We arrived back at Chuck and Gretchen’s dock mid-afternoon after being away for just over 2 months. After a quick tidy up and a shower, we went up to the house for drinks with Gretchen and Karen. At about 22.00 more of Max’s friends came to visit, Nina (friend from undergraduate days at Cambridge, now doing a PhD at Penn State in disease ecology) and her partner Kurt (a post-doc at Penn State researching disease ecology). We stayed up late chatting – many disease ecology questions to be asked!