Main Street

Docs team up for weekend endurance feats

By Mary Ann Cook

ENDURANCE CONTEST: As if their work weren't grueling enough, four local doctors have banded together and now compete as a team in endurance contests. They are Dick Coughlin, colo-rectal surgeon; Roger Hyashi, vascular surgeon; Jeff McClanahan, family practitioner; and Kevin Stuart, gastroenterologist.

They've named their team Anaerobia and have recently completed a four-day, 275-mile race that started at Lake Tahoe and finished at the Golden Gate Bridge. The marathon consisted of trail running, mountain biking, road biking and kayaking.

Two sports were combined each day and each team member had to complete a leg in each sport. This inaugural event was called Race Across California Enviro. Coughlin lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains; McClanahan and Hyashi live in downtown Los Gatos; and Stuart lives in Gilroy.

JOHNSON KITES FLY AT FESTIVAL: Los Gatan Dolly Johnson is one of the artists whose work will be shown in the Palo Alto Festival of the Arts on Aug. 21 and 22. Johnson is a mixed-media artist whose most recent work is designing kites. She likes creating abstracts that people can move into.

Her abstract paintings often evoke a sense of soaring, and that led her to make kites using the same techniques. She works with a combination of watercolor, airbrush, colored pencil and pastel. Her work is displayed in office buildings as well as homes.

Flying her kites in flocks--that is, hanging different-sized kites in groupings, creates a perspective of distance. Her kites range from 54 by 37 inches to smaller kitelets of 13 by 9. "Kites make people smile," she says. The festival runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto.

SPECIAL TRIP: Some people tell mother-in-law jokes, and some people take their mothers-in-law on fabulous overseas trips. In the latter group are Jeanne and Ron Panos, who took their mothers (and mothers-in-law) on an event-filled two-week trip to France.

The mothers are Maxine Volstorff of Los Gatos and Lora Panos of Fremont. One week was devoted to the sights and wonders of Paris, and one week was spent in Normandy and the Loire Valley. Chartres Cathedral, Monet's Giverny, Mont-Saint-Michel, Versailles, chateaux--sounds like they hit all the high spots.

Volstorff hadn't been to France since the 1960s and reports that the French seem much friendlier these days and more tolerant of visitors. The food was delicious and women's hair is cut very short, almost too mannish. Flowers and hanging baskets are everywhere, plus acres of sunflowers--all memorable highlights for Mrs. V.

DIDJA KNOW? That the Galliard Recorder Group is based in Los Gatos and is the modern-day equivalent of a Renaissance era band? The 11 members have played together for more than 15 years, meeting weekly to play music ranging from early Renaissance to modern pop tunes, arranged especially for recorders.

A recorder is basically a long whistle made of wood, or, these days, plastic. It possesses finger holes and its musical range is from low bass to high, high soprano. Two members of the local troupe are Norm Crane and his wife Joanne, both of whom play alto.

The Galliard Group will be featured at the library on Oct. 15, part of the Friday night series sponsored by Friends of the Los Gatos Library. The group's name comes from a Renaissance dance, the galliard, and inspired an adjective meaning lively.

'QUAKED HOUSES WANTED: The Los Gatos Museum Association is seeking houses for its Historic Homes Tour that suffered damage in the Loma Prieta earthquake and have since been repaired or rebuilt. The tour has been scheduled for Oct. 16 and 17, and the association is asking for help in finding five such homes.

The tour will coincide with the exhibit planned for the Forbes Mill Museum at that time and is titled "Loma Prieta: Ten Years Later." The association relies on this popular home tour as one of its mainstays in keeping the Forbes and Tait museums running.

SHE'S A GARDNER TOO: In a recent story about the Gardner offspring, son Darren and daughter Alexis and their community service work overseas, one local relative was not mentioned. She's Janet Gardner, their grandmother, who lives at the Meadows.

LIONS SPEAKER: Jack Medina will be the speaker at the Aug. 11 Lions Club meeting at Los Gatos Lodge. He'll tell how to lose fat, not weight, in a talk titled "Fact and Fantasy in Nutrition and Exercise."

AUTHOR SERIES: The Kiwanians are featuring authors as speakers in an offering they call their author series. The meetings are held on the second Tuesday of the month at 6 p.m., a supplement to their noon meetings and a nod to those Kiwanians who can't attend at lunchtime.

The next two evening speakers are Alastair Dallas, author of Los Gatos Observed, on Aug. 10 and Ira Spector, author of Last Chance, on Sept. 14. Los Gatos Observed is full of photographs and offers self-guided tours of sections of town. The focus is on architecture, with a soupçon of history. Spector's book is fiction and concerns an entrepreneur who thinks he can solve the homeless problem.

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