Lawn art

Fall is here, and our yard is bare.  Except for those irritating leaves and our lawn art:

Our bird is from Colfax, IL - Robert Cumpston.  He makes animals out of tractor parts, or anything he can find at a  junk sale.  So cool!

Our little wheel barrel man.  We usually plant some flowers in him every spring.

 Our gas pump.  Chris drew up the design (along with our friend Arthur), and they punched it out of sheet metal.

Our compass

 Our water pump.  A gift from Chris' brother Dallas

 who also gave us these

 and this!

Hoping they don't get covered with too much snow this year!!

Wednesday night class!

Another new adventure.  This one will hopefully lead into something bigger that both of us want to pursue - so fingers crossed!

We are taking an Upholstery class!  In this initial Basic class - we will be building a footstool  - see completed item below:

Here is Chris working on his webbing :)

Our instructor - Seymour - explaining the webbing process to another student.

Here is my footstool set up - webbing done.  Now time to set the springs.  So cool!

 Some of the tools that we used.  I'm fairly week in 'tool use', so I need a lot of practice!  Make sure you  keep your fingers away when I'm working!

 Chris clinching the springs to the web.  Some serious staples were used.

 Then we had to tie the springs to the frame & to each other.

End of class #1.  It's from 6:30 to 9:30 pm.  Late for us.  Especially since it's in Jamaica Plain - Boston area.    Cool old house that is home to the Eliot School.
And look what we came out to:  snow.  YUCK.  There were a couple inches on the ground.   Fortunately, our house only had rain showers.

Looking forward to next week's class.  We'll be heading to the fabric store this weekend for our footstool covering.

Good times

Last weekend, we had Hurricane Sandy coming to town.  We made sure we had some provisions - gas & water.  But we knew it would be south, so we weren't too worried about it.   The day of the storm, work was cancelled, so we went hiking!

 It was a pretty warm day - even with the high winds.  And only a little rain.  By 9:00 pm, all was quiet.  We lost a few branches, but faired very well.  It was much nicer to us - than Hurricane Irene was!

This weekend, we had some friends coming to visit - so we got our workout done early.  Saturday morning 5k race!  We actually ran 6 miles before the race, since we wanted to run a total of 10 miles for the day.  (we did a 1 mile cool down run after)  The race was in Bristol - along the water.  And it was a pretty chilly morning!

 Small crowd, so I was fortunate to get 1st in my age group.  I'm not a very quick runner, so it was a nice surprise!  And we calculated that the run was only 3 miles.  Not the 3.1.  Not a big deal, but it makes me look like I ran a lot faster!  I ran faster than Chris for the 1st mile, then he caught me, and beat me by about 20 steps.  Those short races are HARD!

 Our friends came to visit (no photos).  And we went for a nice drive & dinner

And we ate a lot :)

Can't forget the Reliability Run!

I'm always anxiously awaiting the dates of the Rolling Bones Reliability Run.  It's always a a fun weekend - cruising the back roads with our friends.  I was a little worried this year that we might have a conflict - but we lucked out, and were able to make it!

Here we are meeting up on Saturday morning in Russell, MA

 First we enjoy some food.

 Then we get the cars ready - with their 'Run' numbers  We drove our '37 Phaeton

 Then we head out for the Saturday cruise

 It was a beautiful day!

We headed north to Vermont, so we did run into some rain.

The rain came & went.

 Saturday's destination was:  Hemmings Motor News!  Cool, Chris & I had never been to their shop, so we were excited.  They have a regular gas station & little shop of tshirts & other gifts.  Coffee too, which was very much appreciated!

 They have a museum in the back.

 Lots of cool stuff

 Ritchie - bein' Ritchie

 We hung out at the museum for an hour or so.  Then it was time to head home (we had a 2 hour cruise back to the start & our hotel)

 We all get together on Saturday night for dinner  It was a smaller crowd this year, but we still had fun.

 Sunday morning, we are all up bright & early!

 3 cars with problems this year.  2 couldn't finish the Saturday cruise.  Fortunately, this one - Charlie's - was able to be fixed on Sunday morning.

 On Sunday, we met at Ezold's garage.  Have coffee & donuts (fix any thing that needs to be fixed)

 Then it's time to head out for the Sunday cruise.  It's usually a little shorter than Saturday's cruise.

 A few of us made a pit stop at a flea market.

 Sunday's cruise ended at a cute restaurant. Big enough parking lot for some photo ops.

 RB Ken was one of the unlucky guys who had to abandon the cruise on Saturday.  But we kept him & his wife in the Sunday picture show. (as pumpkins :))

 Lunch was delicious!

 Time to hand out the awards

Another fun hot rod weekend!