October 13 – 24

Joanna’s experience at the Glass Forge Gallery Tuesday afternoon, before we met Tom at the Bohemian, was fun and enlightening.  We drove into Grants Pass from Kamp Angst, and I dropped Joanna off early in the afternoon as she had signed up for a session ahead of time and when she checked in, it turned out she would be the only one taking the class. 

When making a glass art object, the first thing to do is examine glass samples to determine what color to use, as well as picking out a shape.  As you start the session, one uses a Pontil Rod or Punty (a metal rod used to construct a glass bead around) to pull out the “metal’’, which is a term for glass when it is molten.  To get the glass ready, it is heated in an annealing oven, which release the strain in the material. 

One then places the Punty on a ledge with the Metal extended over the floor and rotates it until the result comes close to the desired shape.  At this point, the Punty is propped onto a ledge and the shaped is lowered into a tray full of the desired colored glass and rotated until enough colored glass has adhered to the shape.  The Punty with the Metal is then put back into the oven and spun continually so that the glass forms into a ball. 

The ball is taken out and pinched, pulled, and twirled with long tongs to introduce bubbles, then put back into the oven to be reheated and spun.  Finally, it is removed from the oven and while one person spins the other uses a thick, saturated wad of newspaper to cradle the glass and create the final round shape.  The end of the Punty is removed using a set of pincers and the glass is then cooled gradually for over twelve hours. 

Overall, Joanna enjoyed the experience but felt that she was rushed a bit during the process, as if the employees just wanted to be done with the project.  Not an overwhelmingly positive customer service outcome.  The next day we picked up the art piece, and with limited opportunities to ride our bikes, we took advantage of the down time to actually go see a movie at the theater.  With today’s modern audio-visual equipment enhancing our home viewing experience and the plethora of streaming options available, we don’t see to many movies out anymore.  But as soon as one sits down in those big comfortable chairs, they remember why viewing a movie on the big screen is so much more rewarding. 

After the movie, we made our way to Climate City Brewing to meet up with Mark (aka the Guru), our longtime friend who we’ve connected with a number of times in past visits to Grants Pass.  We ordered a round of beers, all at happy hour pricing of three dollars each, including a Recall Brown, Hazy IPA, and a Rye Pale Ale, along with a Roasted Cauliflower (with garlic, fresh herbs, and parmesan) to get us going. 

As it would turn out, this would be, for now, a last visit with Mark as he would soon be moving to Fort Wayne, Indiana with his family.  It is the story for many of us, this movement of friends, making it hard to maintain consistent relationships, and yet giving us yet another reason to visit some obscure corner of the globe.

Along with another Recall Brown, we split a Margherita Pizza (tomato sauce, mozzarella, and basil) that was quite good, the basil fresh, as well as the cheese.  Mark couldn’t stay long as he was expecting a ride home, and so, finishing up the pizza, we bade him farewell and promised to stay in touch. 

The next morning with the drive back south to Woodland to spend the night with Chris (Mark’s former wife) in front of us, we opted for breakfast at the Powderhorn Café, a local institution with a long history.  We would order our usual choices, for Joanna the Breakfast Burrito with Bacon and for me, a Garden Omelet.  It was all very good, and yet although we complain about how high the prices are in Los Angeles, here the Omelet was $16 and the Burrito $14, about what I’d expect to pay at home. 

We spent the night with Chris who we had not seen for a couple of years and, as she cooked for us, enjoyed a long and pleasurable evening with her, catching up on the good and bad (she had battled with some serious health issues) and discovering that we had ended up on opposite sides of the political spectrum, which seems to have been the case with some other friends of ours.  We try our best to not let this get in the way of a good friendship and have been relatively successful at not letting this divide get between us. 

We returned to Oakland the next day and spent the weekend hanging out at the house, my activities compromised by an increasing amount of pain emanating from my hip.  Initially we thought it might be a pulled groin muscle, but later tests would reveal that It was arthritis in that hip, now aggravated because my leg was correctly aligned after having the knee replaced. 

With our postponed trip to South America now rescheduled for January, there was no way I would be able to manage the trip given the level of pain the condition was generating, and so, after checking in with Dr. Sassoon who did my knee, we determined that replacement before the trip was not feasible and so I set up a cortisone injection for early November to provide relief and tide me over until time for the surgery.  We’ll follow up on its effectiveness and our decision about replacement surgery, the Peru trip, and the coming holidays in a future post. 

Links

Climate City Brewing: https://www.climatecitybrewing.com/

Powederhorn Cafe: https://www.facebook.com/powderhorncafeandpie/