Time Lost to Traveling (Seattle & China)

 

This post has NOTHING to do with sailing.  I write this so that my future self understands why I skipped three weekends of (probably) perfect May weather without going sailing.

As I said at the end of my previous post, I had a week of customer visits for work scheduled that took place in Seattle, then I flew to China (after coming back to Delaware for a few hours... long story) for some time to visit with Baba.

I won't go into a lot of details on Seattle... except to say that one customer visit was on the Western side of Puget Sound so I did get a ferry ride across the Sound.

School children commuting to school on Vishon Island.

One night I had the chance to catch up with my cousin, Marylin, when she and her husband came down to my area for dinner.

China was all about spending time with Baba (Vicky's father) who had just received a terminal diagnosis of multiple cancers.  We decided to take time from the sailing season to go visit with him while he was still mostly well.  We did meet up with a few other friends and family and together made sure he had some great times visiting and reminiscing.

Photos will tell this story....

Vicky's Guangzhou condo

View from Vicky's condo in Guangzhou.

Tony (Vicky's brother), Vince and Queenie

Lot's of "Breakfast Teas" in various restaurants.

Walking in the park next to Baba's condo.

A visit to the Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor.

I asked Baba what his favorite childhood memory was and
he launched into this description of swimming naked in the river
during lunch on school days.

Mama and Baba take apart their fans for storage.
We had a bad heat wave while there, so all the cooling was pulled out and put into service.

We spent an afternoon with Mama and Baba going over old family photos.  Vicky is on the far left in both photos.

We had a chance to meet Vince's girlfriend, YingYing.

Vicky's friend and neighbor, Cathy, and her daughter, Jennifer.

Vicky's friend Ruby's daughter discussing RedOx reactions with me at age 14.

Big family dinner with all the cousins, aunts and uncles!

Vicky with her cousins and their spouses.

Vicky and her brother, Tony.

At a German restaurant.

Reagan, the nephew of Vicky's cousin, Fei, used to stay with us during vacations when he was a student in the USA.  He even went boat shopping with us when we were searching for our Catalina 315 way back in the winter of 2014.

He reached out to me when he discovered I was in China and wanted to have dinner with us.  There he thanked me for two things I did when he was staying with us - I taught him to eat steak cooked "medium" and also introduced him to Bruce Springsteen.  He said the both "changed my life".

Reagan is now studying climate science at the new Hong Kong school of science and technology in Guangzhou, a very impressive place for a very impressive young adult.  I expect we will hear more about him.

A last family dinner was had Wednesday night (May 31) before we flew home.  One way this westerner copes with Cantonese cooking (known for not letting ANY protein source go to waste) is to sometimes "just look away and eat it".  I started to do this when I found this bee between the leaves of a sautéed lettuce stalk, but I decided to check with Vicky first.  It turns out it was NOT part of the dish!  The management was embarrassed, apologized and gave us free dessert (twice skinned milk or mango pudding).

We left Wednesday afternoon June 1st, and landed at JFK on the evening of June 1st... arriving back home shortly after 2:00 AM on June 2nd.  (It was 24 hours door-to-door.)