Annual Update 2014

Annual Update 2014 - Eat, Drink, Travel, Fish. Just like last year.

from John and Brenda Davenport 

Sunrise on the Ganges

Here's a quick slide show of the highlights of the year according to us, NOT according to facebook.
And here's a quick update on year 2014.

• Almost 100, mother Olive traveled a few floors to a new room at Park Meadow in Nashville with a view of the construction and a "care" desk that will scout the building to find her if you want to Skype with her at "old1915". (Email me first to get on the green list.) 
  
  
• Brenda managed a complete renovation of the Glen Ellyn condo bringing modern fixtures and appliances, decorator colors, tasteful furniture, and granite counters to an outdated unit just like you'd see on HGTV. An impartial jury of family members found her blameless in the botched attempts of BestBuy to deliver 3 extra dishwashers and a black refrigerator. In no-time, Brent had it stocked with fine wines. 
• She's transitioned from Hospital Gift Shop Girl to Donated Book Sorter at Denver Public Library. 
• John had his first book signing at the Tennyson St, Denver Book-Bar. Helped along by Shaunna Earp-Ballinger in a trout suit, his book "Getting into Fly Fishing for under $100" was voraciously gulped up by the locals rocketing him into first place among fly fishing authors for 2014 with 14 sales. Luckily he doesn't have a day job to even consider not giving up.
  
• The Bransky family managed to get Laura out of the country for a Northern European cruise. Sure enough she found, like her father, that international tensions are created for us by leaders on both sides not by humans. Adam is hanging in there in environmental studies at New Jersey Institute of Technology. YES, it is the same Division I, unconferenced, underdog that upset Michigan in basketball on  Dec. 6th 72-20. See the entire game here. He's scoring points for the 5-3 NJIT swim team in the 200 medley relay. And Morgan's underdog, #20 in the state, Scotch Plains-Fanwood girls swim team just upset neighborhood rival Westfield #4 99-71 on Dec. 22nd. It gives me chills remembering Laura and Abby doing the same to York Suburban. Laura taught most of the kids on both teams to swim.
  
   
• Patrick, in his first year of team soccer, scored some goals and stopped many more as goal keeper. The fish of Lake Owassa live in fear of his visits. Caroline has mastered 1st grade and gymnastics and loves capturing earthworms which she sells to Patrick. 
  
   
• His semi-cousins Francesca and Eloise are also involved in field sports.Francesca, when you can get her head out of a book, is playing field hockey and lacrosse as well as soccer.  She wrote a soon to be published book, "Greek Mytholagy from A-Z." for her sister for Christmas. Look for it on Amazon in January.
• Eloise, always interested in performing and eating cookies, 
  
  has started to add in chess to balance her soccer and dance. However what she is really good at is spey casting, a technique developed in Scotland long ago to throw a fly line across a river without hanging it up in the trees behind you. She picked this up on her own, validating her grandpére's theory of child rearing - "just get out of the way." See her spey casts here. 
• We triggered no massive international incidents in India.  Fred and Carolyn Miller joined us in the dust of a massive camel fair, the bus of endless shockless bounces, the spiritual visions in Varnasa, the gripping ablutions on the ghats of the Ganges, the mirage of the Taj Mahal, blush of the busts from the Chandelas erotica, Communists of Kerala, and the nan making with Pradnya's kin in Pune.
• Thanks to our Copenhagen connection Bent and Lars we lived like natives in the happiest country in the world, Denmark. With 11 kinds of herring, who wouldn't be happy. We narrowly avoided international tension by choosing a Moscow-St Petersburg Volga river cruise just as V. Putin was busy re-annexing Crimea. John accidentally caught a small bream while casting in Putin's vacation villa pond prior to noticing the international NO FISHING sign.
  
   Luckily like all crisis in the past perpetrated by our "leaders," the folks in the street and on the riverbanks, like John's new friend Nikoli, aren't buying into the culture of hate mongering any more. Like Nikoli, they believe that foreigners are friends we haven't talked fishing with yet.
  
  
  

  We wish you personal peace, plenty of travel, great food, fine drink, and many fish. 

  
  
  
  
  Click for photo on the map.