Their orbit is a spiral
Mary and Bob have arrived at the Verdi Club through their networks of friends and involvement with swing dancing. They are thrilled to become a part of the Verdi family, as they live nearby in Bernal Heights. Travel has always been a part of their life together. Mary’s invitation to four months of backpacking in Europe cemented their relationship years ago. More recently Bob’s work led him to an annual one-week teaching assignment in Wuhan, China. That became a basis for them to make several trips together to other destinations in China including the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze and the karst pillars of Guilin and ZhangJiaJie. China’s extra-long Covid shutdown has renewed their interest in Latin America. Last year they went to the less-known Afro-Caribbean side of Costa Rica and overland to Panama’s Bocas del Toro beaches and of course the big canal.
Bob is a longtime IT systems architect and Mary, after years as an employment attorney, is working on a Masters degree in East-West psychology at CIIS. This summer Mary’s graduate program organized a short course in India, at the utopian community of Auroville. Bob joined her there after a side trip to catch up with some old colleagues in Singapore. After departing Auroville they got a car and driver and went to a hill station in Tamil Nadu. They spent time on a houseboat in Kerala, then flew to New Delhi before returning home from Mumbai. Somewhere along the way they lost their fear of the unknown, but they do continue to drink bottled water as advised. And to wear bike helmets, always.