There is no one who can create a celebration of friends like our friend Harry Bower, from San Francisco.(Remember he created our wedding concert banquet!) Here for a week,to see us before we left, and to play trios with Rick and Doug, we had wonderful meals, music, and talks.
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We were delighted to have good friends David and Kathy Wales as listeners and admirers of our fully functioning home. David is a fellow mathematician, a next door office colleague of Rick's at Caltech. They are experienced travelers, and suggested the Hotel Ibis, where we are staying in Amsterdam.. They also are responsible for having us choose granite for our countertops, which is a source of constant pleasure. Also visiting,in the foreground, was Arjeh, from Utrecht, in the Netherlands, another friend mathematician visiting Caltech.
We took our friend Arjeh,to our home in Santa Barbara last weekend. Before we got on the freeway, we were stopped by a train. This is the new "Gold Line" from Pasadena to downtown LA. (Not shown, but you might be able to see the tracks and gates.)
We loved our visit to Santa Barbara friends Carol and Fred. Carol showed us their beautiful garden. Carol restored Tim's childhood 'desk' at her South Coast Fine Arts Conservation Center.
For Arjeh it was a perfect visit. We dropped him off at the Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens, and after a few hours of wandering he walked several miles from the Santa Barbara foothills down State Street,to the Oceanfront where Kathy was at work at the Art Show.
He spent an hour in the water, and then we joined Colleen, Kathy's daughter for a beautiful dinner at Bistro Eleven Eleven, across the street from our home. It was out last visit to Santa Barbara before our trip.
Here is a better picture of Colleen. She is the best daughter in the world. We will miss her a lot whilre we are gone.
We were able to make a day trip to Carlsbad, CA where trio sonatas flourished. Daniel played his harpsichord, the same one he played in our wedding concert, which is a Flemish single manual. He is working on one like this for us too. (Sorry you can't see it yet.)
David Dahl visited us from Oregon. A flute player, he surprised us by being in Southern California to pursue his dan bau studies.The dan bau is a Vietnamese single stringed instrument. He gave us a demonstration.
Bob Roth, a visiting mathematician from Atlanta, and old colleague and friend came for lunch today, with his artist wife Lisa. We had wonderful talks, and were happy to be able to have this relaxing time together, a break from our trip preparations!
Before our friend Doug left we had many cacti and succulent adventures.
The baby doves have flown away. Here's one, poised before an open door. Its parents seem to be nesting again. There may be new baby doves in the spider plant nest on our balcony when we return!
All of our friends have left, and we've left ourselves, by our front door. (We can still talk by email.) Back August 19th.
