Bristol bound

We are heading out for a short trip tomorrow evening, this time to Bristol, England, where John has some meetings and work to do with colleagues at the university there and the kids and I have a chance to catch up with a dear friend, Janet.

We met Janet and her husband, Barry, the first weekend after we arrived in England in 1996 when John was a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar headed to Cambridge for the year. All of the scholars across the U.K. were invited to Bristol and stayed with local Rotarians; Barry and Janet were our hosts. We liked them immediately and enjoyed the walking and touring we did with them in this beautiful part of England.

At the end of our year in England there, we met them again in Cornwall, where they kept a sailboat and had invited us for a weekend of sailing. To see a place from the water is such a treat -- it provides a new (and breathtaking) perspective of the land, and we felt so lucky to join them.

That weekend was the reason for one of my favorite Ragsdale stories ever (and there are many). Wilmott Ragsdale was my amazing journalism professor at the University of Puget Sound in the early 1990s. He was in his late 70s when I first met him and was still climbing Mount Rainier annually, sailing and swimming in the Sound, teaching one journalism class a semester, and traveling the world in his spare time. Before this slow-paced life of semi-retirement, he had worked as a journalist for Time, The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, and many other papers and wire services while stationed in the US, England, Egypt, and Thailand among other far-flung locales.

He was on Normandy Beach on D-Day as a reporter; he met weekly with Roosevelt during WWII; he hung out with Hemingway; he always had a good story to tell.

So... during the weekend in Cornwall, in a small town called Fowey (which is famous for one thing and one thing only -- being the home of the author Daphne du Maurier, famous for the book Rebecca), John and I picked up a stained glass sailboat for Rags. When we gave it to him later that summer, I tried to tell him just how special it was.

"We got this during our weekend in Cornwall," I told him.

"Oh, I've been to Cornwall," he replied.

"Well, we got it in a little town you've probably never heard of, called Fowey," I said.

Rags said: "I've been to Fowey!"

"Well, we were SAILING the whole weekend in Fowey," I replied, thinking at last I had one-upped my favorite teacher.

"You know," he said, "I've been sailing in Fowey, too. With Daphne du Maurier."

And that was the last time I ever tried to top him.

At any rate... we have many great memories of Barry and Janet (who I am sure were even more charming sailing companions than Daphne du Maurier), and we kept in touch with them over the years. Barry died a few years ago, but we've continued to exchange letters at least once a year with Janet.

When John said he needed to make a trip to Bristol, I tracked down her email to see if we could meet her for an hour or two. She invited us to stay (ALL of us). We can't wait.

I am not sure how much internet access we'll have (or if I'll be able to update the blog), so don't worry if you don't hear from us for a while. We're looking forward to a quick visit with John's parents Friday night at an airport hotel in Paris (they fly back to the U.S. Saturday morning) -- the kids REALLY missed them after their visit and we are all excited to see them again. After the visit in Bristol, we'll spend an extra day or so in Paris to show the kids some of the sights (aside from the Museum of Immigration and other less-than-thrilling work-related sites Jack got to see with John during their short trip last month!)

As always, I am a bit nervous about the actual travel part of these plans, but it should be pretty easy by comparison to some of the travel the kids have done recently. We look forward to posting pictures of the beauty of Bristol once we return.