The NCF Envirothon was held at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, on the shores of Seneca Lake in Geneva, New York
Team Massachusetts arrived with the T-shirts that they designed
The first night features a trading session with other teams. Caroline's team swapped those bandannas on the right for all sorts of other states' merch
The competition format has field tests in Forestry, Aquatics, Wildlife, Soils, and a Current Issue, which this time was "Renewable Energy for a Sustainable Future"
Is that a fluventic dystrudept or an aeric endoaqualf? (more on that later...)
The Envirothon outing was to Niagara Falls
and they rode the Maid of the Mist around Horseshoe Falls
When the scores were tallied, the two-time defending champs were dethroned by Tennessee and finished 6th. They won the Soils and Wildlife sections and each took home $900 - not too shabby. Next year's competition moves back across the border to Calgary, Alberta and the Current Issue will be "Roots and Resiliency: Fostering Forest Stewardship in a Canopy of Change". Caroline is very excited!
Where is this unsalted sea, with a beautiful empty beach and inviting placid water?
It is the southern shore of Lake Ontario, where Erin and I stopped on our way to pick up Caroline
After wading out like a quarter mile to reach a sufficient depth, we immersed ourselves to complete our swim tour of all 5 Great Lakes
Katy and Lyla met us in Ithaca, where Katy gave us a tour of the town and Cornell campus
Cornell has 8 undergraduate colleges: Agriculture & Life Sciences, Architecture, Arts & Sciences, Public Policy, Engineering, Human Ecology, Industrial & Labor Relations, and Business. Each college's flag was on display in the student union. Some were easy to decode....
...and others not so much
In the greenhouses of the Ag-Life School, they've cloned 4-leaf clovers!
And in the basement various soil columns were on display, and we learned how to tell our Fluvaquentic Eutrudepts from our Fluventic Dystrudepts
from our Aeric Endoaqualfs
and our Glossaquic Hapludalfs
Another of Katy's old haunts was the ice rink. She was recruited as a walk-on to play goalie for Cornell's Division I women's ice hockey team
From Ithaca we drove over to the Catskill region and our favorite hiking area at the Mohonk Mountain House
Charlie and Brad arrived separately, as did Heather and Tessie
An anchor point for our trip was set a year ago when we played the lottery for European Taylor Swift concerts and scored tickets for Milan. Among the customs at concerts is the exchange of friendship bracelets with fellow fans and this is the one that I designed.
Milan's duomo is a massive gothic style cathedral, the 5th largest Christian church in the world
with notable art, such as the 1562 statue of St. Bartholomew flayed and holding his own skin
The concert was held at San Siro, the famous AC Milan soccer stadium. We headed out there the morning of the show in order to buy merch.
The show started at 7pm and it was hot as we walked from our hotel to the venue
The stadium was stuffy and kind of a dump. When we headed to concessions to buy water after the opening act, they were cleaned out of food. We overheard the staff say that the Americans come and eat everything, like pigs.
Four of our seats were up in the back of the grandstand
and the 5th was a VIP seat, much closer to the stage. I started out there but relinquished it to Heather and Caroline for most of the show.
The show was 100% amazing and we have videos below at the end. Each of the 8 Eras was like its own show with distinct outfits, set, and choreography. She performed for 3.5 hours straight to the electrified crowd, who surprised her by chanting "Sei bellissima" (you're beautiful) during the acoustic set. Up until recently, hearing of a Swiftie brought to my mind Tom Swifties, aka bad puns like "Look at the criminal going down the stairs", said Tom condescendingly. Now I understand why Taylor has such a devoted following and maybe I am a Swiftie who appreciates Swifties. Like the ones clever writers have created:
“I-I shake it off. I shake it off,” sang Taylor, fitfully.
“Now we got bad blood,” sang Taylor, anemically.
Heading out of Milan the next day we found a very green building. Our original plan was to head straight to Meduno to stay with Heather's friend Roberta, but at the last minute Roberta's arrival was delayed 2 days and we scrambled to find an alternate plan. For someone who plans trips months in advance, picking a destination and accommodations on 24-hour notice was stressful. Everything was fully booked in the lakes region near Lago di Como and Lago di Garda but we found availability in the city of Trento and went for it.
It worked out great. Trento even had a cat cafe
with cat art and cat-ification roosts on the walls. Unlike cat cafes in the US that are restricted on food service, in Italy we ordered a full antipasto plate and our go-to drink, the aperitivo spritz. Aperitivos are made from sparkling wine, mineral water, and a bitter botanical extract such as Aperol or Campari. Turns out every region of northern Italy has its own local botanical bitter, and while Heather never deviated from the palatable citrusy orange Aperol, I tried many unique bitter extracts, which came in shades of green, brown, and blue.
One of the cafe residents had clipped ears
Our hotel had a breakfast buffet and this statement holds true with my hotel stays in Sweden and our time in Iceland: European breakfast buffets are terrific (even more true with England excluded). Tessie still remembers our endless run of lame waffles at hotels in Texas. Here in Trento you could scoop your own honey from the comb, which I have only done previously with Aunt Katy's hives.
Trento is in the Dolomite mountain range, named for the white metamorphosed limestone uplifted from the ancient ocean Tethys. Caroline, Erin, and I hiked up to a ridge with fortifications from World War I. Is the name on the sign a reference to how you feel after the hike?
Meanwhile Heather and Tessie obtained the same view of the Adige river valley by taking the funicular up
Trento was a great place to shop for Italian clothes without the crowds of Milan or Venice
and the Trento duomo was a respite from the heat
We spent an afternoon at the nearby lake, Lago di Levico. The lakefront hotel let outsiders reserve lounge chairs on their beach. With a lawn and ample shade, it sure beat the sand, salt water, and biting flies of a typical beach experience.
and of course they served aperitivos
Swimming is the rare activity where the girls all play together
Our Peugeot family SUV was packed tight on the drive to Meduno, which is in the region Friuli-Venezia Giulia northeast of Venice, and bordering Austria and Slovenia
Heather met her friend Roberta at Merck work. Roberta grew up in Meduno and comes back to visit with her American husband Chris and their son, who is the only grandchild to Tony and Fanny.
Tony and Fanny hosted a barbecue for us at their hunting lodge in mountains.
Grampa Ed would have appreciated the orderly woodpile
After dinner we hiked through the hills to a nearby village
that was the birthplace of Luigi del Bianco, the chief sculptor of Mount Rushmore.
Luigi's descendant came out to say hi to Roberta's parents and when they saw the American visitors they brought out some Prosecco to share
Meduno is famous to European daredevils for its perfect paragliding conditions
We drove up to the launch point to watch takeoffs. On hot summer days, gliders can stay airborne for 3-4 hours
Tony led us up the highest point, where he and his alpine military (alpini) friends erected a monument
The Pradis Grotte had cool caves to explore, including one with a statue of the Virgin Mary
Goofing off after dinner in Spilimbergo
Erin and I ran out to an old castle
and discovered the landing zone for all the paragliders
Instead of braving the heat and crowds at an Adriatic beach, we followed the locals to their swimming hole, the Paludana on the river Meduna. This rock spire attracted cliff jumpers (there are 2 of them) and spectators
When a group of suntanned teenage boys showed up wearing reef shoes, I suspected we were in for a treat, and sure enough one of them climbed up crazy-high and took the plunge. Check out the video below.
Our kids stayed off the rocks
On our last day, we said goodbye to our hosts and headed to Venice in the heat
Usually entering a big stone church offers a break to summer heat, but St. Mark's was stuffy and overcrowded
Instead of touring the museums we wandered around the city
where peaceful streets could be found
In Venice our tale ends with pasta, alle vongole
alla carbonara
and al nero di seppia (with black squid ink)
The day before our flight home there was a massive computer outage due to a botched Windows update from a company called CrowdStrike. Initially our flight to Paris (12:15 on Air France) looked OK but it, too, became cancellato. Heather jumped into travel agent mode and hunted down a flight through Spain the next day, which was better than the one offered by Delta that was 2 days later. Staying an extra night was problematic because that night was the big Venice fireworks event, but Heather came through again and found us accommodations in nearby Mestre.
In the Madrid airport the next day. "Recuperacion" means recovery, aka the Microsoft blue screen of death.
My first indelible rock concert audiovisual memory is from Rush in 1991 inside sold-out Madison Square Garden. It was my first concert and the band playing Force Ten behind a cartoon of a kid whirling in a tornado is etched in my brain. One of the benefits of not knowing all the songs in the Eras Tour set list was that when a new and amazing song (to me) came along with striking visuals, it was able to set another indelible audiovisual memory. That's what happened here with "Who's afraid of little old me?" Of course thanks to YouTube, who needs a memory?
