We're off to Germany!

Oder, wir gehen zu Deutschland!!
I'm so excited I can hardly sleep. This Thursday Annette and I are heading back to Germany. It's been a couple years for her, 40 years for me. She'll be returning to her Dad's 75th Birthday and giving a talk in Heidelberg and I'll be visiting the apartments and the city of Heidelberg, where, oddly enough, I used to live when my Father was stationed there on his second t.o.d. in that country.

I'm curious as to what hidden memories will be stirred as I explore the streets. I have several, like when I took off on my tricycle to do a road trip and got as far as the autobahn before I was spotted by my brother. When that old white Ford station wagon caught up to me, boy did I get a spanking! I was 4 years old at the time and we'd just gotten back from a road trip across the Alps and down to Spain, if memory serves. I just didn't want the trip to be over!

A wonderful drumming experience Sunday before my cave trip into Hurricane!

From Deep in the Sierras

I just got back from a caving trip of Hurricane Crawl, inside Sequoia National Park. I've been wanting to do this trip from more than a decade. Fewer than 100 people have entered this cave, so I felt very blessed to get access with the Park's Cave Specialist, Joel Despain.




It was a grueling trek with narrow passages some over 80 feet high with cascading flowstone of white and orange, grittering in the dark. Deep inside we found large rooms, some with pools, now seasonally dry like this one. The oscillations of top of the water level and the super concentration of dissolved calcite creates interesting textures and formations.

These beautiful formations are decorating part of ceiling of Pumpkin Palace. The photos hardly do them justice.