My accomplished friend and American roadside architecture expert Agilitynut (yes that's her real name) had occasion to look at this web site and said, "I'm happy to see that you used the Long Holiday Motel's Roto-Sphere as your Motels section icon. I did send you the link to the Milks' YouTube old neon signs footage, right?"

And I said, ".....uh whut?"

The reason I put Long's Holiday Motel here is that I made reservations and stayed next door in the same beautiful wooded hollow, at the Island Resort, resolving a seven-year-old mental bookmark from a previous trip through Gunnison, and thereby clearing my head if only for a moment.

There was a far better reason, namely the coolest single thing I've seen in the last twelve calendar months, but I had no idea that the spiky Sputnik ball on the top of the Long Holiday Motel sign once did THIS incredible trick:

Roto-Sphere Video (1 of 2)

Go ahead, click on it. Hypnotize yourself.

It should have been obvious to me from the mechanical workings on the ball but the Roto-Sphere was crafted, by Warren Milks, to revolve and rotate two spiked hemispheres in opposite directions, producing a mind-blowing visual effect, a fascinating bit of pop culture history, and maybe the ultimate in eye-catching architecture.

Agilitynut says:

"Warren Milks is the guy that created the Roto-Sphere signs. Here's my page:
http://www.agilitynut.com/sca/roto.html

The map that I created::
http://www.agilitynut.com/07/10/trips.PDF

the two videos:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Leuut7nITdI
http://youtube.com/watch?v=3L6-zyxxFl0

Also, my Roto-Sphere set at Flickr which has more photos of Milks, the brochure & stuff:
http://flickr.com/photos/agilitynut/sets/72157603211349087/"

So, what a coincidence. Or almost a coincidence. As much of a coincidence that Agilitynut and I independently named our dogs Sputnik, also the nickname of the Roto-Sphere.