End of Summer

Since Gail had her hip replaced last spring, we didn't do a big bike trip this summer, in fact, what we ended up doing was a 12-mile trip to Trumansburg and back with an overnight at Alan and Marylin Vogel's house (see previous Crossing the Finger Lakes post). Let's be clear, 24 hours in Trumansburg can be pretty amazing, and we didn't even make it to Taughannock Falls. We did make it to the Farmer's Market where I saw the office/kids store I'd worked on earlier in the summer at GrassRoots set-up, we went to Cori, Andy, Orion and Ozzie's house, I played golf for the first time in a few years (consistently boggied most holes with one par). But two of the amazing highlights were the stops at the shops of John Gurche and Bob Potts. Richie Stearns tagged along to John's as he and Alan needed to inspect the engine on a van, but we all took in the tour of his shop and saw his current projects.  I'm not sure The Smithsonian or National Geographic (both of whom John has done projects for) know there's a drum set in his shop or that it's just a garage, I guess it's the quality of the work that counts.  In the picture John is holding on Gail's shoulder the cast of a skull from a body he's recreating. The bones were found in South Africa and are older than Lucy, but more recent than Astralopithecus, I can't even begin to explain the complexities in the painting. Bob Potts was kind enough to show us some of his kinetic sculptures, like this one that's in progress which will be a "fish" that looks as though it's swimming.