Looking ahead, 2003 was going to be a
very busy year. Leaving winter in
Missouri behind, Diane and I joined Olivia’s 30th anniversary cruise
to the Eastern Caribbean on Holland America’s ms Maasdam. It was basically the same itinerary I had in
1991. This time it featured many of the
Olivia recording artists and comedians we had heard since Olivia Records was
founded in 1973 and had seen traveling together cruising with Olivia since 1992. It included Linda Tillery, Teresa Trull,
Barbara Higbie, June Millington, Deidre McCalla, Dianne Davidson, Lucie Blue
Trembley, Cris Williamson and Tret Fure, and comedians Karen Williams, Suzanne
Westenhoefer, Lisa Koch, Roxanna Ward, Vickie Shaw, and Marga Gomez. Since the ship set sail from Ft. Lauderdale,
we also had the opportunity to visit Paulette, my old friend from Kansas State. This time I did go on a shore excursion in Puerto
Rico.
We were back home in time to see the
Feb. 5, 2003 appearance of Colin Powell before the UN Security Council,
presenting his later debunked evidence of Iraq possessing “weapons of mass
destruction.” By March forces that had
not been able to find Osama bin Laden were instead joining coalition forces to
invade Iraq and capture Baghdad. Was
this the Bush son accomplishing something his father had failed to do, going
all the way to Baghdad and overthrowing Saddam Hussein? Was this man who had been in the oil business
looking at Iraq’s tremendous oil reserves?
We will never know the answers to those questions.
Pfizer’s purchase of Monsanto,
including Pharmacia, in April 2003 saw the beginning of the end of my work in
the pharmaceutical industry. It would
take another few years for the process to unfold, but the entire industry was
changing. There were fewer new drugs
being discovered in the laboratories of the established firms. It seemed that the methods being used by the
scientists I had been working with needed to be updated. In the meantime, the focus seemed to be on
acquiring small companies that were developing promising new products. That meant Pfizer would eventually downsize
the drug discovery unit I had worked with in St Louis.
The good news for me was that the first
of two papers I wanted to publish, “Defining the linear portion of a
sigmoid-shaped curve: bend points” was accepted and published in the journal Pharmaceutical
Statistic. I had satisfied the
editor with my responses during the peer review process, making any necessary
changes and approving the mark-up (by 2023, ResearchGate showed about 8,500
reads and 49 citations). Now that the
foundation for it was laid, I could move on to completing the more important of
the two papers.
In April 2003, Diane and I went to New
Jersey for my nephew Craig’s marriage to Mary Ann. They were both in their early 40s and eager
to have a family. They were married in a
noon service held at a small, beautiful Catholic church in Jersey City followed
by a meal at a nearby Italian restaurant.
Craig still had his own business, Model Development Corp, and Mary Ann
had a high-level position with MAC, Estee Lauder. As was common, they lived in Jersey City and
worked in New York City.
In early May, I attended my last IBC
conference on bioassays in Bethesda, MD.
It was easy to take the Metro from there to DC, where Diane and I had
fun visiting Julia Child’s kitchen at the Smithsonian as well as other
exhibits. We walked to The National
Museum of Women in the Arts and The National Portrait Gallery. An evening at The Shakespeare Theatre Company
revealed amazing performances.
Later that month, we flew to Vancouver for
our second Olivia visit to Alaska, this time on Holland America’s ms Veendam
cruising south to north. The ports of
call were the same as before with the exception that this time we stopped at
Sitka rather than Ketchikan. After eight years, we couldn’t help but
notice the retreat and smaller size of the glaciers. The cruise through the part of the inside
passage where we had seen the orcas on our earlier cruise was made in the dark
of night so viewing was not possible.
On our previous Alaska trip, we had not
brought back any souvenirs. Now, we were
decorating our new house with artwork from our travels and were on the
lookout. Instead of doing any shore
excursions in Skagway, we walked to the history museum where we found a
sleeping blanket with a native design.
Another store had some beautiful copper plates, one with a raven and one
with an eagle, powerful native symbols.
When we entered an oriental rug store (of all places), we were surprised
to see a brightly colored hummingbird painted with a native motif on a piece of
leather. All of these purchases were
easy to roll up and carry home in our suitcases. We still wanted to find a native-sculpted
wooden totem pole. On our previous
visit, stores in Juneau were selling them, but this time most of what we saw
were made-in-China cheap souvenirs. We
looked and looked until we found a small store that only carried native-made
products, found just what we were looking for, and brought it home with us.
Hummingbird painting and copper plates
Diane and I liked to keep up with old
friends. In early August, we drove to Denver,
Colorado to visit our friends Karen and Joe.
They took us up into the foothills for a Sunday brunch along with their
son, Brian. Next, we wanted to visit
several friends who had relocated to the Pacific Northwest, so I planned another
trip for later that month like the one we had done for our first road trip to
the Canadian Rockies in 1991.
Colorado brunch with Joe, Karen and Brian
We flew to Portland and rented a car for
the rest of our trip. While there,
President George W Bush was in town, and there were many protests going on
including a boat on the Willamette River with an “Impeach Bush” sign. Protests are nothing new in Portland. We peacefully toured the Chinese and Japanese
gardens and visited Liz and Jill. Liz was
the daughter of our good Planned Parenthood friend Mary B in Columbia. Our next destination was Bend, OR, but our
preferred route through Salem was blocked because of a forest fire in the
mountains. Instead, we took the highway
from Portland toward Mt. Hood which was busy with people on foot and bicycles
participating in the Hood to Coast relay race.
Our friends Kay and Evelyn, who we met while living at the lake, had
moved to Bend and invited us for a visit.
Their suburban house was very different from their double wide in the
Eldon, MO woods. They took us to see the
Lava Beds National Monument and the views from the Lookout and the Butte. Kay
and Evelyn drove us up to Sisters for lunch where we saw the brigades assembled
to fight the fires.
Impeach Bush sign
Portland friends, Jill and Liz with Diane
and Jeanne
Mt. Hood
Evelyn and Kay in Sisters, OR
The drive north from Bend to the Columbia
River was through the High Desert which has an altitude of about 4,000 feet. We drove across a river bridge and stopped to
visit the Maryhill Museum of Art and have lunch at the Maryhill Winery. From there, driving west, we enjoyed the
scenic views of high waterfalls along the Columbia River before turning north
to visit Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument. Over 20 years earlier, in May 1980, the
volcano erupted, spewing ash that killed crops and other vegetation. It triggered the largest subaerial (on land)
landslide in Earth's recorded history, knocking down forests. Wildlife, including fish were killed, as well
as over 50 recorded human deaths. In the
area around the visitor center, there was amazing regrowth, but a word of
caution. Mount St. Helens is still an active
and dangerous volcano.
Maryhill Museum of Art with high desert in
background across the river
St. Helens Braided Ash River
Our next stop was a hotel room in downtown
Seattle. This time our visit to the Pike
Place Market was brief. Our main reason
for being in Seattle was to visit another former friend from the lake, Gale
Kessler, the woman we had helped with her campaign for the Missouri House. We enjoyed a delightful evening of good
music, food, and wine in her home on Mercer Island. Gale was as elegant as ever.
Gale and her friend Ron in front of his Picasso
painting
We took a ferry to the Olympic Peninsula stopping
by the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge near Sequim on the San Juan de Fuca
strait, then continuing west with views to the south of the snowy Hurricane
Ridge mountains. Our destination was
Cape Flattery, the northwestern-most point in the continental United States
where the Strait of Juan de Fuca meets the Pacific. To get there required entering the Makah
Indian Reservation and then hiking down a difficult trail to reach a viewing
platform overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
I called that hike a trial by the three R’s: roots, rocks, and ruts, but
the view at the end was worth it.
Cape Flattery Fog
That night our lodging was on the Quileute
Indian Reservation at the Manitou Lodge.
Dinner in La Push included fresh-caught delicious Dungeness crab while we
watched a sunset view of haystack rock formations in the ocean. The next day a forest ranger led us on a
walking tour of the Hoh National Forest.
This rain forest is a World Heritage Site. Then we continued south down the Olympic
Peninsula to spend the night at the Harbor View Inn in Aberdeen. We were soon to leave the Peninsula where we
had seen so much beauty and learned about an environment very different from
Missouri’s.
Haystack rock formations near La Push
Giant tree in the Hoh National Forest with little me
Diane wanted to see two more lighthouses.
First, we visited the Grays Harbor Lighthouse where we saw a Fresnel lens that
was built in Paris, France in 1895. Its
flash pattern of red and white still marks the opening to Grays Harbor. The North Head Lighthouse was also still in
use with its grounds providing a great platform for viewing the Pacific
Ocean. It was then a short drive to the
8-mile bridge spanning the Columbia River as it flows into the ocean.
Fresnel lens
Arriving in the state of Oregon, we visited
the Astoria Column viewpoint above the city before spending the night at the
Astoria Best Western. We had heard so
much about Cannon Beach during our visit to Portland that the next morning we
drove along the coast to visit it and see its Haystack. It was then a short trip to return our car
and spend the night at the Fairfield Inn Portland airport before our flights
the next day. Diane flew home while I flew to Ann Arbor,
Michigan to attend a meeting with Pfizer.
Canon Beach Haystack
What a wonderful trip! Since we lived in
the middle of the country, flying to the coast and renting a car saved us so
much driving time. Being able to design
a driving loop meant that we could pick up and drop off the rental car at the
same place, saving the extra charge for a different drop-off location.
By November, it was time to travel
again. My nephew Jon was in law school
at California Western in San Diego. I
could combine a visit to him with my San Diego client’s business meetings. Diane and I saw him for Thanksgiving, and we
all toured the Wild Animal Kingdom, now called the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.
Jon having fun entertaining his aunts
The year 2003 had included many trips, and they
were only going to increase. My client
load was diminishing, making more time available for travel, something Diane
and I really enjoyed doing.