David Clark,who is head of school at Pinecrest School’s Boca Raton campus in Florida, writes: “The process of turning 49 has inspired me to get back into my 1990s physical shape. See attached.” (He included a weight room selfie that looked like the David Clark who donned a Cincinnati Bengals uniform in the early 1990s). David continues: “Nicole (Smith ’89) and I just celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary. Our oldest, Amber, graduated from Bates College and is now a faculty member at our school. Our middle daughter, Autumn, is a sophomore at Wagner College, playing soccer and doing well academically, and our youngest, Ashleigh, is in her junior year at Pinecrest School, running track and planning to be a psychology major. Nicole and the girls have inspired me to take on a few new habits: flavored Java cigars with a nice boardwalk port as a new pastime, weekly beach walks, daily meditation and date nights. Those beautiful Florida days (without hurricanes) have made us realize how fortunate we are to have gone to a great place such as Dartmouth and to have maintained friendships with those people from the College on the Hill!” In November Nate Emerson, who was previously best known for his Aires solo in “Shamma Lamma Ding Dong,” completed a 250-kilometer race (that’s about 155 miles) during a six-day period in Argentina’s Patagonian wilderness. All competitors ran self-supported, meaning they carried their sleeping bag, clothes, food and all required safety paraphernalia on their backs. Nate kept a blog, and the report he wrote at the end of the fifth day (74 kilometers) is epic: “Well that was difficult. I probably would have had to drop out had it gone longer. We started off nicely enough—overcast, high winds. Unfortunately, the course had a 500-meter vertical climb to the first checkpoint and then a 700-meter vertical climb to the second checkpoint. Now, as many of you may have noticed, I am not exactly leading the pack. This means that by the time I got to the climbing, 180-plus pairs of feet had stomped all over the trail, and it was muddy, slippery and technical. After checkpoint two it started to get rainy and windy, but I hadn’t changed into my warm-weather gear. I arrived at a very exposed checkpoint three (gale force winds and horizontal rain) and did the full ‘Formula One’ clothing change in record time. Literally stripped out of all my wet stuff, donned every piece of dry clothing I had and my (already) soaked rain coat and put on rain pants. The Patagonia Nanopuff down jacket was the race saver, and I warmed up by running down the hill. That was just in time for a series of river crossings. After a day of heavy rain these puppies were roaring! No option—I just concentrated on crossing and not falling in. I arrived at checkpoint four cold and tired and 43 km in with another 31 km to go. Checkpoint four was supposed to have hot water, so I was going to eat a full, hot meal on the run. The hot chocolate was hot but, sadly, the water to rehydrate my meal was not hot. Huge bummer! I scarfed down about a third of my dinner, tossed the rest and was off again. The rest of the race was progressively colder and wetter, and I slogged it in to arrive at 11:45 p.m. The race organizers had set up a super-heated tent, and I warmed up and dried out for 30 minutes. Then I stumbled into Tent 7, crawled into my sleeping bag and slept the sleep of a finisher!” Give a rouse for Nate! And read his full race blog at http://bit.ly/2AIbEWt.

—Rob Crawford, 22 Black Oak Road, Weston, MA 02493; crawdaddy37@gmail.com