Picnic with Yakov and Lisa

I played billiards with Yakov at the Anchorage Senior Center this morning while Joan and Lisa walked the bike trails. Yakov was 60 when he first came from Moscow to Anchorage for two months to visit his sister. He was a surgeon in Russia and Lisa did internal medicine. When Russia allowed Jews to leave, he and Lisa came to Anchorage to live. That was 1994. Both Lisa and Yakov are among my favorite people here. So warm and loving, so intelligent, Lisa has eyes that sparkle with fun and humor. In many ways Anchorage is not too strange for people from Moscow. They've taught us, for instance, a lot about finding mushrooms in the woods and recipes for cooking them. They taught me one of my only Russian words (but not how to spell it) - pagunka, or bad mushroom.


Yakov, until he had a stroke and heart surgery two years ago, was riding his bike everywhere, swimming every day, cross country skiing, and drinking vodka. Even though he's been studying English since he got here, it is hard for him. He told me today about problems learning English, "Old dog (that's me), No can learn new tricks."



He's not as energetic as he was, but he still drives with a bike rack on the car, or puts his bike on the bike racks on the city buses. Walking (that is for a mile or more) is hard for him because of a hip problem, but biking and cross country skiing are fine.

So after he beat me in every game, except one where he seemed to purposely miss the pockets, we biked over to a small lake to meet the women where we had picnic. A nice, relaxing, quiet day.