I have occasionally mentioned our Russian friend Igor here, former street workout dude turned physicist, on a one-year assignment at the nearby Oak Ridge National Laboratories and happy to spend evenings with us at the gymnastics center. He’s just gone home, the year being up. Which is probably just as well, because the US Department of Energy has decided to ban all Russian scientists from DoE laboratories and won’t be sending any of its own scientists to Russian institutions. So he would probably have been ‘invited’ to leave the country. All thanks to Putin’s ‘anschluss’ of Crimea and the troubles he is fomenting in Eastern Ukraine.

From a US perspective, Russia has oscillated between being ‘the evil empire’ and an awkward ‘friend’. In Europe, and particularly UK, the general feeling is that Russia’s actions are outrageous and dangerous. And some Ukrainian academics that my dad knows, working in a UK university, are in tears half the time about what is happening to their country.

Wouldn’t it be good if we could all just focus on fitness and wellbeing, rather than on land grabs and killing each other?

So, good luck, Igor, in whatever you do next back in your homeland. One day we may meet again, although I doubt we shall ever want to go to Russia.

Maybe we’ll just focus on the fitness bit now.

Meet the gang!

OK, let’s move indoors now, first putting the semi-derelict to better use…

…and then moving a little up-market:

Good work there! And after the work – time to have fun!…

Oh, how I wish Tennessee had a beach… but the river will have to do…

…we can practice our acrobatics there, too…

…or you can have fun camping with your mates…

But all this has drifted away from Igor and the street workout guys – and (happily) from President Putin. There are less depressing, more gay, sporty, adventurous things to read about:

 …best read after you’ve shucked the shirt and kicked your shoes off – at least!

One thing we can be sure of. Whatever Igor is doing now back in Russia, he’ll be keeping up his fitness…

Doesn’t that expression have a ‘did I do alright?’-ness about it?

Let’s all hope for a peaceful solution to the world’s ills… however you choose to do that.

It seems strange to me that a God would let all these people die in stupid wars. Only stupid people would do that.