Hey, nice abs!

There's nothing like a trip to the northwest in August. It's still green here and the weather is nice (knock on wood) though Mt. Hood is still not visible today for our hike. We rode our bikes around the city yesterday on a little adventure. We had a little lunch down by the river and in general just chilled out. The scenery was great and the people watching was just as great. It was amazing how many Portlanders ride their bikes around.

After dragging our out-of-shapes butts back to Aunt Joy's house, we met up with Uncle Ralph to go to BodyWorlds III, the exhibit at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. Being a squeamish type about blood and guts, I wondered how I would enjoy the "plastinated" bodies in all their muscle-y glory. But it was actually amazing. We saw organs, muscles, tendons, vessels, aortas, femoral arteries, etc. Most of the bodies were displayed in some artistic way, like The Archer.

Interestingly, they left the outside view of the penises, testes (they are after all supported by a little muscle) and the vajayjays and nipples. We saw brains, hearts, livers, kidneys, spleens, intestines, stomachs, appendix (they are tiny!), and everything else. We also saw healthy lungs vs. smoker lungs (all of you smokers, stop now!!).

The "plastination" technique was developed by Dr. Gunther von Hagens. People donate their bodies to be plastinized (there are 6,000 currently on the list). They put plastic polymers in all of the cells and then the bodies are posed in certain dynamic positions and then cured (i.e. baked) in those positions. This provides a great opportunity for people to learn about the body and appreciate the complexity of the body's movements and functions. Some of the bodies that are not posed are sliced into 1/2 inch cross sections so that you can view a person's entire torso in slices--which gives you an interesting viewpoint on how all your body parts work together.