"When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves."
William A. Ward
Tom Richardson opened the meeting welcoming everyone.
Announcements:
* Tom reminded us that this Saturday September 23, Raylene needs us at the Woodland cemetery clean-up at 9:00 a.m., bring shovels, rakes, etc. This is a club project.
* Please tell Tom if you are attending the October 17, 5160 District Governor Gary Vilhauer's all-Woodland Rotary Club reception at Woodland Hotel. Luna Vista is staffing the bar.
* Cass requested volunteers October 7, 8:00 a.m. at Woodland Community College to serve breakfast and lunch to the at-risk kids (all are children with incarcerated parents) who will participate in a morning conference of four classes. This is an annual event put on by Friends Care where the kids receive the message in different ways that they have choices not to follow in their parents path.
Introductions-
Lynn Jepson introduced a guest who is a new Sunrise Rotarian and the principal of the brand new Springlake Elementary School. Just completed, the school is opening as a Transitional Kindergarten (T-K) through 3rd grade and will add a grade each coming three years.
Nick gave a LV Foundation announcement that their board recently met and Paul and Nick were voted off and Charlene and Joe were voted on to manage the LV Foundation.
SPEAKER
This week's speaker complete with slide video was our own Bert Rinkel who shared his most recent bike trip in Holland. He and wife Marise had a 3 week biking and boating vacation in May into June where they traveled from Amsterdam to Paris through the Dutch countryside along canals. Through beautiful fields of tulips, dikes and windmills they cruised and biked, averaging 35-40 miles a day. A total of 900 km. Bert said excellent meals were prepared by the chef, Paulo. Also good wine.
It was an 18 passenger boat which had been converted adding sleeping cabins. Over a dozen on the tour were a group from Australia. The crew consisted of the boat owner who was not yet a captain, the chef, a female ship captain, and the key person, the bike guide. An early surprise on the trip was the detour to the small town where Marise grew up. Can you imagine her joy and pleasure boating into her childhood village?
Bert's video was very picturesque but also informative with maps and flood history. Telling of 1953 being a big flood year and as a result many dams were built from 1954-1980. Bert added in the 1970's the "back to nature movement" almost wiped out the mussel industry, until a compromise was reached building gates within dams to allow an exchange of fresh and salt water. The mussels survived!
Flying out of Dallas, Texas, their group happened to be on the maiden voyage for an airline flying from Dallas to Amsterdam. Bert added that a couple on the flight were celebrating their 50th anniversary. I imagine some bubbly was involved!
The main towns they biked and boated through were Keukenhof, famous for it's world class bulb gardens, Gouda (mmm cheese!), Kinderjiik, Dordrecht, and eventually a long boat tunnel before reaching Paris.
Enjoyed by all, Bert said he has two more videos he hopes to share.
Tom ended with this quote-
"Everyday do something that will inch you closer to a better tomorrow."
Doug Finebough