Fireman and bikes

Remember that picture of Helen's bike in our stairway from last month?   We learned a lesson about storing bikes in stairwells.     Last weekend I did a long 30 mile bike ride to a Jazz festival (Helen was at on call at the hospital).  When I came back at dusk, I discovered that Helen’s bike had moved itself from the top of the stairs to the bottom, wedging itself snugly against the door.   I couldn’t even get a finger thru the door.   The downstairs neighbors are out of town.  The back door has a different lock and the landlord, who was in Florida, said that key is lost.   I was stumped, so I called Helen, who had an idea, expertly illustrated here:

Her idea was to buy a 30 foot ladder, to climb up to our porch, which had an open door.    But all the 30 foot ladder stores were closed.   So using her best damsel in distress voice, she called up the fire department, who have lots of lovely ladders about 5 blocks away.   Within an hour, their biggest fire truck lumbers up the street (thats the red thing on the lower left above)  and 5 fully dressed firemen get out.

Biggest fireman:    Got a drivers license to prove you live here?

Smallest Bruce:  Ah, hmmm, no.  (I had a Minnesota license).

2nd fireman, also big:  We would look pretty bad if we helped a crook break into a house.

Non-crook Bruce:  I have proof inside.

3rd fireman, bigger than the first one, who used to be the biggest:  Ok, will hold you to that.

The 4th fireman, truly the biggest, slings a monster ladder on the house, disappears into the darkness, then comes out a minute later holding Helen’s bike with 2 fingers. 

I show them the one thing that proves I live there (a utility bill), thanked them profusely, promised them cookies, and off then went.

Other than this instance, Helen’s bike is a usually a well behaved member of the household, safely transporting here to and from work, as seen here:

But 2 weeks ago, we had another bike incident.   We biked 10 miles out to graduate the latest round of Neurology Residences.  Helen spoiled a kitten with a chunk of steak:

Biking home, we stopped partway up a long hill to rest.  Helen discovered that highway railings are not designed for sitting on (too thin), and suddenly disappeared into the bushes.   After confirming nothing was broken, I did what any true gentleman would do:  I took her picture.

She did get a scrape on the leg, but otherwise was ok.

Zach made his big move to NJ this week.   He rented a big U-Hall and packed everything he could fit into it:  a car, a motorcycle, a tool chest, a queen sized bed, nightstands, dressers, a 62” TV, a 5 piece stereo system, a bunch of other garage equipment and tools:

 

And behind that he had a trailer with a 2nd car! He stayed with Nick at Oberlin for a day, and Nick helped him saran wrap the trailer car for better protection:

After getting to NJ, he stored his stuff in a storage locker, including both cars (they are works in progress), then found an apartment.   Should be moving into it this week.

In other not-so-important-shoe-news, I bought some new tennis shoes.   I tried sharing them with Helen:

 

But she like her boots better:

 

Helen’s parents came for a visit.  This is a picture of them looking at a picture of them just after got married: 

 

On my bike ride yesterday, I found this tree, still under construction by Authorized Personal Only:

 

I’ll let the reader determine who the tree building Authorized Personal should be. 

Mom and Dad, Helen made me pose for this rose picture for you guys:

 

One last photo, another Helen at sunset:

 

In a week I’m off to Rochester for a week.   Then we have a few trips to the lake planed.   Then a conference in Indianapolis then the summer is over!

Bruce

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.

Niagara

We had a couple of road trips this month.   First we met with some friends on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.  First time I had seen the awesomeness:

It was strange to compare nature’s amazing creation with man’s creation a few blocks away.   Several blocks of tourist trap spectacles, like wax museums and haunted maze houses.   After a few minutes of wondering about the neon coated jungle listening to streetside talking mummies, we escaped back to nature’s creation, much more impressive:

 

Our host was the area’s head Jewish Rabbi, an amazing guy who knows a bit about everything and can do just about anything.  Including cook.  Helen picked up a few  tips:

    

The north escarpment of Lake Erie has a mild climate, good for growing fruits, so we toured a few wineries.  Here the daughter of one of our friends is explaining to me how wine is made (it had something to do with horses and dancing):

And here their other daughter is serving me up a freshly baked cake made from chocolate butter and M&Ms (those without imagination will claim it looks more like wet Canadian dirt):

Last weekend we went to NH to celebrate Helen’s Mom’s birthday.  We met up with Noah (here practicing for one of many upcoming concerts at Bolder) and Aya, doing some acrobatic French braiding of Casey’s hair (a college friend she brought along from RISID):

A charcoal Casey did of Aya:

 

There were lots of Russian friends, and that led to lots of Russian music, which led to lots of dancing, although I’m not sure this was Russian:

 

We brought Vira, a family friend who was visiting from Moscow,  back to Syracuse for a few days.   Inspired by the jeans blankets that Judy Adams made Nick/Zach when they were little, Helen and Vira attacked some worn out jeans to give them a 2nd life:

In this last picture you witness Helen with 2 of the neurology residents studying a palm reading book:

I admire their willingness to keep an open mind about alternate medical diagnostic procedures, but come on, palm reading??   Astrology was next.    It was a close call for Western Medicine, but fortunately before they got subsumed, a nearby IBM engineer eventually talked some sense into them.   One of them, anyway.

Bruce

St Thomas, 2009

I pronounce myself as the Sun master.  On my 3rd trip to St Thomas, we had 10 days of fun in the sun and I didn’t get a single sun burn.   And, I did it without putting any lotion on it’s skin.   This is my master of the Sun pose:

The secret?  It is a 3 part plan:

•   Sunbath only on sharp pokey rocks (limits exposure time).  
•   When swimming midday, use fully body armor (i.e. a shirt).   
•   When Helen tries to coax you out from underneath the sun beach umbrella, defend yourself by slapping her on her sunburn to remind her of her foolish ways. 

I had a work project that wasn’t quite done, so I called in to the daily team meetings. 

To not make my teammates feel too jealous, I told them it was raining, but I think they saw through my ruse after 5 straight days of rain. 

We actually had wonderful weather, with enough sun for 3 different wedding photo shoots.    And plenty of lizard sunbathing:

 

We had great visits with Helens parents on the first weekend and Mom an Dad on the 2nd weekend. 

No fish photos this time.  I dropped my underwater camera in the deepest part of the bay on day 2, so it now swims with the turtles.  

I did get pretty sunset photos though.  This is Helen on her last evening swim:

 

 

And this is us on our way out.  Based on his expression, I’m guessing our fellow passenger did not have as good a time as we did.

Test post from Windows Live Writer

This is pretty slick … much easier way to add pictures.   Works great from Windows 7:

 http://download.live.com/