Starting Out

From January through December of 2014, I will be taking my second sabbatical.  Some of the time I will travel alone and some of the time my family will travel with me.  We left Terre Haute, Indiana on December 14th in a driving snow storm with our Subaru Outback packed full with my wife Karla and our two sons, Big L (who is 3 and a half years old), Little L (who is one and a half), and our 14-year old dog Paddington.


We are spending the Christmas Holiday with our parents in Phoenix Arizona.  From there, I will fly to Australia where I will teach at a dendrochronology fieldweek from Jan 3-11, attend the WorldDendro conference from Jan 13-17, go on a post conference tour in New Zealand from Jan 21-25, and visit a colleague in Queensland in northeastern Australia from Jan 26 -31. I will return to Phoenix for two weeks and then the whole family will fly to Rafina Greece for three months on the beach about 30 minutes from Athens.  From there, I will travel to many tree-ring research laboratories throughout Europe including three in Northern Italy, many in Germany, the Birmensdorf lab outside of Zurich Switzerland, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic. We also plan to take a cruise of the Fjords in northern Norway near the end of our stay and possibly attend the TRACE (Tree Rings in Archaeology, Climatology, and Ecology) conference in the highlands of Scotland.

Those plans take us through about the end of May. Along the way, I hope to publish at least three articles and submit a number of grants. I will be giving a series of talks and visiting sustainability programs throughout Europe.  My family will share in adventures as we travel some parts of the world.  I hope that you come along for the ride.