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:
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
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