Two days in the Berkshires

In our continuing effort to take vacations-within-our-vacation, Ooma and I traveled to the Berkshires region of western Massachusetts this past weekend to stay with my college roommate, Hutch (the guy with the trees sprouting from his left ear in the photo), and his wife Linda. They also invited 3 other couples, all of the men being fraternity brothers from college, including the other roommate from my sophomore year. So a mini-reunion of sorts. And as all of the men were engineers of various sorts there was plenty of geek talk. But the women tempered the talk and made it seem like a group of nearly normal people.

One highlight of the trip was the house and cabin where we all stayed. Not many people can accommodate 8 overnight guests, but Hutch and Linda made it look easy – two couples with them in their lovely new 3-bedroom house and the other two in the adjacent 2-bedroom “cabin” (which most people would be happy to call home). Ooma gushed over the kitchen in the new house, saying that it was her “dream kitchen.”

The buildings are situated on 48 wooded acres, which I had a chance to explore on the 8am dog walk Sunday morning. The land is steeply sloped, so there is no thought of doing much with the space. But it is a lovely plot of land that both people and dog enjoyed.

The main event of the weekend was an afternoon at Tanglewood to hear some classical music from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and guest violinist Itzhak Perlman. We sat on the lawn under perfect blue skies and enjoyed some sandwiches and wine while listening to some lovely music. If you have never been to Tanglewood, you are missing a treat. We couldn’t actually see the musicians as they were in the concert shed, but it didin’t matter as we could hear them just fine. And, unlike the patrons in the high-priced seats in the shed, we could enjoy the perfect weather.

Another feature of the weekend was food. Good food and lots of it. A cookout Saturday night, bagel sandwiches at the concert (with potato chips and cookies), pasta (stuffed shells and lasagna) Sunday night and breakfast with homemade granola and breads both Sunday and Monday. My attempt to lose weight had to be temporarily abandoned.

The final – and most important – feature of the weekend was social discourse. We talked about everything – family, health, work, retirement, current events. But, thankfully, hardly any political talk. We were good friends 55 years ago and we remain good friends today.