More bits & pieces

I spent most of this past week in West Virginia, a lovely state, although where we were was a bit lacking in those things which I tend to enjoy while on vacation, such as fine dining and access to art in any form.

However, there was this, the New River Gorge Bridge:

That’s a four-lane highway on top; for scale, a car could drive on any of the girders of the arch. It is immense. It’s the longest single-arch bridge in the western hemisphere, and the second tallest in the U.S. As you can see in the photograph, there was a slight haze to the air that day, so the whole mise-en-scene was a bit CGIish. Confronted by something like this, the brain rebels. It can’t be real. It’s too big. Somehow a computer did it.

Before the bridge was built, folks used a smaller bridge down at the river (still there). It took 45 minutes to get from the top of one side of the gorge to the other. Now it takes less than a minute.

I was impressed.

I was also more than a little bored, not being the outdoorsy type who jumps at the chance to spend all day rafting down said New River. It rained nearly the whole time we were there, so I couldn’t even take naps in the sun, and there’s only so much hot tub one can take.

I was also largely internetless, having left my laptop at home. I was able to keep up with email via my iPhone, but there are about 13 major emails to which I have yet to reply because they need some thought and depth to them. I’ll get to those tomorrow.

So I amused myself by not shaving. Here I am after a week without a razor:

One always hopes that one looks raffishly sexy, but I know I’m just unkempt. It all comes off tomorrow morning, lest I scare the rest of the leadership team at school.

I got home from GHP last Sunday, left for West Virginia the next day, so I didn’t really get a chance to check on the labyrinth, other than to take this photo late last Sunday afternoon.

As you can see, the dry summer has not been kind to the space. The grass is mostly dead. Today I was able to pick up all the little sticks that had accumulated, and I spread a “weed & feed” fertilizer on it. I also have to get the lawnmower fixed, and then there’s a host of other little things I have to swing into action on. I’ll take more photos tomorrow afternoon and blog about them tomorrow night. I also hope to have a full report/plan on the omphalos bowl and its accoutrements and installation. Big doings in my near future.

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