In July 2018, my 17-year-old daughter Lydia and I joined 20 or so other adventurers from the U.S. and Kenya for a two-week service project in south-central Kenya – a week in Nairobi and a week in Embu. We cleaned windows, chairs, cabinets, etc. in the children’s ward of Kenyatta National Hospital, renovated a playground in Embu, spent a good deal of time with kids, and got up close and personal with giraffes.
Before the corn and soybean harvest, my brother Aric wanted to do a hiking trip. We’ve done something about every year—Mount Whitney last year, Half-Dome before that, and Wilson’s Prom in Australia before that.
Aric typically starts brainstorming around January, and planning around March. This year the Grand Canyon Rim-to-Rim caught his eye–a 24-mile day hike from the North Rim, 5,700 feet down to Phantom Ranch and 4,400 feet up to the South Rim.
My brother Aric is a great farmer and enjoys what he does, but his heart also inclines toward mountain adventuring. In 2018, after persuading a few of us to join him up Half Dome in Yosemite, he began looking for a Bigger Thing and settled on Mount Whitney, at 14,500 feet the highest point in the contiguous U.S.
Excerpts from DES update…Rene’s tour, a trip to the local quarry, and Aric’s FB.
In early July, our own Rene Duquesnoy began serving a tour of duty in Kuwait for six to eight months with the Air National Guard. We send a package his way every handful of weeks. If you want to send something, let us know.
My cousin Nick wanted to harvest our corn last week. Cash corn was $2.96, not too bad. But…
The PL (“Price-Later”) fee was 90 cents per bushel (last year it was almost free); apparently the gulf ports want upstream elevators to hold onto their grain for awhile, due to logistics challenges imposed by Hurricane Irma. Word is that if we leave it in the field for a month, PL will drop by 35 cents.
(As published in Chris’s update to DRW colleagues…)
And now, the Southern Illinois Walquist 2017 Corn Planting Update
August 2015: After two and a half years of sporadic effort, I finally got around to taking (and passing!) the VFR private pilot oral/practical exam. As part of my preparation, I flew a cross-country solo trip to La Crosse, Wisconsin.