Sweetwaters and Amboseli, part III

Good grief, this is getting long. I'm getting carried away. Oh, well. Birthday party went well. Fooled around with solar panels today, wiring together giant deep-cycle batteries and beautiful, beautiful BP solar panels. Seriously, they're amazing. It's this flashy-looking, surprisingly light, deep purple panel, and you put it in the sun and INSTANTLY you've got power flowing out of it. I love it. I kept expecting them to burst into flames or something, but no, they just sat there, miraculously producing energy in smug silence. Outrageous. Solar power is so cool. (Just turned twenty...? Or not. OH MY GOD SOLAR PANELS ARE LIKE SOOOOO TOTALLY COOL!)

***

Moving on... Time to leave Sweetwaters and head for Amboseli National Park. Sometime back in 2005, Dan had ordered a safari van for our transport around Kenya. (Safari van = van with a roof you can push up). We'd been using Nick Georgiadis's Landrover the entire time, but Dan was getting antsier and antsier waiting for Joe The Mechanic to FINALLY deliver the safari van. Finally, we received word while at Sweetwaters that the van had come in, and Nick was going to drive it down and collect his Landrover. So, the day before we left for Amboseli, the van arrived. The van, quite simply, sucked. Actually, let's put that in present tense: it sucks. Each day, in fact, we discover a new way in which the van sucks. It has city tyres and very poor suspension, and does not have 4-wheel drive. This isn't a problem if you're in New Jersey. This IS a problem if you're trying to drive over rough terrain with 9+ people piled in, in a country which hasn't quite hopped on the paved-road bandwagon yet.

The first time we took it for a spin, there was an alarming scraping and clanking beneath the van, as the spare tire - bolted to the bottom - scraped against the highly-crowned road. Cursing Joe the Mechanic, Dan drove us back and we managed to unscrew the spare tire and put it in the trunk instead. Further problems arose when we loaded up the van - henceforth to be referred to as The Vengabus, which is what we named it - it looked dangerously low, just with our bags. We stood outside nervously while Dan darted around the van, crouching down to look underneath, examining the wheel wells, grumbling and swearing to himself about how low it was. We all piled in and he reexamined the van, swearing more loudly as he noted how much further it had sunk. But there was nothing for it - we set out down the bumpy Sweetwaters road. It still scraped every once in awhile, but generally held up well.

The drive to Nairobi took approximately four hours. We arrived at ICIPE in the evening, had dinner, ordered a bunch of Tuskers (a South African beer - by the way, Dad, I would buy you a t-shirt but your South African grad student already beat me to it, right?) and sat around talking. The instructor from our first course, Philip Muruthi, was supposed to stop by to chat and return our exams, but he never did, so Dan, Greg, Mark and I stayed up waiting for him till Dan gave up and broke into the beers he'd been saving for himself and Philip. We all stayed out there on the patio talking for some time, about all things Princeton and several other things as well. Dan got Greg fired up enough to write an email to TI, telling people to treat the club with more respect. I can see how you could think of Prof. Dan as arrogant and up in everyone's business, but my view is that he cares a lot about things, and takes upon himself a lion's share of responsibility. It's uncool to care, and we have an apathetic population. Is it arrogance to believe that you can fix things? I don't think so. Each day we spend here, I realize the value of the resources and abilities that any college graduate - no, any high school graduate - has to offer.

Slept, under tall white mosquito nets (I don't like the horrible diseases they're protecting me from, but I must admit, I love their gauzy, romantic draping), and woke for another of ICIPE's giant breakfasts: eggs, HUGE messes of thick bacon, sausages, cereal, fruit, toast, tea and coffee and juice... Of course, you don't have to eat all of it. I have a special affection for the huge bacon explosions.

We then drove to Prof. Jeanne Altmann's camp in Amboseli National Park. The drive was beautiful, through heavily-terraced red farmland, the farmers squeezing every square centimeter of arable land out of their properties. Banana trees and crops of every variety sprouted from the slopes, people and animals walking along the road or between the rows. There was a feeling of fertility, the land gradually growing greener and mountains starting to emerge as we got closer to Amboseli, till at last we reached Namanga, a settlement nestled at the base of a fuzzy-looking green mountains, our last major town before starting on the adventurous road to Amboseli. (We had no way of knowing just how adventurous it would be...) Stopping at a gas station in Namanga, we experienced the most intense tourist-mobbing we'd yet encountered. Amboseli is true Masai land, and even before the Vengabus pulled to a stop, dozens of Masai women had flocked to the windows, pushing their jewelery and crafts into the Vengabus and into our bewildered faces. By the time we stopped, it seemed like there were millions of them. They would do anything; literally pry open your hands and thrust bracelets into them, yelling out prices in dollars and shillings at an auctioneer's rate.

Overwhelmed, we refuelled and set out for Amboseli. The road was possibly the worst we'd yet encountered, which was rather characteristic of the whole Amboseli trip; here is a truly amazing, world-class national park, with one of the most famous and beautiful mountains in the world, wildlife that can be found nowhere else, and an unusual swamp system that makes an entire ecosystem possible. Yet the road leading to it is atrocious. Rocky, very highly crowned, and simply so bumpy you feel that your vehicle must surely shake apart at any moment. It doesn't look so bad - it's regular, raised from the rest of the ground, deliberately built of pale gravel, but to drive on it... Ay caramba. It's so bad, that hundreds of travellers have worn a secondary track to the side of the road, like a second lane that happens to be a meter or so lower than the other lane, and made of dirt. It was like riding a crazy rollercoaster; every so often a tree or hump in the topography would cut off the secondary track, and the Vengabus would go rolling up the side of the slope of the real road, like someone running up the side of the wall, and then curve back down to the secondary track. We were rattling like mad, going amazingly slowly nonetheless, when a terrible smell hit us.

It smelled rather like burning rubber, and after a few minutes of vain hope that it was external, we realized it was coming from the Vengabus. So we stopped, looked under the hood, checked the oil, discovered a mysterious and worrying drip coming from the engine, and ate our sandwiches while Dan scooted under the van to try and see what was going on. After a long, hot wait in the sun, Dan decided that we'd make it to Amboseli, and we kept going. The bad smell returned but then faded, and we made it without further incident to the gates of Amboseli. If you ever look at Amboseli National Park on a map, you'll notice what appears to be a grand, giant lake: Lake Amboseli. However, don't be fooled - Lake Amboseli dried up in the Pleistocene and now is a seasonal, shallow swamp. You can drive straight across it in the dry season. Jeanne told us that people show up occasionally with boats, asking where the lake is, and what this giant dustbowl is doing here when the map said Lake Amboseli...

After a quick detour to the main tourist lodging area to check out what manner of lifeblood was flowing from the van, we drove into the public campsite to our very own tents. We were met by the staff of our new camp, and Prof. Jeanne Altmann.

Sweetwaters and Amboseli, part II

Guess what, it's my birthday! Hurrah.

The sheer abundance we saw at Sweetwaters is difficult to describe. It's something I never understood was possible until traveling here. Coming from North America, it just doesn't seem, intuitively, to be the way the world should work. Compared to a forest, there seems to be much less vegetation for these multitudes of animals to eat - yet here they are. The key is grass. Grass grows very fast. Thus, although the savannas look like they have much less food than a forest, they actually produce FAR more biomass per year; it's just being eaten right away. Grow, get eaten, grow, get eaten. Such is the life of grass. Most of Africa has two rainy seasons, which means two big growing seasons, and often two rounds of babies. These flat plains, which are dry and brown most of the time, support incredible multitudes of animals. Everywhere we drove - impala, Grant's gazelles, Thomson's gazelles, zebras, giant Cape buffalo, hartebeest, waterbuck... So many of them! And they looked so healthy, as well. The impala had sleek red coats that practically glowed with fat, the robust territorial males presiding arrogantly over their herds, the bachelor males running around butting their gorgeous curved horns against each other. The richness of color was almost overwhelming: brick red impala against brilliantly green grass, saturated with the verdant kiss of rainfall.

Elephants and giraffes, of course. And even some rhinos - we saw three separate individuals during our time at Sweetwaters, I think, which was amazing. Wherever the rhinos are, their guards follow; men hired specifically to keep track of the rhinos. That's how endangered they are. We also had the opportunity to visit a “tame” rhino - I'm not exactly sure of his story, but he was castrated somewhere along the way, and has been tame and in captivity for most of his life. His name is Morani, ironically - the Masai word for a young warrior. It was outrageous. A gamekeeper led us through the giant enclosure that serves as Morani's home, searching here and there to find where our huge grey friend was sleeping. At last he located him, nestled between some low bushes in the sun, like an enormous boulder. An enormous boulder with two enormous, very sharp horns protruding from it.

As we got closer, Morani blew out his breath wearily and regarded us through wrinkly eyes, blinking irritably to get the flies out. Wrinkly, actually, doesn't quite convey the fissures, the crevasses, the deep mud-caked cracks in the hide of this giant creature, whose skin seemed more like sheets of granite than the flimsy pink tissue paper we clothe ourselves in. We crowded around him - I was the first to get right up close and touch his side, the huge slowly-heaving side that seemed like it must be a joke - surely this is a movie prop, a plaster model with a motor inside that makes it move like this, in and out, in and out. He shifted, and our guide warned me nervously to step back in case he rolled over. I can't even imagine being rolled on by Morani - instant pancake, at best. I drew a picture of him, the horn shooting up in the center of the page, amazingly smooth and sharp. A rhino's horn is actually made of hair, specialized hair that grows and molds together, sharpened by the animal as it rubs it against rocks, much as we would sharpen a knife against a whetstone.

We also saw lions. We'd all been dying for lions - we'd ask every day, and Justine was starting to feel antsy about not producing any, so at last we got out the radio tracker and went after them, following the faint signal of the strangely old-fashioned device; a large staticky box in a leather holder, with a giant rubber antenna that Greg held out of the top of the Landrover. We followed the signal to a group of three lions, two of them with large radio collars on. We spotted them suddenly, directly in front of the Land rover, and I realized I hadn't properly understood that this strange clicking box was going to lead me to lions. Real lions. Lions that didn't care about our Land rover at all - didn't care about anything unless it were prey, because nothing poses a threat to a lion. There's no cause for concern at the sight of humans, or any other beast. As we watched them, practically holding our breath at the wonder of it, they paced through the windy field and gazed impassively across the landscape, the lithe powerful muscles of their shoulders bunching and falling with each languid step. Have you ever looked in a lion's eyes? They're completely golden, adapted to reflect light at night and to slit their pupils near-shut to block out sun, pure pools of tawny gold. They lay in the grass and groomed each other, eyes squeezed shut as their partner's tongue raked over their face, necking with a tenderness that was quite at odds with the huge fangs revealed when they yawned.

Sweetwaters and Amboseli, part I

Be warned - it's coming in installments. There's no other way. There's too much to write. Photo posts will be added when I have the patience to wait for the amazingly slow internet connection.

Two other notes:
1. I don't know if you've noticed, but if you click on the photos they take you to the full-size version. I didn't figure that out right away. (Fool, I know.)
2. If you've been thinking of sending me mail (like my DARLING MAX, who sent me a wonderful letter and photos which made me squirm with missing Victoria), then be warned that we're leaving Mpala on April 9th or something like that, so if you're going to send, SEND SOON! Or it'll arrive at an empty mailbox.

Without further ado:

We've returned!

We drove to Sweetwaters on the 6^th, after our presentations. Instead of heading directly to Sweetwaters, however, we detoured to Nanyuki and spent a couple of hours there, shopping. I took out my sketchbook to draw a picture of the market stalls and was immediately surrounded by a curious group of shopkeepers, who had approached hoping to sell me something and now wanted to see my drawings. After a few minutes of praise and exclamations, Patrick insisted that I draw a picture of him - and after that, Cosmas demanded I draw him as well. “Look!” Patrick shouted, “It's me exactly! It's like a photograph!” (It was, in fact, nothing like a photograph).

“Have you taken many classes, or is this your natural blessing?” a woman asked me, her eyes serious, crowding closer to look into my sketchbook.

“When you go back to Princeton,” Patrick instructed, “you must show that to everyone, and tell them that when they come to Kenya they should find Patrick! They will recognize me. It is me exactly.”

After finishing my sketch of Cosmas, Patrick hung around and we talked for awhile, about his struggles to put his two daughters through school - elementary school and junior high are free, but the last 4 years of high school are not. The tuition is equal to $300 per semester, Patrick told me. A very difficult sum for your average Kenyan to come up with. Nevertheless, Patrick was determined to find a way to get them through high school and hopefully to university. “Education,” he said, eyes intent, “education! I love education. I know it is what they need to get a better life. Myself, I would like to get some more education - take classes in the night, get a certificate. We all love education. We know it is important.” He went on to tell me about the customs of his tribe (I can't remember what its name was! He wasn't Masai or Kikuyu... He was from the coast, I remember that, but I can't recall the precise name of his tribe), which animals they will and will not eat, and so on. They don't eat any wild birds, because the birdsong or the image of a bird in flight is so joyful and uplifting to the soul. They don't eat camel meat or drink camel milk because the camel is a very mean-spirited animal and they don't want its spirit inside them.

Presently, however, he excused himself sheepishly to go off and try to sell some of his wares to the hapless Princeton student who was approaching his stall.

And soon enough, we left Nanyuki, continuing to Sweetwaters through country we hadn't traversed before. The swiftness of the change was astonishing. In the morning? Arid Mpala, grass stubbly and brown, moderately skittish wildlife of moderate density. An hour later, approaching Sweetwaters? Lush grass, bushes that are actually more bushy than they are spiky, herds of zebras that just glance at you mildly and continue chewing as you drive within 3 meters of them. Giant expanses of green pasture, herds of 100 Cape buffalo at once, soft tracks through the black cotton soil that cut between the thickets of eucleia (a leafy green bush). It was so much wetter! Every morning there was a dew - a friendly, welcome dew starring the grass and damping my feet as I walked out to paint the sunrise. We slept in little bandas divided into quarters, with electricity (!!!) and running water in the lodge/center that we ate and washed in.

Sweetwaters is a conservancy which is in the process of being integrated with Ol Pejeta Ranch, the neighboring property. A gentleman with a delightful accent is the “CEO” of the new Ol Pejeta Conservancy and has some interesting plans to make it both eco-friendly and as profitable as possible; many of the ideas he discussed with us were perfectly in line with the things we've been learning here in Kenya. We met him on the last evening we were at Sweetwaters, the night we gave our presentations of the studies we'd been doing for the week. Briefly, the studies looked at time management in different ungulates and the age structure of the zebra population on Sweetwaters vs. Ol Pejeta (which has been treated quite differently because it's a ranch rather than a conservancy) - we gathered data all week by driving around following herds of ungulates and writing about them.

We gave our presentations on our last evening at Sweetwaters, to an audience Dan had cobbled together: himself, his assistant Justine, the CEO guy, a rhino expert, and the rhino expert's girlfriend. Justine is, quite simply, a lovely young woman. She's a white Kenyan, educated in England, who chose to return to Kenya and work here. She works for Dan most of the time, monitoring the zebras in Sweetwaters and Ol Pejeta for Dan's zebra research project. She has a soft voice and a pleasant accent; I find that there is a rich variety in the accents of English-speaking Kenyans, from rolling Swahili-tinged syllables to British-with-a-twist, from the Kenyans educated in Britain. Each one is different; depending, I suppose, on their first language, their childhood companions, the accents of their parents, the age they began their British education (if indeed they were educated in Britain), etc, etc.

We spent quite a bit of time with Justine because she rode around in the land rover with us all week, helping to take down data about the zebras. I was sitting up in front between Dan (who was driving) and Justine - there isn't really an official seat up there, but I was the smallest and therefore chosen to cram in between the driver and passenger seats, which meant that shifting gears became an exercise in awkwardness. I also learned a lot by sitting up there with Dan and Justine - my zebra age identification skills are keen, and I heard a surprising amount about Dan's college days. I also head a lot about and became very interested in the hybrid zebras that have appeared on Sweetwaters: apparently the Grevy's and plains zebras have hybridized, a unique occurrence though their ranges frequently overlap. In fact, I hope to return to Laikipia this summer and do my senior thesis research on the hybrids.

I've gotten way off track! Back to the presentations...

The CEO guy, as aforementioned, has a delightful accent. He looks to be in his late thirties, has interesting and well-thought-out plans for the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, and listened to our presentations politely and thoughtfully. He was interested in the results of the zebra-age-structure group (Mark and I), which indicated that the zebras on Ol Pejeta have a much healthier age structure and that the ones on Sweetwaters are heading for sharp decline.

The rhino guy was a bit of a jerk. All agreed on this. His girlfriend was German, quiet, and quite a bit younger.

To Sweetwaters We Shall Go

Woooooooooo off to Sweetwaters!

Some simple Grant's gazelle analysis:

The gazelles were awesome, Evander and Vinnie are total studs (hot young rising stars!), and Arnold and Abdul are the bigwigs. Hermann (the gazelle formerly known as loser) is still a loser, really. Tony Hawk is a bit of an enigma. Zoolander proves everything, so he rules. We observed lots of territorial behavior from all the males, and variable success partially determined by the weather - Zoolander had a fairly barren territory with good visibility but very little vegetation, and we observed him in the same area, alone, several days in a row. Then the grasses all started responding to the rainfall, and Zoolander's territory greened up - little shoots peeping through the bare ground, it was AWESOME. Sure enough, on March 4th we spotted Zoolander with 12 females and 5 bachelor males trying to get in on the action. After about 45 minutes of observation, Zoolander decided to assert himself, and ran the bachelors off of his territory.

It was good to see. The basic idea of Resource Defense Polygyny is that the landscape has variable resource richness, and females wander around in herds (to reduce the risk of predation) from area to area according to where the best food is. Males, in order to maximize their reproductive success, set up a territory on an area that they consider to be good - in this area, about a kilometer across, though territories can be MUCH bigger in different areas. They mark the boundaries with dung piles and by patrolling, and wait for females to wander in. Once the females enter their territory, they defend the territory from the incursions of bachelor males (non-territorial males, travelling in herds for protection) and try to keep the females in their territory so that if one of them comes into estrus they can attempt copulation. It's hard work being a territorial Grant's gazelle.

The other two projects - on dik-dik land use, and parasite levels in different ungulates, were also very interesting. No time to describe them... But let me tell you, dik-dik dung piles are a mystery just begging to be unravelled. As are parasites. How would YOU feel if you had upwards of 2000 parasite eggs per gram of dung?

Back to the campsite, pack pack pack, and then to Sweetwaters! Catch up with you in a fortnight.

Jenn

Now You See It, Now You Don't...

Ecstasy from the first snip.

Flooded!

We're up at the center right now. It rained heavily last night, and the accumulated rains of the past few days raised the level of the Ewaso-Nyiro river (or is it Ewaso-Narok? Er... The two rivers meet up at the northern end of Mpala, but I can't remember which it is that runs past the campsite) so much that we can't stay at the campsite. The rising water has made small lakes at the two ditches/valleys that we have to drive through to get from the center to the campsite, and it's impossible to get across except via a back road. We were able to get back to grab a change of clothes and our toiletries, but Joe the Mechanic reckons that if it rains again the back road will be inaccessible as well - so we're sleeping up at the center tonight. Apparently this rain may be due to a cyclone in the Indian Ocean, and doesn't herald the beginning of the true rainy season - I hope that's true, because I much prefer staying at the campsite to staying up at the center.

On the other hand, it's marvelously exciting to have a flooded river and giant puddles blocking our road... The river is surging, powerful, muscling past banks that previously held it in check and cutting muddy V's around the trunks of half-drowned fever trees. Swirls of debris get caught in eddies or race downstream in the middle of the flow, this brown beast that is roiling and still rising. The old bridge is completely covered. The newer bridge is still about 5 feet above the water - apparently during El Nino, the site of the newer bridge was a full 10 feet underwater (i.e. 15 feet higher than it is right now), but that won't happen this time. There's no danger - we're not going to be overwhelmed by a flash flood or anything - it's just rather exciting. We ate dinner at the center for the first time ever, and we're staying in BUILDINGS! The boys in Banda No. 3, the girls in the female half of the dormitory building. We have beds arranged in a circle under a tall thatched roof, with mosquito nets draped romantically overhead. There is a loft with two beds - Melissa and I are sleeping up there. Apparently, various critters like to live in the thatch and sometimes they fall down in the night.

Overall, I suppose it's fun to stay at the center; we're watching a movie right now in the classroom, for example, because there's actually electricity up here, and there's a certain slumber party appeal to the dormitory... But we all prefer the campsite, with the awesome staff (Peter is DEFINITELY a better chef than the guys up at the center) who have been left behind at the camp, our personal tents, the river and the animals and the fire that burns all night, and just the delight of having our own wild place to return to, separate from “school.”

The plants are greening and greening and greening. Every day when Greg and I drive out to run our gazelle survey, the land is greener. It's a total transformation. Unbelievable. I can't imagine what it must be like when the true rainy season hits and the grass goes from nonexistent to waist high within a few weeks...

Anyhow, it's long past time for bed... I should just mention:

When we're at Sweetwaters and Amboseli, I don't think we're going to have internet access. So after monday, don't expect anything for 2 weeks.

That's all for tonight... Grant's Gazelle data analysis commences tomorrow, so I'll let you know how the fates of Evander, Zoolander, Vinnie, Tony Hawk, Arnold, Abdul, George W, Herman, and Casper worked out. (Yes, we named our territorial male gazelles. There were good reasons for all those names, I swear.)

Jenn

I Kiss the Rains Down In Africa...

Ah, yes. Thank you, Toto, for your immortal words.

It is in fact raining here. It rained for the first time 3 days ago - poured on and off all evening and most of the night, the first hint of rain we'd had since arrival. It's not the rainy season right now, but intermittent rain is allowed. There are two rainy seasons (a very important factor in allowing Africa to support such a ridiculous amount of wildlife), the longer one in march/april and the shorter one in october/november. We're in a drought right now, the worst for 6 years - the last rains didn't come. Hopefully they will fall in march/april this year and revive the land. It's evident everywhere that things are being pushed to their limit, dry and brown. After that relatively brief rain the other night, the ground sucked it up immediately and now there is a faint green sheen on the landscape. Delicate little sprouts on the grass stems. New grasses poking through the red soil. We've learned that the red soil flushes first, then the black cotton soil (so-called because it is fluffy and absorbent like cotton), so in a couple of days - perhaps as early as tomorrow - that hopeful verdant flush will spread to the black cotton landscape.

Since that first rain, the air has remained damp - nothing approaching true humid weather, but compared to the complete dessication of the past 3 weeks, it feels like the air is dripping. There is FOG at night. A light mist over the campsite. There have been foreboding clouds crowding the skies and keeping our days cooler, and today they gathered together, huge and shadow-purple, and rained on us. "There it is," said Philip Winter, managing director (or something-or-other) of Mpala, "can you smell it?" He breathed in deeply. "The smell of damp dust. The smell of Africa after the first rain - such a romantic smell. I'm glad you've experienced it."

The second course began on monday - Prof. Dan Rubinstein is here, current chair of the EEB department at Princeton. On the afternoon of the first day we had gone out to do some fieldwork and he stopped abruptly and turned to the eight of us. "My name is Dan," he said. "Not Professor Rubinstein. We're in Africa now." He's a remarkable man, and an incredible teacher. A fascination and an invaluable resource. We're lucky to be able to monopolize him for this brief time. He has his fingers in a lot of pies, and aside from a seemingly infinite store of biological knowledge, he's behind the scenes of most of the major issues at Princeton right now, behind the scenes of Mpala, pursuing many other projects in various areas, and somehow manages to stay on top of everything... Additionally, apparently immune to ticks - he always wears shorts and sandals. I could talk about Prof. Rubinstein for much longer, but due to feeling rather uncomfortable about broadcasting my impressions of people over the internet, will stop here.

I'm doing a really interesting project on Grant's Gazelles right now. Will tell you about it once the project is over.

I'M LEARNING SO MUCH. AND I WANT TO WRITE EVERY COOL THING I'VE LEARNED IN HERE, BUT I KNOW IT IS MUCH MORE INTERESTING TO ME!!!!

Oh, best news ever: When we're at Mombasa, we're staying right near the beach and we'll be able to go swimming EVERY DAY. In the beautiful, beautiful ocean. I'm outrageously excited. I swam most days this summer in the ocean by my house, and I've missed it.

The people on this trip, by the way, are wonderful.

Basic trajectory of the rest of the trip: stay at Mpala till Sunday. Monday, go to Sweetwaters (a wildlife reserve, where we'll do more animal behaviour studies with animals that are much more habituated and won't run away from us like the animals at Mpala). Monday after that, go to Amboseli National Park and study baboons and other mammals with Prof. Jeanne Altmann. Then, back to Mpala for 3 weeks of "Global Technology," i.e. making useful things with solar technology. Then to Mombasa for 3 weeks. Then a short forest elephant safari (maybe). Then back to Princeton. I hate spelling it out like that - suddenly we seem far too close to returning to Princeton. I can't imagine it.

Good night,

Jenn