Bike Flowers

We have been enjoying spring, biking or walking almost every day.   The biker woman who bikes with studded tires year round is seen here demonstrating here special technique for storing the bike in our stairwell (bikes have a short half life when locked outside here):

The same biker woman is seen here on the left trying to taunt biker women of a different breed into a bike race:

Those bikes are parked outside the world renown Dinosaur Barbeque restaurant, #1 ribs in the US this year.   I don’t think they use real Dinosaurs, but based on the size of some of those bikers, I could be wrong.

Another thing Syracuse is famous for is being a major hub on the Erie canal.   They turned it into Erie street in the city, but outside the city there is a nice 30 mile bike road along it.  This used to be a picture of biker woman biking along the canal, but said woman said I reached my quota of photos of her for this month, so asked me to crop her out:

This park is where the barges from the canal would pick up the mega-tons of salt that were pumped up from below the lake in the background:

If you worked here during the Civil War, you were exempt from the army, as Salt was important to the war effort.  To those of you who were in the civil war, you ate salt from here.

This is biker woman on her way to work.   The new hospital in the background will start ‘operations’ next month. 

Another favorite haunt for us is a large nearby cemetery.  Here biker woman is showing me how she would greet one of the numerous spirits that no doubt live in the abandoned church in the background:

I think her greeting has the potential to be either a hug or a double karate chop, depending on the size and demeanor of the spirit. 

The college dorms are on the edge of the cemetary.  In the 80s, an art student stole a skull from one of the crypts to use as part of his art project.  He got busted when his roomate got suspicious of the smell coming from his crock pot (he was cleaning the skull).   Turned out to be the skull of the Syracuse’s  first mayor.   The college kid got into a bit of trouble, but later grew up and founded a record label called Skull Records.  True story.

This guy (the one under the monument,  not in front of it) is (was?) Major General Sumner, a major player in the Civil War:

 

One of the goals these cemetery citizens have is try to have the biggest stone on top of or around them.   In the background here is a 3 story pyramid!

But the winner of the biggest rock is this guy:

That is an 80 ton rock a guy paid $5000 in 1904 ($130,000 in today’s dollars) to move it 9 miles to be on top of his father.   They didn’t have a crane big enough to lift it onto a train, so they had a team of men and horses move it on 2” planks, 900 feet a day for 2 months.   This guy was a descendent of the now skull-less Mayor guy.   I think his skull is pretty safe.

Helen has taken to a life of vandalism.  When we are out walking or biking near a park or other public place with abundant flowers, she can not resist:

But Aya’s sad Mohawk puppet almost begins to smile when he sees the resulting arrangement:

 

Just to show you we do things other than walk, bike, and steal flowers,  this is a picture of Helen’s closest co-worker, an fellow Epileptologist, and his wife joining us for some on the deck home made Sushi:

In non-B&H news, son Nick and friends officially launched Skritter, their Chinese writing learning website a couple of weeks ago:

  http://www.skritter.com

A fun cartoon they made just before the launch is here:

 http://www.skritter.com/launch

They really have made an amazing product in the year since they left college.  Nick traveled to another conference this week to promote it, and is now with Chloe for her graduation from Wellesley (congrates Chloe!)

Time to ride off into the sunset for this month.   I’m over my Helen photo quota, but I had to do one more, as a sunset makes for a good closing photo.  And her boots go well with my IBM windbreaker.  

And because she is so pretty.

Bruce

Laser squirrel

We took a weekend trip down to Philly a few weeks ago.  The girl half a couple we befriended turned 50, so it was time for a party.   They are both physics professors at Temple University, so I got a tour of the boy half’s laser lab.  This is a million dollar laser:

This is Alex powering it up to give me a demo:

His team recently made some unexpected but important discoveries in how to use one laser beam to modulate another.

Helen powered up an ancient Singer sewing machine she has had forever.  Inspired by the Judy Adams Levi quilts that Nick and Zach have, she collected some old jeans and flannel pajamas and worked some magic:

 

Here I model the final product, using a modeling pose I learned in engineering modeling school:

Zach dropped by for a visit last week. 

He borrowed a friend's sports car (S2000) and drove out from MN to NJ to visit his good friend Serjey.  They joined up with a bunch of other sport car enthusiast down in TN to drive ‘The Dragon’, a fun 2 lane curvy mountain road in the Smokies.    With his driving skill and his white helmet, he pulled away from most of the others and became know as The Stig  (famous driver from the TV show Top Gear):

 

To achieve the ultimate stick to the road experience, he bought some wide sticky tires, but you don’t want to use them on the interstate as they wear down quickly.   Somehow he managed to pack those tires and a bunch of tools into the nooks and crannies:

He also put in a racing car seat with 5 point harness.  Those seats bolt in, with not much wiggle room:

   

Definition of a sports car enthusiast: Driving 4600 miles in an uncomfortable seat snuggled next to tools and tires.

Definition of a sports car fanatic?  Someone who tattoos a race track layout on their back:

He had a good time and made it back safely without thrombosis a few days ago (whew).  

Our friend Ben came for a weekend visit.   Here Helen criticizes the muscle anatomy of one of the statues on campus:  

  

And here is this month’s mystery photo.   It has a story, but I’m going to first let you try to guess what this is (no cheating and looking at the next picture):

 

A few days ago as i was working away, solving IBM chip puzzles, I saw a grey blur outside of the window I sit next to and I hear a thump.    On the shingles for the porch below us I see this baby squirrel, flattened out on all fours, like you might see in a biology lab dissection table, except his guts were still in place, and he was breathing 200 times per second, with a wild look on his face  like that of a squirrel who was just run over by a herd of wild elephants but somehow managed not to get squished.

I grabbed my camera to take a picture and his Mother shows up.   She sees me about to shoot her child and she gets that motherly ‘You better not shoot my child or I will break into your house at night and claw your eyes out at night when you sleep’ look on her face.   You can’t quite see it in this photo, but believe me, it was there:

Then she jumps down, and after several failed attempts, manages to bundle the child that is almost her size into her mouth and runs away to safety, which is when I took the mystery photo.

Any one figure the mystery photo out?  I’m guessing you non-medical types were guessing it was a squirrel barfing up a big hairball.   The medical types probably knew squirrels don’t do hairballs so were guessing goiter, caused by a classic case of iodine deficiency, very common with those Great Lake squirrels who often lack access to good table salt.