started to work on dinner. At
6pm we had Christmas dinner with 8 local friends.December 31, 2002: Diether and Jutta were driven by Diether's parents to Jutta's parents in Sankt Wendel. They visited some friends and stayed up pas midnight.
December 27,2002 : Diether and Jutta travelled to Europe to celebrate the 80th birthday of a family member. Arthur picked them up at the FRA airport to drive them to Voelklingen. They had a good time with family there, and enjoyed the birthday celebration (link to photos).
December 25, Christmas day: Diether and Jutta
went to church at QofA in San Jose at 11am. After lunch at home
with Ruth and Ben, they all started to work on dinner. At
6pm we had Christmas dinner with 8 local friends.
December 24, Christmas eve: Jutta, Ben, Ruth, and Diether celebrated Christmas eve with dinner at he Cupertino house and the traditional exchange of gifts.
December 14: Diether and Jutta participated in a company holiday party, and enjoyed conversations with other company associates, a good dinner, the performance of a magician, and dancing.
November 30 to December 6: Diether started a business trip for a new product introduction on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and stayed out of town about a week. He returned on Friday morning. On Friday afternoon Jutta and Diether met with a specialist at the retreat in Greenfield to discuss a new water system for the mobile. We stayed there for the week-end using the temporary water system (plastic bag), which has to be refilled frequently, because of an only 100 gal capacity.
November28, 2002, Thanksgiving Day: Diether and Jutta joined Kerstin at her house around noon, and drove to the beach in Santa Cruz for lunch. They celebrated Thanksgiving dinner with some friends from Stanford and Ben and Ruth.
October 6 to November27, 2002: Diether and Jutta were very busy at work, so were Ruth and Ben at school. In October we celebrated a special birthday for Jutta with a dinner at The Blue Pheasant with a family friend, Ben, and Ruth. Diether and Jutta visited their retreat in Greenfield only once. However, they took time on weekends to enjoy the ocean in Santa Cruz.
September 28 to October 5, 2002: Diether and
Jutta went on their summer vacation (vacation
photos will be here for a couple of months). On Saturday they
drove from Cupertino to the Carson City NV area using Highway 4.
Because of hunting season, the woods of the Sierra Nevada were
crowded with outdoors men and women. In the Carson City area we
found it difficult to find a motel room, because of a very large
motorcycle owner gathering in Reno. We finally found a room in a
run-down motel in Sparks. On Sunday we took 395 to the Holbrook
Junction and continued via Wellington, Smith, and Yerington to
the town of 
Walker Lake, where we were the only
guests in the only resort on the lake. We walked the beach, Jutta
went swimming, and we explored some of the near-by canyons. We
had drinks and dinners at the resort. In the morning, Diether
took pictures of the sunrise. After breakfast at Maggies in
Hawthorne, we re-fueled the car at the Chevron station, where
locals told us about a canyon outside of Lune. Because of the
difficult dirt-road, we did not continue all the way up to
6000ft, where fossils can be found. We continued to Tonopah,
where we bought maps at the BLM and USFS offices. After lunch, we
continued towards Austin.We enjoyed the view of the Toiyabe
Range. After passing the enormous mine at Round Mountain (Jutta
suggested to get employment applications because of the
magnificient countryside.). When we passed the town of Cavers,
we noticed the "Jumping Jack" motel sign, advertising
rooms with phones (The Walker resort does not have phones in
guest rooms.). After checking into room 14, we went to explore
the dirt roads into the mountains. We drove into the Twin River
area, where we walked along the creeks. Before returning to the
motel, we stopped at the local hot spring, found a big pool, too
hot to use. The locals later told us about another pool, which is
on private land, and can be used with permission of the owner. We
liked the area so much, that we added another day to our motel
reservation. We had a good conversation about issues of Nevada
ranchers, and found a copy of the Range Magazine,
when we returned to our room after a couple of drinks in the bar
and dinner. In the morning based on directions from the manager
of the motel, we hiked to viewing distance of the water fall in
Broad Canyon. We kept the hike a bit short, because it started to
snow, and we did not want to be trapped in a snow-storm. After
lunch at the trailhead, we explored other areas like the Ophir
Canyon, Kingston, and the Kingston Canyon with Grover Lake. We
then drove to Austin for a newspaper with a weather report and
espressos in the local bike shop, before returning to Cavers for
drinks, dinner, and the comfortable motel room. Because of the
snow on 
Wednesday morning, we decided to use the day mainly
for driving, and headed north to Austin and continued with a few
stops southwest to Gabbs,
where we had lunch in the R&D bar - reminding Diether of
work. We decided not to take the advice of the locals to go to Berlin,
but because of the late hour to continue to Hawthorne,
where we spent the night at the El Capitan. On Thursday after
breakfast at Maggies, we continued on the paved road to
Bridgeport via Mono Lake with several stops for short hikes along
the way. In Bridgeport we stopped at several motels before
finding one with telephone data ports for Diether's computer.
After enjoying the hot springs close to town, we walked from our
motel to the historic Bridgeport
Inn for drinks and dinner. Because of a southern storm front,
we decided to drive north to explore the Carson River area. We
first stopped at the Buckeye
hot spring for Jutta to soak in the warm water. We continued
via Smith to Yerington, where we had lunch in one of the casinos.
From there we drove to Fort Churchill
and followed the Carson River to Dayton. We saw a few wild
horses on the river. We had drinks and dinner at the oldest hotel in Nevada in
Gold Hill, and spent the night in the smallest room there.On
Saturday we explored the Carson River Canyon between Moundhouse
and Carson City interrupted by lunch at Adele's in Carson
City. In the mid-afternoon we started our return drive to
Cupertino with a stop at Lake Tahoe to allow Jutta to swim in the
lake. We arrived at home in Cupertino shortly before 9pm. Ben
helped us with unpacking the car. We were pleasantly surprised,
how well Ruth and he had kept the house clean.
August 3, 2002: A look at the Satellite image
of the Monterey Bay showed fog. Therefore we stayed in Cupertino.
We ate lunch with Ben in the sunny backyard. In the evening we
had dinner at our house with Ben, Ruth, her parents and their
visiting relatives from overseas.
July 28&29, 2002: On Sunday morning we drove to our cabin in Greenfield to spend two days there. We had taken vacation on Monday to enjoy the beautiful wild countryside. We returned to Cupertino on Monday afternoon.
July 27, 2002: In the morning we looked at the exhibit of photographs of a friend in the Cafe ? in San Francisco. We had lunch in a nearby restaurant. In the evening we celebrated the combined birthdays of friends.
July 20&21, 2002: We had a quiet weekend at home in Cupertino with a few hours in Santa Cruz.
July 19, 2002: Our friends from France had to return home. Diether came home for a farewell lunch; Jutta accompanied them to the SFO airport.
July 5 to 7, 2002: We had tried to book a hotel for us and our French friends on Lake Tahoe. As all of our favorite places were booked out, we decided to stay in Virginia City instead. Therefore on Friday morning we started the trip. We had a lunch stop close to Auburn, and continued to Kings Beach via Truckee. We stopped at a beach there for Jutta and our friends to go swimming. We drove through Incline Village, slowed to a crawl at the California Nevada border, not by customs, but by a traffic accident. We stopped at the viasta point on the way to Mt Rose to enjoy the view of Lake Tahoe. We continued on the Mount Rose highway past the southern end of Reno on on the Geiger Grade to Virginia City, where we checked into the motel, and proceeded from there to the Miners Restaurant for dinner. After dinner Jutta, Friedhelm, and Diether went to a historic bar - previously a club visited by celebrities like Edison. On Saturday morning after breakfast at the Miners Restaurant we drove to Carson City to visit the Nevada State Museum, presentations by some groups, and the Capitol area. We continued on highway 50 to Lake Tahoe, where we had a picnic and went swimming and sunbathing. We had to park outside of the beach and picnic area, because the parking lot there was full. We returned to Virginia City in mid afternoon, and Jutta and Francoise went shopping, while Friedhelm, Diether, and Thomas stayed at the motel. After a Mexican dinner at the Miners Restaurant, Diether, Jutta, and Friedhelm went to another bar with music and dancing. On Sunday morning after breakfast, our friends drove South, while Diether and Jutta returned home to Cupertino on Interstates 80 > 5 >580 >680 > 280.
July 4, 2002, Independence Day: In the morning we went sight-seeing with our friends from France. Through Santa Cruz we drove to the Carmel mission. After an extensive tour of the attraction, we drove to our favorite restaurant in Carmel Valley village to have lunch. We continued over the Los Laureles grade through Salinas to the mission of San Juan Bautista. Because of the holiday, we could only see the outside, because the visitor office was closed. We walked through town, and watched bikers with their Harleys and other motorcycles from the Hollister Bikers Independence Rally. We returned to Cupertino in the early afternoon to join a Independence Day party at the house of Ruth's parents.
(For the other parts of the family news click:(Latest_Diary, Jan-Jun2002, Jul-Dec2001,Jan-Jun2001,Oct-Dec2000, Jul-Sep 2000, Jan-Jun 2000, 1999, 1998)