Co-President’s Message The travel bug cometh, and it bites hard 2018 wine tour with Scott Burns ON MAY 9TH Scott will lead a tour to the Tualatin Valley, visiting Cooper Mountain, David Hill, and Montinore Estate wineries. Enjoy a day with Scott, a retired professor of geology and well-known wine expert, and friends exploring what makes each winery special. Date: Wednesday, May 9. Time: The bus will leave from PSU at 9:30 am. Lunch: Bring your own lunch with nibbles. Tasting fee: Typically waived with wine purchase. Cost: $60 per person, which supports the RAPS Scholarship and covers the bus rental. Limit: 26 participants. Sign up now and look forward to a great day in May on our Wine Tour. Call Rebecca at 503-725-3447 or send a check to: Portland State University--RAPS Office, P O Box 751, Portland, OR 97207-0751. You may also sign up at the RAPS General Meetings. 2 AROUND RAPS TERRITORY—the office in the Campus Public Safety building and board room in Simon Benson— we’ve spent a fair amount of time talking about the Italy tour set for this November. It’s a great opportunity to raise money for the RAPS Scholarship, it has a great itinerary, and it’s led by a great company, Collette. Yes, we’ve concluded that it’s pretty darn great. In fact, we were talking about the trip during our February board meeting when my mind began to wander—which shouldn’t surprise anyone who has ever been in a meeting with me. To make matters worse, I was chairing the meeting. I became so distracted that I actually skipped a topic on the agenda before Dawn White, tapping on the agenda sheet, jarred me back to the here and now. But it had been so pleasant wandering back to 1957, because that was the year I caught the travel bug. I was in first grade, and Priscilla, my much older (by 11 years) and tremendously sophisticated (I was in first grade, remember) sister, fresh out of high school, was preparing to spend a year in Europe. In my eyes, this was really big stuff. There was even a bon voyage party! The day before she left, we drove to San Francisco International and stayed overnight in a hotel near the airport. Her flight, which was to take her to New York City—the city where the “Today” show, with Dave Garroway, was broadcast. I watched it with my dad every morning!—was early the next day. In New York she would board MS Gripsholm, a new Swedish-American liner, for the crossing to Gothenburg. Over the next months I received several postcards—of the changing of the guards at the Royal Palace in Stockholm, of the Munich skyline, of pigeons fluttering around Piazza San Marco in Venice. It was fun to get cards from so far away, and I still have a couple of them. But it was at San Francisco airport, staring at that beautiful, four-engine Lockheed Constellation—for a seven-year-old, I knew my airplanes—when everything changed. I knew where that big plane was going, and I really wanted to be aboard. I was so jealous of my big sister. The travel bug didn’t bite me as much as it chomped down and never let go. I made my own post-high school trip to Europe a few years later. It would be another 20 years before I made it overseas again, but getting married, buying a house, and having a baby take their toll on a travel budget. Barbara and I have been making up for those home-bound years ever since, traveling as much as we reasonably can. And we’ve been known to stretch “reason” every so often. We can worry about the budget when we get home. Speaking of which, the 2018 Swanson travel budget is already shot, well spent on the Far East (last month) and Eastern Europe (next month). But for those of you who are weighing the RAPS Italy trip, well, I envy you, and I encourage you to pursue it. I know where that big plane is going, and I really wish I were aboard. —Doug Swanson
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