Crazy Uncle Greg

On this trip, Ian also got to meet the other of the missing relatives, Crazy Uncle Greg. Greg made a long trip from Oregon to Binghamton to see our grandmother. Greg is not actually crazy, but at the moment he is living a very alternative lifestyle. He lives in a tent in the Oregon rainforest, where he is an apprentice at the Cob Cottage company. He is learning to build cob houses -- these have nothing to do with corn cobs, but rather are hand-sculpted from a mixture of clay, sand, etc. You can see a photo of one
here.

Greg arrived in Oregon by taking a train from NY to North Dakota, and then riding his bicycle from there to Coquille, Oregon. To make the trip back to NY last week, he rode his bike from Coquille to Eugene to catch a plane. This was a ride of 137 miles in 11 hours on a very hot day. Greg describes it as "the hardest thing I ever did". Then he took a plane from Eugene to Las Vegas, then to Washington, then to NYC. From JFK, he took a bus to the subway, the subway to the bus station, and a bus to Binghamton. Then he walked from the bus station to Grandma's house (yes, we would have given him a ride, but he refused). So it was a tired Uncle Greg that arrived to meet Ian, but he found enough energy to perform his "uncle duties".

Here he is getting to know Ian on his own level:



Changing and dressing him:



Feeding him (we've started giving him a bottle of expressed milk once a day so he'll have bottle skills when we need them):


And helping to keep him calm: