Sylvia's Journal

The partnership, first called 4337P and then 8369A, has been dissolved. It had been an eventful and rather expensive partnership with one nearly fatal accident (the end of 4337P) and a deer strike (the end of 8396A). I met yesterday for the last time with my three plane partners and we divided the insurance money – not enough to buy another plane. My share was even smaller than the rest because I owed quite a bit of money on the expensive Garmin GPS that we put into the plane and that I could not afford to pay at the time. It was, in hindsight, an example of bad financial decision making that cost me dearly.

Bill generously lets me hitch rides on his plane until I have saved up enough to buy a share again. Yesterday we went for a long flight. It was the first time in nearly 2 months that I took the controls. I piloted us out to Ticonderoga, a tiny airstrip nestled at the top of Lake George in Upstate New York. The route took us over a winter wonderland with close ups of a few of Vermont’s ski area. We could see the skiers not far below us.

Bill monitored local weather reports as I flew south over Lake George to Glenn Falls airport for a stop and lunch. Fearing that we might not get out of the airport and fly back east over the mountains while staying below the clouds we made the decision to forget about Glenn Falls and fly back to Rutland where I did my first landing in 2 months. I gratefully accepted Bill’s coaching, which I needed. Bill flew back so we both got to log a few hours.

Back home we found Sita and Jim who had joined Tessa and Steve for a walk at the beach with Chicha. Sita and I finally played our ukuleles together and I had a teacher. I had already gotten into some bad habits that needed correction. I marveled at Sita’s musical skills.

She also gave us a blow-by-blow account of her Davos experience and illustrated this with pictures of herself with various luminaries. She is now ‘into economics,’ she told us, and reads the Financial Times with interest. She received a dose of reality in Switzerland and with it little reassurance that the cast of characters on our world’s stage know what they are doing. She and her scribing buddies are kicking into action to contribute their own rather unique set of skills to bringing people together and have them talk about how we/they can learn ourselves out of our current mess.

While the men in the household were doing whatever it is they were doing, we girls had a beauty treatment with chocolate masks. We decided that Sita looked the scariest and Tessa, as one would expect, very professional and beautiful even with gunk on her face. After the treatment we all had soft baby skin faces.

We had not known about everyone coming home and had accepted a dinner invitation in Ipswich, and so we missed the spontaneous steak au poivre dinner that Jim cooked with such intensity that the whole house participated in the experience and the vent hood nearly caught fire during the ‘light the brandy’ part of the recipe. The result, which he had seen on a TV cooking show, turned out perfect and we were sorry to leave the four kids around the table at their gourmet meal.

We had our own gourmet dinner that our friends Carol and Ken had prepared with Louisiana rather than Indonesian shrimp. Over dinner we reviewed all the things of importance and interest with our hosts and fellow invitees Edith and Hugh until I practically fell of my chair from sleep. I think I am now back on Eastern US time, having slept till 6:30 AM.