With Linda still haunting gritty construction sites in Honolulu the dogs and I continued our self-

appointed rounds around the ponds, past the Magdeburg Sphere which always reminds me

of Rick as it was an image from a book of his, smuggled out of the SF Antiquarian Book Fair, from which Linda had the young Todd Hido make a photograph from which she in turn made

“Iconismus XI”, the drawing from which she in turn cast a life-size replica of the orb used to prove the existence of the vacuum in 1654 but now Rick is gone, vacuo spatio indeed…

As the weather heated up the shades came back down and

Saturday

brought a surprise visit from a Jeff, a Jeff and Arthur Tress, two Jeffs whom we’d met through separate mutual friends in our separate places, on their way back with Arthur from – surprise! – Surprise Valley.  This made for an abbreviated watercolor but a most interesting visitation

including the usual tour of the oasis culminating in the repo before they went on to Planet X.

Sunday afternoon Linda returned, barely alive, from an otherwise wildly successful Hawaiian expedition bearing my summer project, the project being reimagining four lost 20×40″ panels connecting and extending the three surviving 20×20″ paintings to recreate the full seven panel piece bought by Ryland Kelley in 1976…should be interesting.

The next day after a warming morning walk Linda returned to doggie pedicuring and I took off

on a last trip to Alturas, 84 degrees all the way up, pretty much, with a brief 20 mph delay

leaving Cedarville followed by a last quick and efficient round around town and back over

Cedar Pass to the Valley of Surprises, the endlessly delayed completion of the Eagleville Saloon not being one of them, to turn east on CR 37, leaving all that behind in favor of

Hays Canyon

into the Hays Canyon Range

where at the crest I turned downrange and up around 7400′ lunched in warm winds before

continuing a few more miles looking for the springs and aspen groves Bruce Haley’d

mentioned.  They were there, all right, as were,

descending,

the confusing turnings lower down I somehow managed to negotiate

with dumb luck [or maybe intuition], reaching

CR34 up around mile 75 about 3:30

and so, as ever traveling at my own risk [at whose risk does one otherwise travel?], hit the playa

and was home in time for dinner.