Ithaca, NY

Last week I visited my friends Melba and Hod at Cornell University. Ithaca is so beautiful!



People told me how pretty the gorges are, but I thought they were in state parks, cordoned off from the rest of the town. Instead, we walked over a number of gorges from Melba & Hod's house to Cornell campus.



The architecture of the campus is pretty too.



This is on the Cornell campus!

A requirement for graduation is to pass a swim test. My young friend Josh said this is to safeguard students who like to gorge-dive. But later I learned that MIT also has the swim requirement, and they have no gorges.



Treman State Park. This reminds me of "Lord of the Rings" when Frodo hides from the Nazgul.



Apparently one of the drawbacks of Ithaca is that the winter lasts for a long time. Otherwise it would be too perfect.



Melba and her large poodle.

We walked the dogs every day. It was my first time walking a dog. At first, it was hard to know how much leeway to give on the leash. I didn't want to yank the dog around, but I also needed to keep it out of traffic. After I figured out the right balance, I found dog-walking to be surprisingly fulfilling.



Me with Melba's little dog. It was very quiet, and also liked having its belly rubbed. It was warm, and liked to cuddle, and didn't wiggle around very much. If I were designing a dog, I would create the same features.