An active year before this trip

This has been a year of much activity for me.

 It was one year ago in November that Penny had her last major bowel surgery operation. She is now almost back to normal and all follow up tests have shown no evidence that her bowel cancers have recurred or spread. As time goes on it is appearing that she has been completely cured. She (and I) are cautiously optimistic.

For me my attitude this year has been "Better get on and do all those things you might want to do!" 

In March I went on the New Zealand tramping trip that we had planned although Penny did not come so it was cut short and we did not go to Australia as previously planned. The New Zealand trip blog is at  http://shauntrampinginnewzealand.blogspot.ca/

In June/ July I sailed my boat Polyandra anti-clockwise around Vancouver Island (759 Nautical Miles). This took six weeks and included a week in Bamfield to attend "Music by the Sea". http://www.musicbythesea.ca/ I am grateful to my two friends Hugh and Keith who came for parts of the voyage. Penny and Keith's wife Arlene came for four days to Bamfield to attend some of the concerts.

In August while Penny went to Ottawa to visit the grandchildren for three weeks I went Alpine hiking for a week with the Alpine Club of Canada, Vancouver Island branch, camping at 2000 meters, above the tree line about 50 KM north of Pemberton, BC and then I spent a week in Ottawa. 

In October I went to the UK to a family get together, to spend a week in London and then to attend the Canterbury Festival with my sister.

Now we are off to spend Christmas with Penny's sister Liz in Melbourne Australia. Penny decided that she would like to stop on the way so we will spend four days in Fiji, a week in Melbourne, five days in Hobart, and another four days in Fiji before coming home again. We leave December 15th and return January 8th.