South Africa 2008

After a very busy Thursday there was one more paper to give on Friday at ICE on Dust Mites & Mattress Ecology. The very practical steps of vacuuming a mattress can remove mites and allergen, followed by flipping/rotation, can further reduce them by taking the mites away from body humidity. The project was funded by Sealy Inc. as part of a MS thesis. The story was sufficiently interesting that we were interviewed by the Durban paper. The highlight of the day was meeting the family of my former graduate student, Debbie Jaworski. She brought her two daughters and husband, whom I had not seen since they moved from California to Oklahoma. Debbie replaced my Ph.D adviser John Sauer, at Oklahoma State University. The evening was spent trying to organize a fishing trip off the coast of Durban. Due to a bad weather forecast we employed plan B, which was to visit the aquarium where we saw them feed sharks and turtles.

Fishing was on for Sunday now...the challenge was getting up to meet Captain Stewart at 6:30AM. Students from OSU and Texas A&M joined us for the outing, which was supposed to last until about 1PM because he had a flight to catch for Bloemfontein. After getting underway we caught some shad for bait then motored for about 20 minutes beyond the breakwater where we dropped anchor, which allowed us to drift while bottom fishing. There were two hooks on each line and a very heavy sinker. My first effort was to drop the line overboard rather clumsily and a large hook ended up embedded in my left hand. After collecting my wits I removed the hook and dropped the line into the water this time. After reaching the bottom and reeling up a few cranks I hooked a nice salmon...much better then my hand for sure. A few minutes later John caught a salmon and we were in business. I ended up catching three fish and John caught the most...five. Unfortunately the wind came up and soon we were looking up at some of he swells so we had to return early. Since we had no way to transport the fish to Bloemfontein they remained behind...such a pity as they would have tasted very well on the grill.

John and I caught an evening flight to Bloemfontein where long-time friend and colleague Leon Fourie picked us up. Now we are in the city we visited had 10 years before with the family (>3 months) where I worked on a tick repellent at the University of the Orange Free State with Leon. We will be in Bloemfontein for two weeks working at ClinVet.