Photo: Marine catches up on e-mail at the Norfolk Public Library

The past few days in Norfolk have been enjoyable, although we were lucky to dodge a tornado that ripped through Suffolk (40 km away) yesterday afternoon, destroying 125 homes and damaging many more, leaving 60,000 without power. It was categorised as an F3 tornado, with winds up to 165 mph (265 kmph). We hopped on the ferry back to Portsmouth just as the heaviest of the rains fell, but we missed the hail that pelted other areas. There was a fair amount of lightning in the area as well, but nothing too close for comfort.
We visited the MacArthur Memorial where General Douglas MacArthur and his wife are buried, which is surrounded by a two-storey museum dedicated to his life and incredible career in the US Army, spanning sixty years and four wars. When we bought our ski cottage at Wentworth five years ago, it came with a copy of William Manchester's 800-page biography of MacArthur, and it took the next four years of weekend reading during ski seasons to get finish it. The museum was interesting, and although it doesn't give the full flavour of the man and his complex character, it was worthwhile visiting particularly after having read the biography...I doubt I would have gotten as much out of it without having done so first.

Today I took the girls to visit the Portsmouth Children's Museum, and the girls had a good time (OK, me too!) romping around the exhibits and taking in a planetarium show on the planets that examined the question of whether Pluto is really a planet, or just another Trans-Neptunian Object (TNO - my new word of the day...)

Time for a public health commentary... Although I have been tempted to write about this earlier in the blog during our trip south, I read two articles in the local newspaper today that have prompted me to write about it now: obesity. It is rampant down here. My observations throughout the voyage have given me the impression that at least half of the people we have seen are overweight or obese, and the latest statistics published by the US Department of Health and Human Services appear to back me up. A third of Americans are overweight, and another third are obese. In some areas of the US obesity has reached epidemic proportions, with over 50% of the popuIation falling in that category. It is mind-boggling (dare I say flabberghasting?), and the worst news is that childhood obesity has quadrupled in some age categories in the past twenty years, which sets them up for all sorts of health problems in adult life. Canada is, of course, working on developing the same worrisome trends, and our political, public health, and education leadership needs to get the lead out and start tackling the issue. It positively gags me to see a mother give her two-year old infant a sip-cup of coke to slurp on, or hear an overweight family complain that they can't afford to "eat healthy" while at the same time drive the latest SUV model two blocks to go to school, or see that physical education in schools is not much more than an afterthought, and neither is providing the required recreation infrastructure for the public. I have noticed that in more than a few department stores that it's not easy finding my size in pants, but the selection of 46+ inch waists is considerable. A medium T-shirt? Ha! Try the XXLs... Then there are the restaurants down here: the portions they serve are humongous, and two meals at most eateries will easily satisfy our family of four. When we go grocery shopping it is instructive (frightening, really) to compare what we have in our cart with the contents of many other carts in the checkout line. Judy is particularly attuned to this, and it is scary to see how much of the stuff that a lot of folks seem to be buying around here isn't food. ..well, they seem to think of it as food. It's not like we are health-food fanatics, because we aren't; we just like to eat well because if we don't, we don't stay well. People are fattening themselves for the slow-motion slaughter, and everybody is going to pay for it eventually, either through increased chronic illness, loss of productivity, premature death, hospital wait times, etc... The list of long-term impacts is long. There are a lot of hip and knee replacements coming up the pipeline if you ask me.

Anyway, I needed to get that off my chest, er, stomach.

Tomorrow we will head east a bit to stage out of Little Creek VA in preps for another offshore passage to New York City, 268 miles to the north-northeast.