The Lewin Family Virtual, Interactive Year-end Letter - 2019 ©
Back by little demand.........Here is The Lewin Family Virtual, Interactive Year-end, Letter for 2019.
It has been a busy year as we have been supporting the car rental and airline industries. Unfortunately, this will read like a travelogue, but that is what the year encompassed.
A friend of the family (and I am not naming names) decided the dead of winter, January was the perfect time to get married in New York City. You can only imagine how 9 degrees and a stiff wind through the streets of The City felt. Almost like being in the Midwest in the dead of winter. Read on.
Getting back to the wedding in NYC, it was a fun time, despite the frigid temperatures and we came to realize that the East in the winter is not for people from Southern California. We visited friends, a few relatives and I spent some time at my favorite art museum.
February saw foreign visitors at our home, all from the Netherlands. Joop arrived first and when he returned home, Rob and Karin arrived. Driving around, we visited parts of Southern California that I hadn’t seen in years.
April, some of Carol’s Master Gardener friends and their spouses rented a house in Sedona (Arizona) and we joined. Just before, we played tourist in and around Tucson visiting some of my favorite attractions.
On the drive back home, I received a call from one of my jobs, could I teach a communications class for CST at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri? I left the next morning for the three-day class. From there I flew to Montgomery, Alabama to support the recovery efforts of the May 3 tornado in Lee County.
Towards the end of May, we flew to the Isle of Islay, Scotland, the southernmost island in the Inner Hebrides. We were honored to be the guests of Mike and Marian, who we met at the Grand Canyon a few years ago. For the ten days, we thoroughly enjoyed the annual Scotch Whisky Festival where we visited all nine distilleries and toured the entire island. We even took one day and took the ferry to the Isle of Jura and drove as far north as we could after visiting the Isle of Jura Distillery. At the end of the road was a small gin distillery owned and operated by three women, Lussa Gin. It was 20 miles north of there where George Orwell wrote 1984.
From Islay (pronounced Eye-la) we flew back to Glasgow, sat around for nine hours and then flew to Derry, Northern Ireland. Rented a car and toured Northern Ireland for four days. There we saw several sites where Game of Thrones was filmed, visited the puffins along one of the cliffs on Rathlin Island and drove to Malin Head (actually in Ireland) where Episode VIII of Star Wars was filmed. Malin Head is the northernmost point in Ireland. It was a real treat driving a medium size SUV on the left side of the road.
From Northern Ireland, we began winding our way down the western part of Ireland for two weeks, visiting all the attractions and driving all the Rings. All the pictures are here. Returned home the end of June.
July 7, I flew to Boise for work and spent almost two months there. During that time, I flew to Anniston, Alabama twice in two weeks to teach FEMA classes. First week, I got orders to fly to Atlanta ahead of Hurricane Dorian. Dorian failed to affect US interests as predicted, I came home after four days. Carol was already gone to Hawaii with a friend for some well-deserved snorkeling.
October, Carol went to Seattle with a friend to partake in a knitting conference. In October, I taught communication classes in Clarinda, Iowa and Duluth, Minnesota. Mid November, I was in Fairfax, Virginia for another comms class. Just after Virginia, was deployed to Springfield, Illinois where this boy from Southern Arizona will experience a Midwest winter. As I pen this Letter, we are expecting 4 to 7 inches of snow and little ice over the next 48 hours
The last week of this year, we are flying to Aspen to spend time with Anthony and Erin.
Oh, when insomnia strikes in the dead of night, take a look at all our pictures. You will fall asleep in no time.
A happy and healthy 2020 from Southern California, Aspen, Colorado and Springfield, Illinois, to all of you.
Oh, one last thing...if you forgot to bookmark this wonderful epistle, you can always go to arnie.org and find your way back. There is even a link to send an email.