Throwback Thursday

My friend and former colleague, Andy Nash, sent me this photo last week. It was taken (I'm not sure by whom) in 1992 when Andy ran for a seat on the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) District. He didn't win, but it was a good try. I was fresh out of graduate school that year and lucky to have found a job with these amazing people.

The candidate, Andy, on the left, our friend and colleague Lucy W. in the center, and me on the right. 1992.

I worked with Andy, Lucy, and our boss Mike, at Silicon Valley's transportation policy agency and met and worked with transportation professionals across the Bay Area. I went on to become an executive at the San Francisco Municipal Railway thanks in no small part to the confidence they, and others, had in me. Good times.

Throwback Thursday

Here's a shot from summer of 1987 (32 years ago!). It's San Francisco, which explains why we're wearing jackets in July. A friend of ours from Washington, DC, was visiting and he took this photo. I think it's on the driveway (Science Circle) in front of City College. Mount Davidson is in the background.

Walt (left) and Ken (right) in San Francisco, July 1987.

I attended City College for a few semesters before transferring over to Berkeley to finish my undergrad degree. We had an apartment not far from this place when we first moved to San Francisco. When we bought our house in 1995, it turned out to be in the same neighborhood.

Throwback Thursday

Ken recently posted some photos of our French house when we first saw it, and in his comments he added a link to photos of our former house in San Francisco, just before we moved to France, with an additional link to some real estate photos of the place. Before we showed that house, I took some photos that have a more "lived in" look. That's because we were living in it at the time.

The living room and dining area. We had the old aluminum windows replaced. From these windows we had a view of San Francisco Bay and the Oakland Coliseum on the other side.

Soon after I took these shots of what I call the "great room," that is, the living room, dining room, and kitchen, we engaged the real estate agents who advised us how to get the place ready for showing. Their advice was simple: get most of the stuff out and empty the corners. Empty corners make a room look bigger, apparently. We obliged, of course.

The living room with the fireplace just outside the photo on the left. No flat-screen tv back then!

I don't have photos of the rest of the place, or maybe I do, but I don't know where they are. We lived in this house for almost eight years. We transformed it, and the investment was well worth it. We made a tidy profit from the sale and that allowed us to move to France.

The dining area and the kitchen, which we had remodeled. The kitchen was originally enclosed. We had it gutted and the walls removed to open it up to the rest of the room.

I really liked this house, even though it had its problems. I suppose all houses have problems and that's just the nature of home ownership. Looking back, I'm glad we did what we did to improve the place. We did it mostly for us and our comfort, but it paid off when we sold the place.

The new kitchen seen from the living room. I'm convinced that the kitchen remodel really sold the house.

The one thing I don't miss is the house's location up a very steep hill from the local subway station. I was younger then and the exercise was good, but I can't fathom having to climb that hill every day now. Thank goodness for retirement! And just for fun, here I am in the kitchen at Christmas in 2002.

My hair is a lot greyer now.

Throwback Thursday

I'm out of photos again. This happens often during the dark and rainy months. I don't take the camera out in the rain, and it's been raining pretty often. Other days are just too dark and I'm not motivated. So here's a shot from a walk I took down on the riverbank back in January 2012.

Walking along the Cher River on a foggy January morning in 2012. Callie was with me then.

I haven't taken Tasha on the "river walk" at all. I'll have to do that once it dries out a little. I have two options: I can put the harness and leash on her and walk down to the river or I can put her in the car and drive down. Driving has the advantage that we'd probably walk more along the river. But I can't do it in muddy, wet conditions. Another walk we can do is around the island in Saint-Aignan. There's paved parking for that. In fact, I have taken Tasha on that walk, but it's been a while. Hmmm...

Throwback Thursday

Ken found some old photos on one of his disk drives the other day. I had forgotten about them. Some were photos that I took while Ken was away from home, using one of his digital cameras. These two were taken in September of 2002. We were still living in California. I drove up to Auburn from San Francisco to see our friend Sue, and our dog Collette came with me, of course. We visited a couple of wineries near Sue's house there.

Me and Collette, happy in the grass. She was a great dog! She was 10 years old, I was 42.

Obviously, I didn't take these two photos. I'm sure that Sue took the first one. I imagine that we got a winery employee to take the other one. Good times!

Sue and me, happy wine tasters!

It's nice to have all of these old photos. It helps me to remember all the fun we had back then. And it was great fun. You can't go back, but with photos you can remember!

Throwback Thursday

Here I am on a horse. I think it was the second, and last, time I rode a horse in my life. The year was 1981. I was a twenty-one year old urban cowboy. That fur-lined suede coat was one of my favorites. I also wore boots in those days.

Walt rides a horse. Giddy-up!

Throwback Thursday

I haven't done one of these in a while, but I found this picture the other day, so here it is. The year was probably 1985; I was 25 years old. I worked for a member of congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. I didn't do anything related to policy or legislation. I was the front office staff and did the congressman's daily scheduling, along with other clerical things. And drove him back and forth to the airport.

At my desk, writing checks. I had an IBM memory typewriter. It was replaced with a desktop computer soon after this picture was taken.

I used WordPerfect back then. I still have that Washington, DC, mug you can see on the desk, upper left.

It was a great job and I had a very good time doing it. The congressman I worked for was from southern California and I was lucky to get to go there for my job. I combined the work trip with some vacation time to northern California and visited San Francisco for the first time that year. Ken came with me. I fell in love with that city and decided that I wanted to live there. In 1986, Ken and I left Washington and moved ourselves to San Francisco. I went back to school to complete my education at Berkeley and start my career as a city planner.

It's getting close to thirty years ago now. Time flies.

Throwback Thursday and blogiversary

It was nine years ago today that I started this blog, on the occasion of my return from my first trip back to the U.S. since moving to France. I spent a week in upstate New York to see family and friends, then another week in the San Francisco Bay Area with friends. This photo is from a dinner out in a French restaurant in Silicon Valley; I think it was called "Brigitte's" and it's now gone.

Left to right: John, Candy, me (in back), and Cheryl. A good time was had by all!

Blogging was relatively new back then and I was looking for a way to share photos and stories about our new life in France with friends back in the U.S. Until I started the blog, I was sending emails with photos. Ugh! So 20th century, especially for 2005. So, here we are, nine years and 3,004 posts later, and it's still going on. I don't know how much longer it will last, but I'd like to make it at least to ten years. Facebook seems to be sucking up much of what little attention spans people have left these days. I find FB a little overwhelming and lacking in the personal design elements that a blog can offer. Such is life. I also preferred beta to VHS and look how that ended up.

Throwback Thursday

I think the year was 1994, twenty years ago now, when Ken and I spent a few days in Las Vegas with my cousin, Kim, who flew in from Florida. We stayed at the then-brand-new Luxor hotel, a sleek black high-rise pyramid with the full blown ancient Egyptian theme. It was my first time ever in Las Vegas and we had a great time taking it all in.

Me and my cousin in front of the Sphinx at the Luxor resort, Las Vegas, summer 1994.

It was August and hotter than heck outdoors. So hot, in fact, that one night, after a fancy dinner with lots of adult beverages, we actually took a taxi across the street to the MGM Grand hotel for some gambling fun rather than walk (five of us stuffed ourselves into one cab). The next day we were terribly slightly hung-over and spent the day poolside at Luxor. Kim rented one of those cabanas with cool mist, a stocked fridge, table service (more drinks), and a cabana boy that came by every hour or so to put cold towels around our necks. Ah, that was the life!

Blurry photo of me hanging out in the cabana at poolside.

We actually ended up going back to Las Vegas again with Kim a few years later. That time we stayed at Caesar's Palace. Again, we had a blast. We even visited the Debbie Reynolds museum. A few years ago, Kim left muggy hurricane-prone Florida and moved to Las Vegas, and she loves it. Like they say, it's a dry heat.

Throwback Thursday

These are the only two photographs I have of my first dog, Lassie. When I was about four or five years old, my dad brought a newly weaned collie puppy home. When I saw her, the story goes, I yelled, "It's Lassie!" and that was forever her name. She and I were inseparable those first years. She naturally became the family dog, but I always thought of here as "mine."

Lassie around 1965, sitting under my dad's chair. Just a pup.

We lived in the country at the time and there were no leashes or fenced-in yards. We just went outside and played. Lassie would come and go as she pleased. She did chase cars as a puppy and actually got clipped by one, but it wasn't serious and she stopped chasing cars after that. The years went by and my family moved a lot, and Lassie adjusted every time. And still, I don't ever remember having a leash for her. We just let her out and she wandered around, always coming back home. I remember once, at a campground in the 70s, having to tie a rope around her neck to walk her because they had instituted a leash rule, but that was the only time.

A photo I took of Lassie in 1975. She was still in good health then.

In 1977 I was a senior in high school and Lassie was thirteen years old. She developed a series of problems and my dad took her to the vet a few times. The prognosis wasn't good and the last time she went to the vet she didn't come back. I was in denial about it all and pretended that everything was ok, but I really missed that dog. It wasn't until 1992 that Ken and I adopted my second dog, Collette. She was a Shetland mix and looked like a smaller version of Lassie. Now we have Callie, another collie (actually a border collie, but they're all related). There's something about sheep dogs!

Throwback Thursday

This is the last Christmas that Ken and I had in our San Francisco house before we sold it and moved to France. It was December of 2002; I was 43 years old. At that point we had put money down on the house in France and were still trying to decide how to proceed.

I'm never too far away from a glass of bubbly wine during the holidays.

We ended up selling the house two months later and moved out in March. Still, it wasn't until June that we actually arrived at the new place in France. We spent several weeks with friends in California, then set out across the country to finally spend a month in North Carolina before flying out to France. It was a whirlwind.

Throwback Thursday

I'm starting to run low on old photos for this weekly meme. At least on photos that I'm willing to post here. For today, here's one from 1961. I was close to being two years old. It's a studio portrait, but in black and white, although color photography did exist by then. Maybe my parents were nostalgic for the good old days, you know, before Dorothy landed in Oz. At least it's a photo; I would never have been able to hold that pose for a painter.

Baby's first bow-tie. And suspenders.

If I remember correctly, the large framed (yes, really) version of this photo was colorized. Before Ted Turner did it to movies, they used to do it to photographs. I don't know where that version is, but it must be somewhere. This one is wallet-sized. I suppose that now-a-days not many people carry actual paper photos in their wallets. All the pictures they could want can be stored on their mobile phones.

Throwback Thursday

It's September 11, so I thought I'd remember the World Trade Center. Ken and I visited sometime around 1984 or 1985. We went to New York from Washington, DC, a couple of times. Once to see Linda Ronstadt at Radio City Music Hall singing with Nelson Riddle and his orchestra. Another time we went to see the parade of the Ashanti people up Central Park West to the Museum of Natural History to celebrate an exhibit about their culture.

Me in front of the north tower, Number One World Trade Center, in the mid 1980s.

I don't remember which time this was, but we went down to the WTC and up to the observation deck. Before I knew Ken, back when I worked for the state of New York, my agency had offices in the WTC. I think it was Tower 2, the south tower, and the offices were on the twenty-third floor. I remember wishing it was higher up. I was lucky to be able to go the NYC offices a few times. I lived and worked in Albany, the mild-mannered state capital located 150 miles north of Manhattan. I loved heading down to "The City" when I could. I remember going to Windows on the World up on the 106th floor for drinks while I was there and exploring the WTC's underground shopping/restaurant/transit scene. I was totally amazed by the spectacle.

Butt shot! Looking toward midtown from the observation deck. The Empire State Building is over my left shoulder.

The last time Ken and I were in New York City was in 2006. We drove in, from Albany, on our way to Washington, DC. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant I knew from that time long ago called the Sevilla, a Spanish place in Greenwich Village. It was still there, still the same, with the same dishes on the menu that remember from 1980, and it was still good. Of course, by then the twin towers were gone.

Throwback Thursday

Look at that hair! I guess it kept me warm in the winter. This was taken in 1972 just as I was about to turn thirteen years old. In all likelihood it's an official junior high school photo.

There are ears in there somewhere.

You gotta love the '70s. I don't remember that shirt, but that huge pointy collar was right in style then. I wasn't wearing a tie because back then they were wider than me. I don't think my hair was really as red as this. The photo was heavy on the red tint, as evidenced by my normally blue eyes looking reddish-brown. I was able to remove some of the red cast with Photoshop, but it's still too much on the red side.

Throwback Thursday

When I was a kid in the 1960s and 70s, my family did a lot of camping in the summertime. We never went too far from home, usually to campgrounds in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. After I left home I stopped going. My first apartment out on my own was camping enough, I suppose. It wasn't until the late 1980s that I started to go camping again, this time in California. Ken was reluctant at first, but he got into the spirit and came to enjoy sleeping in a tent on the ground. We did a lot of camping in Northern California, in the mountains, on the coast, and in the Southern California deserts (including two camping trips in Death Valley). We also ventured into Nevada and Utah at one point.

The truck belonged to a friend of Sue's from Nevada who came along with us.

It was our friend Sue who got us into it, at first letting us borrow her old tent and sharing her camping supplies. It wasn't long before we had our own tent (which we still have) and collection of camping gear for our trips. This photo is from around 1988 or 1989. We were with Sue in the Tuolumne Meadow campground at Yosemite. The mornings were chilly up at that altitude (about 2,600 meters or 8,600 feet) and we enjoyed warming up with our morning coffee next to the campfire.

We did a lot of hiking on that trip and spent a day down in Yosemite Valley. We also enjoyed cooking dinners and eating and drinking (we always took a good supply of wine on camping trips) and star-gazing late into the night. Good times.

Throwback Thursday

This week I didn't forget Thursday. The year was 1987. Ken and I had moved to San Francisco the year before and a friend was visiting us from Washington, DC. We hit a lot of the tourist destinations (we were still exploring, too) and on this particular day we headed over the Golden Gate Bridge to Muir Woods in Marin County.

Walt and Ken at the base of a very old redwood tree.

It's a beautiful park nestled in a foggy coastal valley and filled with redwood trees. The woods are eerily quiet, a nice respite from the hustle and bustle of the city just a few miles away. If you're ever in the Bay Area, I recommend a visit.

Throwback Thursday

Not too far of a throwback this week. We're in September 2005 during my first trip back to the USA since moving to France. I spent the very last part of my trip with our friend Sue in California and we went camping in Yosemite for a couple of nights. We took a day-long hike up to Vernal Fall and back after which we rewarded ourselves with a couple glasses of wine at the Ahwahnee hotel.

Wine smoothed out the aches and pains of a day-long hike up steep trails.

Ken and I had been to Yosemite quite a lot while we lived in California, so this was not my first time there. We tent-camped up in the Crane Flat and Tuolumne Meadow campgrounds, stayed in a cabin down in the valley (and woke up to three feet of snow one morning), and went on a day trip or two (a long day from San Francisco). This was, however, the first time I stayed in a tent-cabin in the valley.

We stayed in one of these tent cabins.

Throwback Thursday

This one is from 1982 when I was a student at the Alliance Française in Paris. I was in the second semester of my French studies and the class was leading up to le degré supérieur. There are three Americans in this class, one of whom (Jane) was in our program. Our teacher was named Monsieur Grand.

That's me in the white sweater. I was 22 years old. The woman next to me is German.

I remember that he would start each class by calling on students randomly to conjugate a verb in a certain tense. They were always the hardest tenses, like the imperfect of the subjunctive or something similar. I was not very good at it. But he gave us hints to help us along, after thoroughly embarrassing us. Of course, we were only embarrassed in front of him. Nobody in the class wanted to be called on and we were never critical of each other.

The whole class. Our teacher, M. Grand, is standing in the back. Jane is in my row, to the left by the window.

I passed the class and went on to the oral exams (very stressful) and got my certificat de français parlé and diplôme de langue française.

Throwback Thursday

I haven't run out of old photos. Yet. This one is, I think, from 1963. The actual photograph is stamped "Dec 63," but that doesn't look like it would December in upstate New York. So, maybe it's from the fall. I would have been three, almost four, years old.

If I remember correctly, my parents rented the upstairs apartment in this building where we lived in 1963.

I have some other photos from this group (same date stamp) with snow in them which makes me think that this roll of film was developed in December of that year. I remember, of course, back in the film days how a single roll of film could sit in a camera for months before it was developed. That's all ancient history, now.

Throwback Thursday

Sherman, set the WABAC machine to 1971. Here I am in the sixth grade class photo at P.S. 16 in Albany. I was sitting on the floor to the far left in the first row with four other boys. We were the short guys. Behind us, eight girls were seated. Standing (of course) behind the girls were two rows of the taller kids (three girls and thirteen boys).

A wry smile.

This is the year I started taking French in school. I was a year behind because I had just moved into the city school district in fifth grade, then placed into an "advanced" class for sixth grade. The "advanced" kids had started French the year before. I had some catching up to do and one of the kids was assigned to tutor me in French. We would meet on the school steps in the morning before class started and he'd run the alphabet and numbers with me.

The whole class. My French tutor is the kid in dark-rimmed glasses with the glasses case in his shirt pocket.

I'm impressed by how the photographer set this up more or less symmetrically. Boys and girls are grouped, not random, by height, and to the extent possible by hair color and style. For example, the two seated girls in the middle each have their long hair tied in tails. And the two long-haired girls behind them, on either side of a curly-haired girl, are each wearing a headband. I don't remember the photo session and I'm sure we weren't aware of what the photographer was doing.