"Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to perceive."
I went for a bike ride with Joe, Claire and Wei Chi. It was the first time riding with Wei Chi.
We went a little way down the Dongfong, and they took us to a little
site which honors the memory of a loop rail line that used to run off
the main line; which used to be what is now the Dongfong (hike/bike
trail). Here, we see the gang hanging out next to the old engine,
which ain't going nowhere.
Of course, this is supposed to be nice place to come and hang out, and
there's a keeper fellow who tends the area, keeping it green, in
flower, and manicured; and as you can see from this shot of the
adjacent gazebo, he does a very nice job.
But he has another little labor of love just down the way; a strange
little "rabbit haven;" twin islands in a little pond, connected by a
bridge, with a hutch at the peak of the bridge. The keeper feeds them
with a conveyor basket. He brings them a regimen of cabbage outer
leaves and what not, loads the basket, and string it along to the
island. As soon as the rabbits see him manipluating the basket on his
end, they come a-runnin' for mealtime!
Now, there was another interesting surprise for this trip. Claire
mentioned that they would take us to another special place, and they
did; a couple of fairly large complexes, not far from the condemned
vocational school mentioned in another one of these pages. One is a
an old lumber mill where Claire and Wei Chi's dad used to work. The
other is...wait for it...the voc training school built to replace the
one which had been condemned, and...where Claire went to school!
The voc school is impressive. Oddly, I didn't get any shots of the
regular buildings, but for a reason—which you may, from these
pics, be able to divine—I was drawn like a moth to this one
peculiar and massive structure next to one of the multi-story
buildings. This was a "hull"-shaped outdoor stairwell, linking a
basement level of the nearby building with the ground and second
floors.
I'm telling you; this sucker was built like a brick shithouse, as they
say in the vernacular. Joe worked on boats in earlier years, and he
said this things was more massive than some of the bigger hulls he had
worked on. Anyway, have a look. This thing's like statuary; it's not
possible to take a bad shot of it.
Well, after slavering over this thing for about 10 minutes, we started
getting signs from the ladies that it was time to move on; Wei Chi had
to get down to ULA to open up. Another successful morning out!