Highs and Lows

Last Sunday was eventful. There was the surprising result at the Grand Prix at Monza, for one thing. But that was just the start.

After watching the race we made a family trip up to Stanford University. The campus is just loaded with interesting things, and I had identified three more spots I wanted to check out. The main attraction was the Cantor Arts Center, which we’d just briefly seen in a rerun of California’s Gold. We’d never been inside, so we decided that we we overdue for a visit…

I checked to see if there were any interesting caches there I’d not found… I noted and quickly solved a pair of simple puzzle caches, and those pointed me to the two other intriguing locations on campus. So we drove up, and started our visit on the west side. We walked around some checking out the more interesting architecture, along with some sculptures, a very large totem pole carved to represent the Stanford family, and other attractions. The weather was very nice, warm but with a bit of a nice breeze.

After checking out the nearby sights, we decided to drive the Jeep around to the museum parking lot. Then after looking over the outdoor Rodin sculpture collection we headed into the museum for the first time.

Wow, we really hadn’t known what to expect, but I know that I hadn’t anticipated such a grand museum. Its not exceptionally large, but perhaps “just right.” The lobby isn’t exactly subtle, but it is impressive. The collection was also far better than I had anticipated, partly because of the current exhibit of paintings on loan from the New Orleans Museum of Art. These included a large number of French painters (naturally) including Monet and Picasso, but also including period paintings of Louis XIV, Marie Antoinette and many others.

There were also Warhols, Rodin’s The Thinker (above), art and artifacts from the Stanford family, and much more. We really, really enjoyed our visit. Carrie and I could have spent a couple of more hours there, but Allison was less entranced by things like intricate brushwork and magnificent renderings of alpenglow.

Admission is free, as is campus parking on weekends, so I highly recommend a visit if it sounds interesting to you.

After the museum, we made a short quarter-mile walk north to a puzzle final, close to the Stanford mausoleum. I’d actually been within a few hundred feet of it before, but hadn’t been aware of its existence until I checked the puzzle location in Google Earth. It’s hardly surprising that Leland Stanford had this grandiose structure, complete with marble guardian sphinxes, built to memorialize himself.

That concluded our afternoon at Stanford, which was a wonderful family outing. I’ll post a few more pictures from the trip in another post.

Sometime after we returned home, I fired up my computer and soon discovered that one of our popular local geocachers, Bud Gawlik (“50sumtin”) had passed away at home the previous day, apparently from a heart attack.

……..

Bud was an exceptionally nice guy, one of those people that seemed to somehow always have a positive spin on things. He was a very active part of the local geocaching community, and he did a lot of geocaching, both in terms of finding and placing caches. I’d talked with him at quite a few events, exchanged many emails with him, and run into him while out caching on three occasions. I was always happy to see Bud. His sudden death hit the community, and me, pretty hard.

There’s a long memorial thread on the GBA forums devoted to Bud, so I won’t try to rehash all of my feelings and remembrances here. Bud will be greatly missed by many people, and my heart goes out to his family. Bon voyage, Bud! It hurt to lose you, man.