06-FEB-A-2

 

NORTH BAY VISIT TO SANTA ROSA

 WITH KEVIN BERGMAN AND GRAND ROUNDS

FOR SANTA ROSA FAMILY MEDICINE RESIDENCY PROGRAM IN SONOMA COUNTY WINE COUNTRY:

TOUR NORTH CALIFORNIA TO COLONEL ARMSTRONG REDWOOD GROVES AND RUSSIAN RIVER,

THEN GROUP DINNER AT THE ANNAPURNA RESTAURANT IN SANTA ROSA AND RETURN ARRIVAL AT HARKENS’ HOUSE IN WALNUT CREEK

 

 

February 1-2, 2006

 

            I have arrived and settled in at the Sonoma Hilton Wine Country Hotel, an elegant place to be complete with wine bastings which I was not able to be around to enjoy, since I was actively pursuing many other interests in multiple venues.  I had arrived nearing midnight in the rain, as the two months of the continuous winter rains of Sand Francisco North Bay area are ongoing, making even the traditional “Golden Hills” (which I insist are al most always quite brown when I see them!) all emerald green.  Kevin Bergman met me after I had come in by the Sonoma County Airporter, and we had a glass of wine with crab cakes as we caught up on the various invents that had occurred in the interval since we had been together at GWUMC-and at Ladakh, Malawi and Somaliland missions.

 

            Kevin has enjoyed the Family Medicine Residency program here at Santa Rosa, and has also had a chance to travel a bit.  It is possible that they will institute an international track in their residency, which I am the bellwether to introduce.  The director of his residency program is a fellow named Kumoda, a third generation Japanese American who had been the local doc at a small settlement known as Guerneville along the Russian River where the gay and lesbian community of San Francisco would retreat on weekends. It was hear that Dr. Kumoda had seen a strange disease that ahs taken over the population of unusual patients he had dealt with which later became w known as AIDS.

 

            I had also talked with Kevin about a chance to go with me to several spots he is hoping to join me in later in the additional year he will be here.  He had been attracted to a fellow resident named Jolene Biel who has a Harvard MPH and is interested in doing something that relates to International Health, and he will try to carefully work her into his life as both of them complete their residency/. 

 

            I had called Laurie and Alden Harken on arrival as I had promised I would try to visit them on my way through.  They would like to see me and also b e eager that I extend my visit to include a few days with them and a chance to give a talk or two to their residents, which I have worked out after an initial visit b y rental vehicle and a change of return flight schedule.  I spent a leisurely mooring after arrival at the Sonoma Hilton (my only one for these three weeks!) and after breakfast, called Enterprise Rental with an agent coming to pick me up and take me to the office for a vehicle rental.  I was going to rent a small vehicle, but they got me instead into probably the largest SUV I have ever seen—a huge white Nissan Armada, a V-8 4 WD which weighed several tons and would certainly have rolled over and destroyed anything in its path.  I drove form the Santa Rosa area down coastal 101 toward the Golden Gate Bridge, and turned off on 37E to cross the wetlands marshes of the North Bay area.  There are a lot of raptors parked on signs and posts, with bird-watching posts along the way.  I called my answering machine to check on messages which showed little urgency.  I also reached Virginia who was going to go to Florida to visit her brother Rob and friends the Shurtzes in Florida this weekend, the dates she had originally suggested she might come to Derwood, since she was eager to leave Iowa on the coming weekend—the children’s’ choir was performing at her Methodist Church where she is choir director so she was not needed, and she is also eager not to be in Iowa as the Moingona Hunt Club Ball is held this weekend, with her ex-friend David taking his new live-in to the grand event in heir former place.  She is also contemplating a number of options she has wanted me to consider as she is thinking of how a two-state relationship might work, since the only job she has at present is in Simpson which is inadequate to sustain her already stressed life style with the expenses of the horse habit and extra animals she would like to consider, one of whom she has added recently in a very personable pup named George she would like to have me consider.

 

 I drove down 24 through Oakland and Berkeley to get to Walnut Creek, in an amazingly magic arrival at the Harkens to go with Laurie up to a green space hillside to walk Buffy along the steep hillsides in one about fifty outdoor trails she can choose among for the outdoor exercise form within a short drive from home.  We had Buffy chasing prairie dogs and sticks across the green hills as we cleaned the mud off our feet and Buffy’s as we came back to a salmon dinner at home. 

 

Without a lot of enthusiasm we watched the Bush State of the Union speech on the day that Alito was confirmed as Supreme Court judge, the day that Sandra Day O’Connor retired.  We enjoyed a time of reminiscing, comparing grandkids, and talking about current status in the lives of each of us form a common starting point in Boston now bicoastal in its completion in our last positions in the academic surgical careers we have each had.  I drove back to the Sonoma Hilton as I parked the huge SUV to be picked up by Enterprise the following morning when Kevin picked me up to go to the Santa Rosa medical center for my Grand Rounds presentation on International Medicine opportunities.

 

After the lecture and Q & A session, I met with several students and residents and Dr. Rick Flinders who runs the residency program.  Kevin and I then went to a “typical California “ lunch spot—vegetarians guiro spot for lunch, and then despite a rain y and fogy day, went to the area North in the Sonoma County between steep hillside slopes of vineyards such as the Corbel winery and others along the flooded Russian River banks.  I remember that the Russian River was the source of the rainbow trout that were packed off to New Zeeland to start the big trout population there..  We could not achieve any great vitas because of the fog, but it was still interesting since we could see the vegetation and greenery as well as the flooded Russian River banks as we went through small towns to see the Rio Quonset Hut theater and the Steelhead shop and the Guerneville town where the specter of AIDS had its origin in the known medical literature..

 

But, piece de resistance, Kevin and I went to a state park of his choosing, the Colonel Armstrong Redwood Grove.  There we walked around the paths between the moss-covered stumps of fallen giants and the huge towering cathedral of overhead tree trunks heading straight up into the mist of their own making.  The redwoods were magnificent, and fascinated a tycoon named Armstrong who worked to preserve this one grove of all the others that were cut.  The forest has a stream running along the roots of the tall trees, and the tallest of them is named Colonel Armstrong which is 14 feet in diameter and 308 feet tall and 1400 years old.  There are a few others almost as big, with Pastor Amos giving a close second at 1300 years old and thirteen feet in diameter but even a bit higher in the three hundred plus department.  That is a long way up for the pressures of the water and nutrients in the phloem to make it to the top under the heavy bark.  It is wonderfully to have these preserved, and I somehow resisted the urge to carve a “Killjoy was here” into any of the magnificent relics.  I did, however shoot a bunch of pictures in this shrine to the tall trees.

 

We drove up the coat to the mouth of the Russian River where it went into the foaming Pacific in a swirl at an appropriately named “Blind Beach” which we could not see.  There are sea lions down there on the rocks which we could hear but not see, and the misty mystery of the scene had its own charm.  It was a good drive in the time it took for Kevin and me to talk of many things and make a few plans for future adventures in various parts of the world we can still explore.  He will always take care of patients in a clinical setting, which is of less interest to Jolene, but each will enjoy world-wide interests in pursuing these events, the first coming up shortly in Guatemala only two weeks hence.  Jolene is just now getting back to work after the unexpected death of her father.  But, a return to Malawi may be in the future.

 

After a brief stop at the Condo that Kevin bought in settling in here at Santa Rosa, we all gathered with the fellow residents in his program and Dr Rick Flinders and his physician wife at Annapurna Restaurant to talk further about the various adventures that the group has had or would like to have in the future in international medicine.  Following the dinner, and despite the long day, Kevin was so kind as to drive me al the way around the North Bay to Walnut Creek.  With Laurie receiving us and urging him to consider staying the night and going back in the morning, he had been energized enough that he felt he would not sleep at the close to midnight time o of our arrival at the Harkens’ house and would just as soon spend that time driving back toward Santa Rosa to be up at a Dermatology practice at 8:00 AM the following morning.  So, Kevin and I said goodbye at the Harkens’ house, and I realized that I was now about to become a driver in the East Bay area with Laurie Harkens new Jaguar Sedan as my vehicle to experiment with the roads and tunnels of the Oakland area.  The Alameda County, seventh largest in California, has seventeen towns larger that 100,000 population and is about three times the size of the 800,000 population of San Francisco itself.  Not only are the residents  doing the kinds of trauma care that a multiple gunshot wound environment immerses them in but a few are looking into the kinds of epidemiologic questions about improving health and lifestyle overall to improve the health of California, a very health conscious community to begin with.

 

So, as I had just had a two weeks experience in Philippines in two major venues, I was about to enter my second venue in a full week of California, now having expended my stay by postponing my return flight to Saturday before the Super Bowl Sunday of  a third week on the wing.