Sad but true: our Lone Male Excavator has left us for more exotic locales (grad school in plant and soil sciences on OAHU) and we miss him already. Ryan has been a careful and conscientious excavator, a funny dude, a good friend, and last but not least, an incredibly snazzy dresser (plaid + camo = AWESOME).
Yes, we will miss his hard work, his dedication to replacing shoring boards in the heat of summer, and his enviable ability to reach things on tall shelves, but we will also miss his encyclopedic knowledge of all things Star Wars, his willingness to talk in funny voices for our amusement, and perhaps most of all...
his unparalleled ability to re-purpose old broken office furniture during his lunch break. The above photo may appear to be an ordinary office chair, but look closer! It is actually an office chair attached to another chair because it broke off its original base. The wooden legs of the base chair have been careful sawed at an angle for maximum comfort.
And what became of the base of the chair, you ask? BEHOLD:
This is quite possibly my favorite piece of furniture ever. It's an end table! On WHEELS! This handcrafted beauty is made of another chair (with the back sawed off) screwed onto the base of the broken office chair, with a piece of laminate for a top. And it's the perfect height for chips and salsa!
Finally, Ryan's coup de grace:
A genuinely well-made desk for volunteer Christina, made out of the side of box 10B (I think it's 10B).
In conclusion: Ryan is awesome! We totally miss him! He is funny and us taught about plants and how to sharpen tools and such! However, on the bright side: we now have a couch to sleep on when we go to Oahu...
Godspeed, Ryan, and may the force be with you.
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5 comments:
Off-topic (I miss the Lone Male Excavator, too), but did Coturnix (Bora Zivkovic) from A Blog Around the Clock ever get in touch with you? He was offering to act as a go-between for some Serbian excavators who had found a European mammoth embedded in sand and needed advice on how to proceed with it. I left a comment a few days ago that you guys had collectively about a century's worth of experience dealing with Pleistocene fossils in an ephemeral matrix, but there was no followup.
No, he never got in touch with us, but I'm sure our lab folks (specifically Trevor Valle, tvalle@tarpits.org) would have some advice for him...
It always sucks to see someone lie that go. I only met him once, but he seemed like such a great guy.
I love Ryan and I don't even know him!! Love your blog too.
You left out the part where that little chip and salsa table was made well before, and who helped Ryan. :-P /glory-hounding
Farewell to Ryan, the last of a dying breed! Wait...what did I just say?
Spencer
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