for now, here's a picture of a wombat. more on this later:
i've been struggling with a cold for the last week or so, and i think i'm at the part where it's winning a little. the weekend was great and i got tons of fresh air, but i'm glad to be curled up in bed with the dog right now.
friday night i played it low key and watched "about schidmt" with jack nicholson. it sucked, the whole time i kept waiting for it to get going and then it just ended. ugh.
then saturday was the shawan downs green valley point to point race day. . it was as funny as i knew it could be, though i think i missed out on some of the local flavor i was seeking. where we were was a different crowd. there were entire families straight out of the banana republic and j. crew catalogs, madras plaid represent!
there was a little bit of race related excitement too. in one race, 3 jockeys got thrown and one got stepped on. they all ended up being ok, but one of the horses continued to run without the jockey and actually gained on other horses before taking off completely. it was pretty funny to watch (sorry jockey dude, but it was)
then yesterday we went to the house of david hess, who might be hands down the coolest person and funnest father i have ever seen. his studio/workshop is amazing, and he is the nicest guy ever. he gave us the a great tour of all his studio and work spaces and we even got to poke around his storage units, where he stores all the things he might eventually want to use for projects. his sculptures appear all over baltimore, and other parts of maryland both in private residences and public buildings. i was just totally blown away by how cool he is. i don't know why i would have expected differently, i guess i just anticipated some sort of attitude because he's a pretty big deal around here but i can't say enough good things about him. and he also has a very cool 12 year old son, eli, who has been working in his shop with him since he was 5. it's pretty funny for a 12 year to pipe up with mechanical suggestions in the middle of a project discussion, and even better for him to be right.
the project discussion in question revolves around the building of a 2nd team sculpture for the baltimore kinetic sculpture race, which is an annual event. read more about it here, but the short version is you build a sculpture of some sort that can move on both land and water. it's like 12 miles of land riding, 2 miles in the water, and there are various odd rules to be followed. david is historically known for his 8 man platypus sculpture, which will be running again this year, but he is also adding a wombat mobile which will be piloted solo by eli. david was gracious enough to let me wander around his shop, getting in everybody's way in the name of photo-journaling my day near baltimore arty greatness. as soon as i find my f*cking camera cord, i will upload my booty.
AND! we actually got to help work on the wombat sculpture. it's still in the early design phases, and i am obviously a total disaster in any sort of machine or adhesive based situations, but i was happy to do some of the more menial tasks for the crew. i was tasked with rolling pvc pipes into circles for the wombat's skeleton, and fashioning 20 finely hewn wombat claws using some tubing, a bandsaw, and a grinder. (all of the machines used were the old school belt driven types of stuff. insert homer simpson drooling here over david's shop, which anyone who has ever wished to make anything they could think of would die for) overall, it was a very fun weekend and when i get my camera connected i will update with the images.
and that's it for me, i'm off to sleep like the dead for a hopefully solid 12 hours or so before this week kicks in.
here's a little official blurb about david's platypus sculpture from the kinetic sculpture race's homepage.
"Eight independent bicycle pedal sets link into a master powertrain, using gearing so each pilot could pedal at their own personal rate. The sculpture weighs 3500 pounds with no one on it, and uses an SUV transmission providing 2-wheel-drive low gearing for pavement, and 4-wheel-drive high- and low-gearing for rough terrain."
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