Raving Amicks

Your mom and I recently visited her mother and brothers outside Boston. Had a great time. Visited Kinnebunkport, Maine where we spent our honeymoon nite. Here’s a picture of the Captain Lord Mansion. We went inside and it turns out the owners we met in 1978 were still there! We were one of their first customers. I had lobster roll for lunch and your Mom and grandmother had fish and shrimp. We bought lobsters and cooked them at your grandmother’s house.
We also visited our house in Harvard, MA. Here’s a picture – pretty modern in those days. It was on about 2 acres of mosquito swamp.

Mason and Mary Lynn came up from Delaware and we visited Cape Cod.

Met up with Jonathan, Sanford, Raquel, Jonathan Jr., Anita and McKensie. Had a great brunch at a Brazillian restaurant where Jonathan has done some work. Here’s a picture of some cranberry bogs on the Cape.  Oh yeah, we had more lobster rolls at Logan airport on the way out!

Here’s the “Diogenes” lamp we first saw at Winfried’s home in Germany. Pretty nice, it has an adjustable 50W halogen reading light (with the handle) and a 300W halogen light out the top.

Nice snowstorm (as long as it doesn’t get more nasty)! Here’s Neal Creek and the house.

Made your Mom a great dinner and did the flower thing.  She made some great Valentine’s Day cupcakes

Great visit to Dieter by the Amick family including Tyler and Mindy.  Never saw the sun or the ground (too much snow)!  Lots of great food and beer.  Visited Dachau (more educational than depressing), Neushuanstein (King Ludwig’s fantasy castle) , Alte Pinakothek (the old museum in Munich – more Rubens than anywhere – King Ludwig designed the museum around the massive “The Last Judgement” by Rubens) – http://www.superstock.com/stock-photos-images/900-772) and the BMW museum.   Spent New Year’s eve on the Oktoberfest grounds with many massive tents and four bands playing,  360 degrees of fireworks at midnight – truly amazing!!!    Flights all on time, massive jet-lag both ways.

Yeah, I finally got to go to band camp!  :)   It was a week-long Jazz Workshop at the Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, WA. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Worden)  Spent an exhausting week in workshops, listening to faculty perform and ourselves perform.  Food was bad, accommodations were sparse (tiny dorm-like rooms with shared bathrooms).  Here’s some pictures.  Went up with Bob, who also attended (he’s the guy in one of the pictures).  There’s a picture of the corner of the dorm/barracks I stayed in with the ocean in the background.  The trombone faculty member was Wycliffe Gordon – an amazing player (www.wycliffegordon.com).   He’s the large black guy in one of the pictures. There’s also a picture of me during our public performance.   Great fun!   Learned a lot.

He looks dead, but he’s just worn out. Your Mom has been walking the dogs hard like 6 miles every morning.

Went with 5 friends on a float/camping trip on the Deschutes River in Eastern Oregon Tues. thru Friday afternoon.  The weather was horrible – it rained all day on Wed. and  camping in the rain is the shits.  Caught some fish (the rainbow in the picture is like 14″), had some great laughs and conversations with my buddies.  One of the pictures show my buddy Ken in the rain in my boat with a tarp draped over him.

The Mom unit and I toured the Powerdale Dam on the Hood River and the fish trap/station that’s located by the dam. The dam has been decomissioned and is in the process of being torn down. The fish trap and station is also being eliminated, so this was our last chance to see the fish trap in operation. They sort and tag ALL steelhead and salmon coming up Hood River and then let the wild fish and a few hatchery fish go above the dam. Here’s some pictures of the dam and the work being done with the fish. Most of the fish pictures show a wild winter steelhead. One shot also shows two (larger) chinook.

With all this rain the Hood River is running high and muddy, so I thought I’d try for smallmouth bass near the mouth. Here’s a picture of a 16″+ bass I caught this afternoon. Thought I was snagged on the bottom and then it started moving!  I let it go.