Merry Christmas Folks!

What a year. Can't wait for 2009, so we can get this turkey behind us. I mean, it started out fine, right? In February we spent a week on Grand Bahama with daughters Kelly and Ali. That's them wandering along one of the best beaches we've yet seen. We had a number of great adventures while there, like the Grand Bahama Shark Feed. They neglected to tell us who was being fed to whom. This is your author screaming, to no one in particular, "Holy s@#$!!!!!!" The week before an Austrian Attorney was eaten. Makes you wonder…. I thought there was professional courtesy involved. Guess not. I retired from Lockheed Martin after 22 years on 1 June. (Please note that the great crash of 2008 was unanticipated by me or anyone else back then.) But not to worry, it only gets worse. Read on. My birthday was in July, and one of the thing's I'd been wanting to do is to stay at the Cape Heceta Lighthouse Bed and Breakfast. This little gem is located on the Central Oregon Coast along one of America's prettiest seashores. The rooms are in the former lighthouse keeper's quarters and are antique and cozy. But the draw, aside from the view, is the seven course gourmet breakfast the inn keeper serves over a 2 and 1/2 hour period. Wow! Double Oink!

In July, Rhonda took Ali, friend Sean and me to Grand Cayman for a putative week of fun in the sun. We played with the stingrays at the famed Stingray City. I love those varmints. They are ultra friendly and smooth as silk. But ya gotta watch 'em. They can suck the chrome off a trailer hitch. The next day Ali, Sean and I went diving off Grand Cayman's East Wall. Utterly awesome. Here we are looking straight up at Sean and Ali at around a 100 feet, hovering over 2000 foot vertical drop. It's like standing on the Empire State Building and hanging over the edge looking for 20 foot Hammerheads that periodically come up looking for lunch…….Then my life changed.

After two back-to-back deep dives, we ate lunch and headed home in the rental car. Unfortunately, I fell fast asleep on the way home owing to the nitrogen in my blood. I nailed a telephone pole at 50 mph. I can't tell you how much that hurt. Ali had a concussion, Sean some bruises, and I was pinned in the car for 45 minutes in the sweltering heat. The car had no air bags, so I sustained 7 broken vertebrae, 10 broken ribs, a severely broken collar bone, broken sternum, a punctured and then collapsed lung. A quick-thinking doctor at the hospital saved me by inserting a chest tube to drain the quart of blood that was by then collapsing my remaining lung. I spent 8 days in Grand Cayman before an air ambulance could fly me to Stanford Hospital. At Stanford I had two operations, one to put a 7 inch titanium bar on my collar bone and one to fuse C7 and T1. A week later they sent me home, but without my voice. (That returned 10 weeks later.) There is much debate among associates as to whether the voice returning was a good thing or not. The good news is that I am mostly healed. I can run as far as before and most of the strength in my left hand is back. I'm not as limber, but, pretty much good-to-go. Still, I wouldn't recommend it as a weight loss program (15 pounds).

In October, I traveled to Colorado Springs to my 40th Year Reunion at the Air Force Academy. It's always great fun visiting with the many friends from my class. We had much fun reminding ourselves of all the stupid things we did as cadets. Like shooting up Frank Palermo and Paul Flynn's room at 2 AM in retribution for putting limburger cheese in the back of our overheads. Somehow Bill Beekman and I had snuck the firing pins to our M1 rifles past the Sergeant's after playing Army in Jack's Valley. Hee hee. The wives just shook their heads sadly. They were thinking, "To think we married one of these idiots…."

Also in October, my daughter Kelly and boyfriend Mike took me to Bocas Del Toro, the Republic of Panama. This is in the Caribbean within sight of Costa Rica. Much of the place is drop dead gorgeous with hundreds of little uninhabited cays and dozen's of white sand beaches. Here we have Admiralty Bay, where Columbus visited on his third voyage to the New World. This was on a day-long trip by boat (everything is reached by boat, of course) to Zapatilla Cays. They are among the prettiest little islands in the world. Another boat trip took us to Bird Island, which was other-world: like our planet used to be 600 or 1000 years ago.

October also included a 5-day visit from our good friend Brian Lovelock from Australia. We spent two weeks with Brian and a Dutch couple on safari in Botswana back in 2005. We told Brian; if you are ever in the Bay Area, look us up. And look us up he did. Since I had recently retired and was looking for some exercise, Brian and I power-hiked 65 miles in Yosemite Valley, Point Reyes Seashore, Ana Nuevo Reserve and the local area over the five days of his visit. Good exercise and great seeing Brian again.

News on the home front: Ali was accepted at Johnson and Wales University in Denver for next year. This is excellent news, because it was the only place she applied. While this could be a sign of over-confidence, I don't think so. I think it was that J&W U was exactly what she wanted. What made it sweeter was the $12,000 scholarship. With her 529 plan in the tank, that was definitely a plus as far as I was concerned. The fact that the famous (infamous) Bambi Mannerstadt went there when I was a cadet had nothing whatsoever to do with my feelings on the matter.

Aside from a momentous election, this year will be remembered in American history for the great financial collapse, which includes most people's 401Ks and IRAs. (Remember, I just retired……) And since Rhonda is a Financial Advisor for Edward Jones, not a travel guide to far away places, she has been exceedingly busy holding hands of late. This, despite years of warning clients that markets go up…and markets go down. Thank goodness for her conservative investing style.

Son Kevin is still a business owner/entrepreneur in Orange, CA, where he builds ultra hot Subaru cars for well-healed 20-nothing trust brats. In the Spring, he drove up to show us his latest offering. (In red, to the left.) He skipped a free ride to Grand Cayman to enter an all important auto show in LA, where his entry won best in class. Good for business, but lousy for family relations. Too many cars in LA already, I say. Then last week he spent 10 hours on I5 going between Orange and Pasadena, trying to get home for Thanksgiving. He finally called at 3 AM saying he was throwing in the towel. That's 1 for 3, son.

Kelly is still at Levi Strauss in San Fran as a staff attorney in labor relations. In these times of bankruptcies and staff cutbacks, just having a job is gravy. Which brings us back to me and the stupid economy. I have talked LM into bringing me back as a subcontractor/consultant type, with a limit of half time (else they hook my pension.) Hopefully this arrangement starts next week. This will definitely put bread on the table and should be much more fun than trying to keep a high-end development team in gravy, when the company has been so screwed up of late, (e.g., my job before retiring). Oops. Hey nit wit, don't bite the hand that feeds you! Besides, when I accepted my golden parachute last June, I signed a contract agreeing that I can't say anything bad about the company ever again. Boy, those corporate attorneys are tough. Destroy this letter after reading!

Those of you following this annual diatribe know that I started the Great 214 Grove Drive Redux in November 2005. Most of the work, but certainly not all, was on my own. Below, is how it looked during "Destruct". We lived for 2 ½ years with no kitchen, laundry room and only one toilet and shower, plus a dishwasher that drained into the yard through a window. But I think I can now declare victory over the "money pit", with the new bathroom, kitchen, dining room and laundry room totally complete. I'm actually starting to like the place. The bathroom turned out so well I'm not allowed in it. !@!@#$# women! My revenge is that they mostly stay out of my nice kitchen. I do the cooking!..........Hey, wait a minute!

More travel photos at: http://wentzelfamilytravelog.shutterfly.com/

We wish you the very best Christmas!

Eric, Rhonda and Ali