It was still raining when I got up, but we found a dry spell to drive out for breakfast and another to drive to the new meeting place for the Long Beach Cactus & Succulent Society where our friend Woody Minnich was today’s speaker with one of his presentations on a trip to Madagascar. What better way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon!
As you browse through The Cactus Trip Diaries you’ll read how we travelled together in 2005 on Guillermo Rivera’s cactus tour of NW Argentina and again in 2009 on Marlon Machado’s tour of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil.
Long Beach was the first US C&S Society where I have gave a presentation in February 2008. Wow, doesn’t time fly! So in addition, to a great talk there was also an opportunity to renew friendships with folks that I first met in 2008 – too many to mention, with the exception with Vern Yandell, who in 2008 greeted me with a few words of Dutch, learned as his wife was originally from the Netherlands.
Left to right: Woody. Karen Ohlinder and PK
The Cactus Trip Diaries 
Comments on: "Sunday, 2 March 2014 – visit to Long Beach C&S Society" (2)
That’s a great photo PK! Are you Dutch yourself? (re: to the works of Netherlands spoken to you).
Hi Breck,
Yes, Dutch through and through, born in Den Haag (‘s Gravenhagen) on 10 May 1953 and moved with my parents, for my father’s work, first to Copenhagen, Demark, in 1966, then to England, supposedly for just two years, but we all stayed on.
Why did I not become a British National? Because I still get really excited when 11 grown men in orange shirts run around a grass pitch, kicking a piece of leather around, or more recently, when Dutch men and women, precariously balanced on a thin piece of metal win gold medals and set speed skating records. I was speed skating champion of my class in 1964 and 1965. We had to skate on natural ice, outdoors, when the weather permitted. The current generation skate on artificial ice and set records at altitude. I was never much good at soccer.
I learned my first English by listening to the songs of Lennon & McCartney. My last Dutch school report said ‘English: 5/10, will never master the language.’ I taught my kids: ‘If you don’t like what the teacher says about your performance, prove him wrong.’
Cheers
PK