Bavarian Weekend

Bob and Debbie invited us to a long weekend at their time-share in Leavenworth, WA, picked us up about 8 Wednesday morning, weather overcast and foggy.  At the Santiam rest stop north of Albany, we ran by the decommissioned B-1 bomber being transported from Tucson to the Boeing plant in Renton.  It was the largest load ever on I-5--29 feet wide, 146 feet long--so it traveled only at night to minimize disruption, but the canvas-wrapped fuselage parked beside the pavement created disruption of its own.  We drove off at the next exit, turned back, stopped, and along with many others, got out to photograph the rare sight.

Our next stop was at the concrete replica Stonehenge commissioned by Sam Hill in 1918 at the Quaker community he tried to establish on the Columbia in the early 1900s.  The community failed, the Stonehenge was turned into a WWI memorial.

We headed north, still under cloudy skies and were captivated by a lenticular formation with Mt. Adams in the distance.

We arrived in Leavenworth after dark and found the time-share.  The next morning, I enjoyed the view from the balcony.

The forecast called for rain the next day, so we took in the fish hatchery.  Exhibits in the main building included a black bear that Bob decided to wrestle (with the help of some photo editing).

We hiked a trail by Icicle Creek where, according to the lady in the hatchery office, local Indians had some years before planted salmon given to them by the hatchery and now in season fish from platforms for salmon that had returned.  We could see this year's returnees in the creek, two to three feet long, a few quite red, some with white fins and tail, most still dark. 

 We also saw small birds; the walk was pleasant, the trail paved, level, and included signs identifying plants, birds, and animals in the area.

The town boomed in the first half of the 20th century, sustained by logging and the Great Northern Railway, but fell on hard times.  Then in 1958, after visiting Solvang, CA, owners of a business on Front Street talked other business owners into converting the town into a Bavarian village theme park.

Now the town is booming again: most of the stores, restaurants, and buildings are pseudo Bavarian, the only industry is tourists, of which there seem to be a few, and prices are Miami Beach.

We ate a lot of wurst and schnitzel, red cabbage, and some fine strudel.

The most interesting attraction was the nutcracker museum, opened only in 1995, now with some 6,000 nutcrackers, ranging from prehistoric to modern, with many from the 18th and 19th centuries.

We drove 12 miles to Cashmere, home to the Aplets & Cotlets factory, which we toured. 

In the attached store, free samples were available--we sampled freely.  Yum.  Fresh aplets and cotlets are not like what you get locally.  We buzzed in sugar high until lunch at a barbecue behind a lovely bronze pig.

Two large antique malls, filled mostly with the usual castoffs, took much of the day.  I found an 1880s meat press, a small cast iron device for extracting a few ounces of meat juice for babies and invalids who could not easily chew.

Sunday we started back, with a long stop at Maryhill Museum, which houses perhaps the largest collection in the U.S.--some 80 pieces--of life-time casts of Auguste Rodin sculpture, as well as a hodgepodge of items accumulated by Sam Hill and friends, and extensive displays of Native American artifacts.

Among the Rodin items are number of plaster casts, working models that he used in deciding on the final form of bronze casts.

The plaster Thinker is signed in pencil, a gift from Rodin to Loïe Fuller, a pioneer of modern dance in Paris and friend to both Rodin and Sam Hill.

Soon enough, we were back on the road and not long after were at home greeting cats and dog.

A nice weekend.

A Different Kind of Travel

About the first of October, I went to some garage and estate sales and one antique sale to see if something might jump out at me. At the antique sale--the advertisement in the paper was under "Antiques" instead of "Garage Sales"--was a collection of old pewter and a model ship hull with a tangle of string and pieces of what had been masts and yardarms.  The lady tending the sale told me that the ship was ivory and had belonged to her mother.  She was reducing the amount of her stuff, and had asked her son if he wanted anything.  He wanted the ship, and as she lifted it from the mantel, she dropped it.  It shattered.

Now her son did not want it, so she was selling the remains.  She assured me that all the pieces were there.  I doubted it: shattered masts, broken yardarms, minuscule beads, lines so fragile they disintegrated at a touch.  I took the collection home to study, and decided that I needed to remove the lines, start from scratch.  I did not think to take a photo until after I had cleared most of the lines, I'm sorry to say.  I started trying to figure out how the pieces fit together and how to fix them  Regular glue did not hold, super glue failed; finally at a bead store I stumbled on "Crafter's Pick," a multi-purpose glue that worked.

I put the masts together and fit them and found that my problems were just beginning.  I spent hours searching the Internet to find directions for rigging square riggers.

Along the way, I discovered that the model was probably not ivory at all but bone and baleen, similar to models made in the early 1800s by French prisoners in the long wars between England and France, models now sold at Christie's and Sotheby's.  Using the remains of the rigging and patterns from the Internet, I managed a facsimile of an 18th century three-masted square rigger with 32 guns on two decks.

The lines are silk thread ranging from .35 mm for foot lines to .60 mm for shrouds.  The main mast is just over 12 inches above the keel, the hull is about 9 inches long by 3 inches at the beam.

In all, I spent some 50 hours stringing lines, I have no idea how much time I spent traveling the net looking for answers.

The Allure of Very Spendy Cars

The Portland Art Museum started sending notices last winter about this summer's featured show of sixteen interesting automobiles made throughout the Western world from the 1930s to the '60s, an exhibition shown only at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, where it originated, and in Portland.

The cars were not the only expensive item on the menu: enticement was increased with the promise of an evening with Jay Leno, first set at $35, then at $100, because, I was told when I called for an explanation, Jay had agreed to spend time in the gallery with a limited number of real aficionados for a special "hoods-up" viewing.  I bit, bought two tickets, and when Deb was needed in Huntsville, I found a friend also interested in cars.  Then I got an email from the Morgan Owners Club that the museum had invited local car clubs to show their best cars on the park blocks each Saturday; this day was reserved for the Brits so we drove up early, found parking around the corner, and wandered the street among some very nice British iron,

including a TC,

a Morgan three-wheeler, and Jags, Rolls, Sprites, four-wheel Morgans, and others.

The real attraction, however, was inside, and in we went where we found spectacular vehicles on pedestals in the main galleries, including the 1957 XK-SS Jaguar once owned by Steve McQueen.

I was taken with the '37 Bugatti 57S Atalante,

but each vehicle was fascinating: the 1930 green Bentley "Blue Train Special,"

 the '31 Duesenberg (hood ornament shown here),

the '39 Talbot-Lago.

The crowd inside was not as thick as outside--I was able to get clear shots--and we looked our fill, then left for other errands and Dim Sum at Fong Chong's.  We returned for the 6 p.m. hoods-up, and waited outside for the museum to reopen.

We had "Preferred Tickets," but when the gates opened we discovered there were "super-preferred" guests already inside, crowded around Mr Leno.

I had imagined that Leno might go from car to car and say a little about each for our edification; he wandered among the vehicles, all right, primarily posing with people for photos.

He looked tired and perhaps a little harried but was gracious and generous; I doubt he saw much of the cars. The hoods were up--but the "aficionados" were more involved in souvenir photos.

I took a number of engines shots: I found them as lovely and as interesting as the cars.

After studying all the cars again, I broke down and joined the tourists: I bought the catalogue. Ken Gross, the author, and Leno graciously signed it.

We trouped next door to the third floor Kridel Ballroom where our tickets got us seats beyond the first aisle about 30 rows from the stage, not close but closer than the $35 seats that started some 50 rows farther back.  After the obligatory back patting and thank yous, Ken Gross and Jay Leno walked on stage, sat in upholstered chairs at a tea table, and with Gross prompting, Leno talked cars for almost an hour and a half, funny story after funny story.

He admitted that he had some 123 cars in his collection [probably not counting motorcycles], but asked the women if they would rather have their husbands come home reeking of transmission fluid or cheap perfume.

He described the Pebble Beach concours as a show where millionaires compete with billionaires and have a chance of winning.  He told of driving his McLaren F1 [about $970,000 new in 1992, $4 million at the last auction] to a car show and getting out to go to the bathroom or something, returning to find two LA gang bangers eyeing the car.

They had ratty hair, gang tattoos on their necks, one had tear drops tattooed down from his eyes.  Leno said he thought, "Oh, oh, this could be trouble." Then one of them said, "This is Gordon Murray's design, isn't it?" and Leno thought, "They know something about the car, I've prejudged them."  They talked about the car, and then, to make up for his first judgment, Leno offered them a ride.

The driver sits in the middle in a McLaren, and after the two bruisers got in, one on each side, Leno began to think that maybe this was not such a good idea.  One of them suggested that they drive into the hills where, with less traffic, they could get a better ride.  At this point, Leno is beginning to sweat, because there would be fewer people too.

He drives above Malibu on a road with a long tunnel where he opens it up to really hear the exhaust roar.  They leave the tunnel doing about 125 and at the other side sits a police car.

Its lights come on and the siren screams.  Leno thinks, "Oh no, here I am with two gang bangers; who would believe me when I say I don't know them?  The cop's going to run a check on them and they'll turn out to be drug dealers, we'll all be arrested and the McLaren will be towed to the impound lot."  He stops the McLaren about half a mile down the road, the squad car pulls in behind, the cop walks up, knocks on the window, and says, "What do you think you're doing?"  The two gang bangers pull out police badges and say, "It's all right, we're undercover."  Leno sags in relief.  He asks, "Why didn't you let me know?" and the cops say, "We don't usually tell people."

An enjoyable afternoon and evening.