A couple of talented students, friends from Kansas City, and a picnic | Life in Ludlow

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I am lucky. In addition, the weather was nice for the past week. 

For last Thursday’s program at Rotary we heard presentations from Ava Gardner-Mifsud and Akira Anderson. They are two of the club’s 2022 scholarship recipients and did a great job describing their plans for heading off to college this year. 

Ava is going to the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington, Seattle campus and is looking forward to developing her knowledge of the business community. As many of her friends know, she participated in track at Chimacum High and plans to run on the team or on a running club at UW. 

Akira was hard pressed to contain her enthusiasm for heading to the University of Puget Sound. 

In fact, UPS alumna and Rotary member, Nancy McDaniel was hard pressed to contain her joy at Akira’s choice of colleges! 

Akira was a standout “libero” on the Chimacum volleyball team and is excited to continue playing for UPS as she pursues a potential career in the sciences. 

The success these two women have had so far, I suspect is but the beginning for a couple of Chimacum’s finest. We wish nothing but good luck to both of them. 

In addition, many in the room learned what a “libero” is. (The short definition is the player with the different colored jersey.)

Old friends from our former home in Lee’s Summit, Missouri sailed in the San Juan Islands last week and graced our home with some tales of other old friends in the Midwest before heading home. We assured them that they were not to tell of the fine weather we had over the weekend. 

They got a good taste of how one manages travel around the Great Pacific Northwest given the Hood Canal Bridge and the ferry system. 

We picked them up in Anacortes having taken the ferry from Orcas Island. They went to the ferry terminal on Orcas only to discover they thought they were to catch the ferry to Friday Harbor instead of Anacortes so they had a nice wait for the correct ferry. BJ and I had a delightful lunch at Ciao’s in Coupeville on the way to Anacortes having successfully negotiated the big traffic jams at the Coupeville Art Fair. You see, they have not had the event due to that thing we call COVID and the artists were out in force. 

We arrived at the Anacortes ferry terminal a few minutes before the ferry from Orcas, so we went into the terminal for the restrooms and a bottle of water. I unscientifically noted that about half the folks waiting for the ferry looked and sounded to be not from the USA and they appeared to be making every effort to keep Washington “green.” Bless them all, every one. 

We gave our Missouri friends the obligatory tour around East Jefferson County with lunch in Port Townsend and a stop at the Marrowstone Winery. (I discovered the winery has music on Fridays and Saturdays. Another thing I have missed this summer, which will not be missed next week.) We tried to get lunch at Doc’s in Port Townsend, but the wait was 90 minutes so we ended up at the deli at the Commons at Fort Worden. No line! Food OK.

We took our friends to the annual lower Pioneer Drive picnic on Sunday afternoon at Kehele Park. 

Sharon Sorenson does most of the organization for the event including drafting her husband Lynn in cooking burgers and brats. Then there are potluck offerings of salads, vegetables, and not-so-low calorie desserts from the over 30 attendees. 

We sat next to John and Nancy Bonderson who were happy to meet our friends. The Bondersons spend about half the year in Hudson, Wisconsin and our friend Cheryl was very familiar with the area since she grew up near Hudson. Our friends also enjoyed Nancy and John poking fun at me. So rude.  

Yep, I am lucky. Weather, food and friends were all pretty darn good last week.    

Love a curmudgeon and have a great week. 

(Ned Luce is a retired IBM executive and Port Ludlow resident. Did you hear what happened when Ned got invited to a potluck that cannibals were having? He promised to bring a friend. Email Ned at ned@ptleader.com.)