walking on college hill.

 

Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore. 

I was meeting Angel this morning at the new Lafayette College bookstore. I pulled off the highway, went under the highway and was greeted by carnage.

Typically as you approach the College, there is a stone archway, and a large hill. In the hill are stairs, and the sculpture of a Civil War soldier. It is lush with trees, and at this time of the year daffodils. I've taken those stairs and ramps many times down town. I think I left the College in 2015 and they were doing some work on the stairs. Okay, they were steep at places. But they were a 100 years old. Get over it. 

Today, it was all gone. I saw rocks and bare soil and hundreds of tree stumps. There was fencing and rebar going all the way back to Bushkill Street. I nearly crashed the car. Sadly I could not take pictures because there was no room to park.

When I returned home I looked online. It's called "Easton/College Hill Escarpment Hike – Bike Trail and Historic Step Refurbishment". According to the press release it "will make substantial improvements to the pedestrian pathway that connects Downtown Easton with the College Hill neighborhood by reconditioning the historic stairs that serve as the primary city-campus transition. Huh? By ripping everything out. Sorry, I'm not a landscaper but this does not compute. "In addition, we will be constructing a new walking and bicycling trail between the Karl Stirner Arts Trail and South College Drive ... About 1,100 feet of new trail will be constructed as part of this project, providing a 6-foot-wide pathway. About 650 feet of existing trail will be repaired or replaced. Amenities will include better lighting, new seating areas, and locations for displaying artwork."

It's now going to look like this. Insert puke emoji. Maybe in 20 years, when all the vegetation grows back, it will look okay. But damn is it going to be sunny until it does.

Angel told me the new bookstore was across the street from the Wawa where the old gas station was. But it wasn't. There's a park there. The bookstore is actually down further. All the houses on McCarthy street were raised to build new dorms. The bookstore is on the corner. The next tallish building in the picture has a restaurant on the first floor. The road to the administration building had a median strip with flowers. I parked the car wondering what alien universe I was in.

I found Angel curled up with a book. Took a quick tour and said hi to Darrell. Then we headed out on a walk around College Hill. A and I used to do this walk all the time when we worked together at LC. This time we started at McCartney and High, and went up High to Paxinosa Ave.  Looking at mansions is fun. Even if most are now apartment buildings. It's been awhile, so I noticed these unique spires on this roof. And the chimney had a window!

We turned left onto W Pierce and walked one block on Cattell. Was this always in the sidewalk? How did I miss it. We crossed Cattell and went left on W. Burke and returned to the Bookstore on McCarthy. Then we headed to Wawa for drinks.

We headed across the street to the park to wait for the teenager, and then headed to Panera for a meeting with Echo City. I'll be working on a children's book. That will be a new adventure.

Miles/Steps:    not quite 2 miles.
Weather:         low-50s, cloudy, blustery.

its been awhile, but splat!

 

I don't think in the ten years I've been volkssport walking that I've fallen in front of the group. Today I changed that. Discussions of urgent care and incident reports ensued. No thank you. It's just an ugly boo-boo. Though my hand took the brunt, my elbow and knee still are sore.

I arrived at Wy-Hut-Tuk Park at 9:25. Meeting time was 9:45. When I arrived there was one person already there. A minute after I arrived the next one came. Five minutes later, a car-full came. Don't be late for these events.

 

(Angel is this what you're looking for the photo book?)

We stood around twenty minutes getting cold, and left promptly at 10. Six people walked, three rode. The walkers headed north for 1.5 miles to Lock 35, over the spillway and under 78.  The website said that from Easton to Riegelsville the trail was surfaced with large gravel.  The first step in repairing more damage from Ida, two years ago. We were right smack in the middle of it.

 

It's on the way back that one of the rocks reached up, grabbed my toes, and pulled me down. I went splat. Everyone was aghast. They are thin and didn't realize that fat people basically bounce. It's all this padding. I used Betty's poles to get up. In reality there were no less than five sets of hand wanting to pull me up. People were brushing the dirt off of me.

 

We were halfway back when I looked at my hand.  It looks like a puncture, but it isn't. More like a deep brush burn. It pulled off some skin. I cleaned it off when I got back to the car and put a band-aid on it. Haven't looked at it since.

This week I also did Milly and the old-lady chair exercise class. No yoga. I went shoe shopping. Don't tell the Roomie.

Miles/Steps:    5K+
Weather:         mid-40s, sunny, blustery.
Wildlife:          heard geese and woodpeckers
Bathrooms:     P-4.5  The indoor one is closed until April 1. Must not be winterized. There was a port-o-potty in the parking lot.

grounds for sculpture night waves

 

About two, maybe three weeks ago, my sister-in-law Barb called and asked if I was interested in going to Grounds For Sculpture to their night event "Night Waves". I said yes. We had to do it soon because the show ends the first week in April.  

We chose yesterday. I'm glad I printed the tickets that day because my emailed tickets never arrived. I'm guessing that I mixed up my school and personal email. Of course we picked the one day of winter when they were calling for heavy rain and wind. We dressed for battle.

Our tickets were at 6. We left her house in east Allentown at 3 and it took two hours during rush hour to get there. Sadly Allentown traffic was the worse. We were less than a half hour away when it started to drizzle. We found a Chinese place to eat at five minutes from the venue. It's funny, when discussing options I said Asian because Pat hates it and won't eat rice. I rarely make it. Barb said David didn't like Asian food either so she rarely has it. (There was a food my brother didn't like? I'm shocked.) In another life we guessed the restaurant was Italian—crystal chandeliers in a Chinese restaurant are odd. Though they made an effort to have a Chinese decor. My food was good but salty for my palette. We both brought home leftovers. It was certainly cold enough to keep them chilled.

We actually entered GFS a little after 6. It was a light rain when we got out of the car. But by the time we headed out into the park the rain stopped. We discovered a map wasn't necessary. All the paths that they didn't want you to take were roped off. There was no getting lost. As we walked to the section of the park that was lit they had key sculptures simply up-lit. It was pretty.

At the top of the post is #1. We heard the music before we saw the lights. Almost every one had sound with it. We watched for awhile and almost missed this rainbow lava flow. (Sculpture is called "Eolith" by Isaac Witkins. I don't know the artists that lit them.) As you left there there were lit rods hanging in the trees. Vertical rods on bare trees. Horizontal on pines.

#2: "Dorion" by Bruce Beasley. It's a giant metal origami crane in a pond surrounded by arborvitae. Pictures didn't turn out. The projection was on the plant life and bounced off of the sculpture.

 

#3 was the "Nine Muses" by Carlos Dorrien. You could walk thru this one. Again it was surrounded by water.

#4 The blob looking thing is called "Memory" by Masayuki Koorida.  The upside down V shaped lights that you walk thru are the (#5) Wisteria Pergola.

Now my numbering might be all wrong. I think the horticultural stuff is not numbered.  But we crossed a little bridge and walked thru a (#6) bamboo forest. This I took a walking video. This is where I alsodiscovered you can not shoot video horizontally.

 

#7 was "Arch Set II" by Elizabeth Strong-Cuevas. Quickly followed by more rods. This time anchored from the ground. You could walk into it or around it. We did both. This is where I believe #8 "Dancers" by Alexander Rutsch was.

 

Then we came to a fork in the road. One was rustic, the other said "accessible". We took the rustic route and ended up at the amphitheater. #9 was the whole amphitheater. And there was tablet inside of a metal frame that you played like a xylophone. Again, I got some cool but useless horizontal video.

 

When we came out of the amphitheater, we walked thru the lit (#10) "Forest of the Subconscious" until we came to #11, the Sacred Sun. It looked like a triangle-ish shape, a cube, and a circle. 

 

 

If you stood at the exact spot for your height they all lined up. And then magic!

#12 was a sphere hanging in the trees and it moved and the lights moved around it. Barb and I christened it "Tilt A Whirl". The sculpture under it was called "Gradient Disk and Ice Ring" by Michele Oka Doner. I honestly didn't see the sculpture. I only saw the Tilt A Whirl. And it began to drizzle.

We were about to walk thru the final piece back to the visitor's center. They call it the (#13) Red Maple Allée. The long winding path meanders between two rows of Japanese Maple trees.

We hung out in the visitor's center a bit and then headed out to a downpour which followed all the way home. Glad I didn't drive.

How far did we walk? I have no idea.  I'd say no more than a mile. But that's fine. I was not home sitting on my fat ass watching bad television or working. And it gives my readers something interesting to read. So I call it a win.

Miles/Steps:    a mile
Weather:         mid-40s, damp and cold for such a high temp.