Travelblog

Heron Island

2005-03-27T10:47:00.000Z

“Heron Island, Heron Island, this is the dive boat, everything’s gone horribly wrong.” I heard that twice a day as part of our dive briefing. Jason, a divemaster we had several times, had a way of reciting his safety briefing as if he had said it a thousand times. Every time it would have the exact same intonation and speed, with matching lackidasically rendered frantic arm wave at the “horribly wrong”. Since we are in Australia it was all rendered in a cute aussie accent, one of several varieties we encountered. As it turns out, Jason had done the dive briefing at least hundreds of times. When I asked he said he had worked at Heron Island for a year before moving on to several months with a liveabord crew and then returning to Heron where he was into his third week.

I dutifully listen to the dive briefings and repeat to myself “channel 99” and watch so I know where the grey button is, but after the third or fourth time I find myself trying to imagine a situation where I would actually apply that knowledge. The scene that immediately flashes to mind is very Hollywood: we’ve lost track of other divers but it’s time to come up and so we do. We spot the boat and swim over. As I climb back in there’s an eerie silence… no one is aboard. In my mind it’s a a very movie silence where there’s a sudden stillness in the entire soundtrack as opposed to the wave -sloshing, water slapping wind-blowing reality. Yes, in that situation I would take off my gear and cautiously make my way to the radio. I imagine myself raising the handmike and pressing the grey button and broadcasting into the stillness without really expecting a reply. After all, in diving, two people are left dry on the boat at all times – the captain and a spotter. To surface to an empty boat would be truly the stuff of film. More realistically would be some sort of disaster that required the full attention of the crew. I imagine Jen, our spotter of the dive, heroically grappling with some diver in full gear (ill? Dying?) and the captain rushing to help her. She looks directly at me, a gawking bystander, and barks this marine equivelant of “You, dial 911!”. I suppose having heard it several times before would help me perform appropriately in such an emergency.

However our diving off Heron Island was completely devoid of emergencies and we had 9 tanks of the most amazing coral we've ever seen. Tons of little schools of little fishes, I couldn't help reflecting that it was just like a fishtank, just like a movie. I want to landscape my underwater backyard to match some of the dive sites we saw. Although I've seen little goby fish hovering in front of holes in the sand, this was the first time I got to hover long enough to see a little shrimp pop out of the same hole, pushing sand in front of him. At the information center I learned this paring is very common - the shrimp uses the goby as lookout, and the goby shares the hole. Once I saw this I found it fascinating and on many later dives sought to see how many shrimp I could find. We also were introduced to the Woebegone Shark, a total snoozer for Aussie divers. When we first saw one I couldn't figure out what it was - the guide indicated shark and insisted when I gave him a skeptical look. We could only see the head and it is wide and flat with a weird fringy edge. It seemed like a flounder to me. Later we saw a whole shark hiding under a ship hull and then I could see that it was a shark, about 5 feet long, with two vertical fins on it's tail and the strange beard. The symbol for them, because of the beard, is to hold your knuckles to your chin and waggle your fingers.

Being on land was also amazing - Heron Island is a bird nesting refuge and there were birds everywhere. They supply earplugs in your room. The first day was overwhelming but we quickly got used to it. There are no Herons, actually, just Egrets. The largest populations while we were there were noddy terns and buff banded rails. We did get to experience mating shearwaters, or mutton birds, but it was the tail end of the season and I could imagine the peak being quite an experience. They make noise at night, and it was described as a cross between a cat screeching and a baby crying. I found that hard to imagine, but once we heard one we knew immediately what it was. I'd describe it more precicely as cat yowling - that noise cats make when they're posturing but before they've gotten out the claws, with variations that made me think of ghosts at halloween. It's definately an odd sound for birds. We were also blessed with turtle season - we saw a female drag herself up the beach and dig an egg laying pit. It was pretty dark but we saw her lurch into the trees, saw sand fly and then crept up behind and could vaguely see her lurching periodically. We thought she might be laying but we later went to a turtle briefing and concluded she was probably digging the egg laying chamber. We also got to see baby turtles scamper down the beach to the water. In the darkness, with their little legs rapidly flailing, they almost look like a swarm of bugs. If I didn't already know them to be cute I'd find them creepy.

We made some friends, we met a couple from Canberra who actually came and lived in Belltown for a year in '96 as an adventure. We also met a couple from Seattle, concidentally, who are also in Australia to see the Ironman. It turned out to be a couple we were destined to meet this week, our friend Peter's partner on his movie. Out of all Australia we ended up on the same afternoon dive and Jen noticed I was wearing a hat for a WA State triathlon and so sought us out between dives to say hi.

Heron Island gets two thumbs up. Later this week I'll update about our adventures in the Red Centre involving sink laundry, lizards and a track bug inadvertantly set free.

We're goin' down under, let the blogging begin!

2005-03-12T22:45:00.000Z

Housekeeping - if you're ready to get off this email train, drop me a line by Monday and I'll take you off.

For the rest of y'all it's 4 weeks of adventures down under! (March 14-April 11) Admittedly, this is a bit of a quick turnaround for another big trip. Conveniently, the international drivers permits I got us for the Gap Year are still valid. I did have to renew my passport properly as my Berlin replacement was only good for a short time. Bonus - this renewal was free! We also had to get visas for the first time in our travel adventures. Fortunately this was quickly and efficiently accomplished online.

The primary blame for this trip is Peter and Meredith - our mentors in sports travel. They were the instigators of the Tour de France trip, They were the reason we flew 20 hours from London to Hawaii to see the Ironman, and they are the reason we are headed now to Australia (instead of next year) to see the Australia Ironman! We couldn't resist the chance to travel with cool friends. However, we being the people of copious free time that we, are will be going for 4 weeks. For such a long flight (14 hours from LA to Sydney) I wanted nothing less. Because of scheduling we also get nothing more. Darrin just got back from the Game Developer conference so we're leaving Monday. We are only staying 4 weeks because we learned our lesson on basketball last summer by missing Seattle winning the WNBA championship. The Supersonics are having a really good year, so we're coming back in time for the playoffs.

We had initially planned to hop over to New Zealand for a week, but after meeting with a friend and hearing about all the cool stuff there is there, we realized a mere week would be an exercise in frustration. In fact, 4 weeks in Australia began to seem shorter and shorter the more we read about it. The question comes up again and again – how far to drive from Sydney to X? Sydney to Forster where the Ironman will be, how far from Sydney to Melbourne, what about the coastal route vs the inland route? How far away is Alice Springs with Uluru/Ayers Rock? The answer, again and again, is really far. Sydney to Melbourne can be like driving from Seattle to San Francisco (12 hours costal, 9 hours inland). Sydney to Cairns is like driving San Francisco to New York.

Finally I could stand it no longer: is the US *really* bigger than Australia? Darrin surfed up an answer. Australia is 2.95 million square miles. The United States is 3.5 million square miles. Ho ho, of course we’re bigger. But how are all these driving distances so crazy far? Because that includes Alaska. How many of us have driven (or will ever drive) to Alaska? Let’s get serious here. Ditching Alaska and Hawaii, the contiguous United States are only 2.85 million square miles – 3% smaller than Australia. So before you rent your Britz camper-van and pass up that multi-flight boomerang pass, chew on that.

On the schedule: scuba diving trip on the reef, a short hop out to the Red Centre of Alice Springs & Uluru (Ayers Rock), some time in Sydney (where I've got my eye on what looks like Australia's Puyallup Fair - the Royal Easter Show!), the Ironman and then a drive up to Brisbane (Sydney to Brisbane, about 1000 km). Wish us luck, we're heading South!

The US with new eyes

2004-11-24T14:07:00.000Z

We’ve been home for 4 days now. It’s been a little bit like Christmas re-discovering the things we own and left behind. Clothes, dishes, computer hardware. I can’t get over how enormous our dishwasher is though I remember when we moved in from a house I thought it was small. We also own a crazy amount of stuff. Lots of clothes, lots of kitchen gadgets and dishes, tons (and now many kilos more :-) of books. Trying to remember things is a little funny: which drawer has the socks, which floor my car is on, how to take the bus to swimming. So far in each situation I do remember, but I have to pause first for a minute to recover the memory, as if I’m re-loading from backup.

We disconnected the batteries of our cars to keep them from running down whilst away, as per the recommendation of my dealer and Darrin’s manual. Monday I went downstairs (after thinking a moment to remember which floor) and pulled off the car cover. I unlocked the door with the key, popped the hood and re-connected the battery. It started right up. I had to reprogram the clock and some radio stations and then I was able to drive away. Driving felt so natural I didn’t even think about it, but I did feel a pang pulling out of the garage that I was driving instead of walking out the front door to catch public transportation. I could have taken the bus, but it would have required 15 minutes of planning and schedule research and timing to catch a specific bus. On the way home I needed a snack, so my car and I popped into a drive through, as opposed to me on-foot being able to pop into a shop. The next day I resolved to take the bus, but didn’t check a schedule and at the stop realized that I could walk back home, get in the car, drive to where I needed to be and park before a bus would even show up to pick me up. Which I did because I was late.

So already I’m walking less, and already I’m eating more. We’ve eaten dinner out the last 4 nights and every time I feel I’ve over eaten. It starts sensibly enough – I go to the restaurant hungry. Lesson #1: only eat when you are hungry. I just stuck with water to drink because that’s all I’ve been having in Europe, maybe the rare diet coke and we had red wine in Italy. A friend at one dinner immediately asked “Aren’t you going to order iced tea?” That was a funny moment - suddenly remembering “oh yeah, I used to always get iced tea.” It was touching that she remembered and noticed. I haven’t had it in ages because you can’t get it in the UK. They jokingly call it “Thames Water” and consider it a perversion of proper tea which is itself passé. So I’ve picked that back up, but I realize it’s a little bit of sugar to start that I haven’t been having.

The truly pathological game begins when they set down the bread. Perhaps it’s that we haven’t been eating at fancy restaurants, but I realize that rarely was there bread or any kind of free pre-meal appetizer on our trip. I know I have dinner coming and the bread is just extra calories when you look at the whole. Nevertheless I’m hungry and it is a real tension to sit there hungry with appetizing food in front of me that I’m trying to ignore. By the time my oversized meal arrives instead of feeling the satisfaction of happy anticipation I feel deprived and I overeat. What I’m eating so far consistently has more cream, more cheese and heavier bread. The Brits have us beat on mayo and fries, but they’re also close behind us in obesity problems.

I’m not sure how I’m going to handle this going forward, I’m going to try to get more aggressive about only seeing half my dinner from the start and I’d like to ask for no bread but that’s more socially awkward. It now strikes me as ridiculously cruel to frame the bread situation as a self control issue. It’s natural to eat food when you’re hungry, and it’s probably natural to overeat when food is abundant because maybe it won’t always be. I think the best alternative is to just not eat out but cook at home, and thankfully I have the time and at least some of the motivation to do that. Note, however, at Day 4 getting to the grocery store is still slipping day-to-day on our to-do list. It was really nice in Europe to never cook at home and never feel like I was engaged in an epic battle to control my natural impulses. It is clear to me that the US cultural/social structure naturally guides one to poorer eating and exercise habits. Calling it a toxic food environment seems appropriate.

heading home

2004-11-17T23:03:00.000Z

We are scheduled to arrive on Saturday at 3:40 on BA 49. I estimate we'll have over 120 kilos of luggage with us, almost what Darrin and I weigh together :-) Andrew is planning to pick us up, and I've asked some friends to check with him on the luggage front, we may not fit! Books are the killer, especially those Dorling Kindersley travel guides we've come to love, they're just heavy. We don't really have plans Saturday evening, I 'spect we'll be home by 5:30. We'll probably eye the mail mountain, put it off and focus on staying awake till at least 9 pm.

It's incredibly hard to leave, I have managed to find a great running club and make some good friends. In thinking about what I'll miss most, in a crazy way it's the things I haven't seen yet. Just this week I discovered a fabulous moroccan tea place that I wish I could go to 10 more times. Just tried the Porchester Baths and would move on to checking out the Ironmonger Baths if I was still here. We only discovered the S & M (sausage & mash) cafe in October and it's a definate favorite. The easy travel, and definately the public transportation and the pedestrian society. I think we'll both come home more trim, from the increased walking and the smaller portion sizes at dinners. I'll miss all the languages and all the variations on English. Virgin Radio is giving away a trip to Australia and their tagline says something like "sometimes it seems like all the Australians are here, so we're going to take you There!"

We've only recently started getting comfortable with the train - we went to Brighton and Oxford last week, both places we could spend way more time. I never did make it to The Potteries to see moorcroft. There's definately fodder for future visits.

Favorite foods I'll miss: rough oat cakes, sausage & mash (much less greasy than I expected), plain chocolate hob nobs, thin crust pizza, nestle triple-berry shredded wheat and no-sugar-added Alpen. I'll miss calling "wild berry" "fruits of the forest".

Foods I look forward to: pho (never found it here!), crepes, non-sweet mexican. Pioneer Organics produce delivery. Sushi. I have found some good sushi here but not many chances to take advantage of it.

Christmas lights are already up here. On Regent Street they're beautiful. The search lights from Oxford Street that I can see from everywhere (literally, from home and from all points on my 11 mile run tonight) are less exciting, particularly since we were galvanized to go to the source and discover that all the stores had closed by 8 despite the lights. hmpf. I definately look forward to seeing all of you and relaxing for the holidays. See you soon!

What, me bitter?

2004-11-07T23:52:00.000Z

You don’t know bitter until you’ve seen a town that is still burning the Pope in effigy more than 400 years after the pro-catholic Guy Fawkes Gunpowder Plot of 1605. In the pre-bonfire parades they carry 17 burning crosses in remembrance of 17 protestant martyrs who were burned in the main street of this town, Lewes, in the 1550s. But, truth be told, there is very little bitterness in it. What lives on now is a town that knows how to have a great time playing with fire and is willing to keep up the fun parts of the tradition though the original fiery conflicts are now burned out.

Let’s get the Americans off on a good start with the name of the town: Lewes, which we’ll say correctly if we read “Lewis”. Next I’ll fill in a bit of history. The history I knew already was that of Guy Fawkes – leader of a group of men that plotted to blow up Parliament on its opening day in 1605 when the King would be present for the state opening. Guy was a Catholic, pining under the severe restrictions imposed on Catholics during Elizabeth I’s reign and disappointed that things were not significantly changed when King James I was crowned in 1603. It was still less than 100 years since the Anglican Church had broken away from the Catholic Church and things were far from settled. The plot was simple – over a period of weeks the co-conspirators built up a store of gunpowder in the basement of Parliament and were planning to light it on the day. Somehow word got out and they were arrested only the day prior. Over the next year they were tried, convicted and hung. The King encouraged celebrations of this escape and the saving of the government and thus Guy Fawkes Day was born. To this day on the opening of Parliament they conduct a ritual searching of the basement.

I specifically chose a Seattle return date after November 5th because I wanted to see what Guy Fawkes celebrations were like. I had read of effigy burning and charitable collections (A penny for the guy) in books, but is that really what happens? Not really. Guy Fawkes day seems very similar to the 4th of July – staged fireworks displays but often a bonfire to go with.

Lewes is a town in a larger area called Sussex which has a long tradition of having autumn bonfires. Their historical roots are even older than Guy Fawkes day. The Fletching Bonfire Society is the overarching organization and it links together Bonfire Societies from all over Sussex. One town or another hosts a bonfire every weekend in September, October and November. By their standards, The Big One is held on the 9th of October. Sounds like that would have been interesting, because the 5th in Lewes was quite a sight to see. I think part of what makes Lewes a big deal is that because it’s combined with Guy Fawkes Day, 60,000 people pack the town to watch! It’s just a little bit crazy.

How can I begin to describe it? For starters, 5 different bonfire societies hold celebrations in Lewes on the night. Several other bonfire societies come to march in their processions in support. For each host bonfire society, the evening begins around 5:30 pm and consists of two to three processions through the main streets of the town. A procession is basically a parade, with maybe a group of 10-15 people, then a music marching band of 10 or so, then several more groups of people. They march 3 across and it took each prosession probably 20-30 minutes to pass, so it’s a fair number. All are in fancy-dress or elaborate costumes and each society has a primary and secondary theme. Lewes Bourough had a Zulu theme and a Smuggler theme. One of the societies had a Native American theme, other themes included WW2 and Tudor dress. Finally, and most notably, every person in the procession who is not playing an instrument is carrying a flaming torch. Imagine a 2-foot wooden stick (much like those from campaign signs that are probably not yet cleaned up yet) with the end wrapped in something combustible which is then dipped in paraffin and dried. Most have one torch lit and are carrying an unlit spare.

Sprinkled amongst the groups of people in each procession were one or two effigies. Far from the lumpy straw dummies I’ve learned to imagine, these are actually elaborate fully-painted paper-mache likenesses. In past years George Bush has apparently been popular but we were not so lucky this time, the closeness of the election perhaps raised the hope he’d be irrelevant by the 5th. This year there were a couple Popes (tradition is very important) and then a few parking meters and a parking warden– a reference to a new parking scheme that was being implemented. There was also an incredibly elaborate one of a former head of the BBC riding a ram. These range from 4-10 feet long and maybe as tall as 8 feet. In addition to the effigies there are also one or two groups of 3-4 people dragging flaming barrels. These often looked like a medium-sized steel drum that has been split in half vertically and then each half turned into a cart – so it seemed more like a flaming pull-wagon. One impressive one was a steel cage in the shape of a large water barrel being rolled on its side. Inside was a flame-filled half-barrel mounted to the ends of the larger steel cage by bearings such that it always remained open-side up as the barrel cage rolled forward. There were chains similarly mounted on the outside of the ends and it was by these that two people (wearing big, heavy, fireproof gloves) led that flaming barrel forward.

From reading the website, preparing for these weekends is like a town preparing for the high school homecoming parade: there are regularly scheduled get-togethers to prepare torches in so-and-so’s garage, dip them in paraffin in so-and-so’s backyard, bundle them in packs of 5 for easy distribution – volunteers needed! Preparing 5000 torches for a single society is no small job! Not to mention the effigies. The costumes are judged ahead of time in fancy-dress competitions the weekend before. Programs are put together and jars prepared for charity collections.

Here’s an abbreviated example schedule for one society on the night of:

First Procession: 6:25 PM – assemble in street X and march to the War Memorial (at the center of town – every society does at least one procession past it and honors the society members lost to the various wars) in darkness, Band will play the Death March.

Second Procession: 6:45 pm – with torches lit march from War Memorial to point B

United Grand Procession: 7:40 PM – all societies march in one big procession with not just torches but set-pieces lit as well. These were things like burning versions of the societies initials, emblems or even entire words like “No Popery”. They’d be about 2 feet high and held on poles to a height of about 12 feet.

Forth Procession: Assemble at point C and re-torch. Then process through various streets with torches lit and ultimately end up at our society’s firesite.

Bonfire & Fireworks: about 9pm at the 5 different sites – burn effigies, light fireworks, have a huge bonfire.

Final Procession: 11 pm process again with lit torches back through town to some point and stop and say the traditional bonfire prayers. These vary somewhat amongst the societies but always start out: “Remember, remember, the Fifth of November, Gunpowder Treason and Plot; I see no reason why Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot. Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, ‘twas his intent to blow up the King and his Parliament; Three score barrels of powder below, Poor old England to overthrow; By God’s providence he was cach’d with a dark lantern and burning match.” At that point some of the societies continue with traditional sections wishing ill to the Pope.

By the end of the evening it’s well past midnight and people have been marching around in costume with flaming torches since 5:30! All the while crowds press in so we can truly feel the heat as the processions go by with their open flames. Sometimes a torch would prove to be not well made and the flame would begin to run down the handle. At that point the person would just drop it flaming on the street, and later folks would kick it aside – basically into the crowd, where it was up to us to stay back and let it burn out. Finally I should mention the topper that made the evening feel truly wild was that in every procession there would be people with ammo bags on their belt full of firecrackers which they would light and drop on the street. These were not wimpy firecrackers, often I could feel the percussion and found myself covering my ears. Many people had followed the advice of the tourist board to wear earplugs and I certainly wished I had a pair.

It was definitely great fun, and definitely something I couldn’t imagine seeing at home. We did get some good photos so check them out! N. Ireland and Edinburgh are now up as well.

election turnout

2004-11-04T23:27:00.000Z

Since the US press seems to be long on gossip and short on information these days, here are some actual facts about our election garnered from international press...

The Herald Tribune reported today that 120 million people cast ballots (114 million counted so far), or just under 60% of eligible voters. It's the highest percentage turnout since 1968. In 2000 turnout was 105.4 million or 54%.

Both Bush and Kerry's vote exceed the prior record of 54.4 million votes for Regan in 1984. Right now CNN reports Bush with 59,312,656 and Kerry with 55,780,416. Several papers are pushing the stat that Bush is the first to break 50% since his dad in '88 - without explaning that it's because there have been major third party candidates in the intervening elections.
(00-Nader (2.74%), 96-Perot (8%), 92-Perot (18%!)).

Internationally most commentators were setting up pre-election that it wouldn't matter who won, Iraq would still be a mess. Interestingly the Herald Tribune thinks France & Germany are making signals that they could consider a fresh start. Perhaps this is a validation of the lesson that Long Term Capital Management taught us when it set a record for hedge fund implosion - if you make a big enough mess, everyone else will have to save you. LTCM wasn't exactly pleased with the terms of its saving though. Let's hope Asia doesn't get any big opportunities as the #1-#4 purchasers of our growing debt (japan, china, taiwan, south korea). If GW really wants to "reach out", he can start with restoring the balanced budget amendment before his next round of tax cuts.

day in london

2004-10-23T13:14:00.000Z

I’ve been pretty good about blogging major travel, but I don’t talk much about the little things. An odd little thing occurred yesterday that calls for a blog with a glimpse into the life of Shaula & Darrin.

I recently gave notice on our flat, believe it or not there’s only a month left. An estate agent called yesterday morning and set an appointment to come get a peek that afternoon. She came by, took a look around and left. We continue typing busily away at our computers. I, typing up an excel schedule breaking down Bill & Justin’s pending visit into morning/noon/evening day-by-day and what we should try to do, cross-referencing with tour schedules on the web. Darrin programming, having taught himself yet another new programming language (the O’Reilly Python Cookbook rests on the end of the dining room table), his for-fun project replaced by the inspiration to re-write his spam filtering system. The inspiration was brought on by a hard-drive failure and complete system re-install. Being in the UK made the obligatory hardware upgrade awkward so he’s settling for a software upgrade instead.

Yes, the six-month experiment of a change of scenery seems to be winding down with the geeks having perhaps modified the mould, but not breaking it. The sketchbooks contain one sketch, the cross-stitch kits purchased after we got DSL in the flat remain unopened, however an animated gif of the cross-stitch bookmark I did BDSL (before DSL) is still pending. We still buy more books than we read (or than I really want to haul home, we’ll have to think about that). Shaula is still doing running & yoga, and slacking on yoga – Need to use up those 6 classes I have left! Darrin happens to now be riding the stairmaster at the gym. We drink more espresso perhaps, and love the European thin-crust pizzas.

Darrin got up for a snack a bit after the agent left and asked “Is that her standing outside the flat?” I looked and it was. Twenty minutes later she was still standing there. Was she meeting clients? Meeting other agents? Darrin saw her talking to other people. Another twenty minutes passed. Had her car been booted? Perhaps she was locked out of her car – it was a bit chilly for standing around. At the hour mark that answer seemed to be it, men were sliding wire down her car windows in an apparent attempt to force the lock. At the hour-and-a-half mark we heard a startlingly loud pounding noise and Darrin peeked out to see the men smash in her passenger window with her standing by. She got in, they made an attempt to clean up the glass and then she drove off. That seemed like an awfully dramatic solution to me, but who knows?

Pond Hopping - NC and Italy

2004-10-05T20:58:00.000Z

The 2nd week of September we flew to Washington DC to hook up with my family and spend a week at the beach in the Outer Banks, North Carolina. OBX to the hipster regulars. There was an OBX sticker on half the cars on I-95 as we drove down. My brother Chris rented a HUGE house with 4 “master” bedrooms – En Suites we call them over here. Plus 4 additional bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, a main kitchen/living room floor, a little TV lounge on the middle floor and then the basement had a pool table, another TV area and then a pool & hot tub out back. Massenas, are you taking notes? This is definitely the way to do it.

While we were there Hurricane Ivan made landfall in Florida and then worked its way up inland of us. Tornadoes blew out 3 houses in Chris & Tracy’s zip code the day before we returned, but in OBX we only experienced one rainy day and winds that were a little higher than usual. That meant that when Darrin, Chris, Tracy and Dennis (my Dad) went hang-gliding the company insisted on keeping them on tethers. So as they ran down the dune and took off two guys were running alongside each holding a tether to keep the hang-glider from flying away. Chris noted that they were able to basically fly Tracy like a kite. Darrin was very proud of having landed on his feet every time. I was proud of him too but the video taken by my step-dad Al revealed why – he pretty much kept his feet pointed at the ground while in the air. It was kind of cute actually, he looked like a little Egret deciding to choose a new fishing location. [DWM: that was only on my first flight!!!]

I stayed at the house for a little bonding time with my two nieces Kaylee and Rebecca. Kaylee is almost 3 and we built a sand castle together. Rebecca is just 1 and it took her pretty much the whole week to decide I was ok, but I think by the last day back at her home she had decided I didn’t bite. While in OBX we introduced the gang to geocaching, both the joy of the successful find and the frustration of the DNF (“Did Not Find”).

Darrin and I got to celebrate our 9th anniversary whilst in NC. We decided to take a wave runner tour and after some back and forth the shop got us lined up with the required 2nd couple. We did a tour once in the Florida Keys and decided it’s a lot more fun than just renting them to ride around. Basically some local guy who could ride a wave runner in his sleep takes off and you have to try and keep up. Bonus challenge is that he’s alone on his wave runner and can stand up, we’re a pair and can’t. It was a bit rough in the open so our guide ended up taking us into some fun maze-like swampy areas where we could roar around and try not to hit the other couple. All in all we had a great time and could hardly walk the next two days.

When we returned from the States we had two days to unpack, do laundry, repack and then head to Italy! At long last the much-beloved destination of about every American we spoke to. Darrin arranged the trip: travel day, 3 days in Rome, train to Cinque Terre, 2 days there, Train to Venice, 2 days there, return. Rome was amazing. I really liked the combination of urban density alternating with wide-open spaces. I love that European cities are almost universally 5 stories or shorter. It’s a very human scale.

Our hotel was right next to the Roman Forum and the Coliseum which Darrin had pegged as our first day itinerary. We wandered over and learned that in Italy you really won’t learn anything without a tour. This was true for most of our trip – nothing is labeled, there are no signs, most sites don’t have organized tours – it’s all done privately. D’oh! After some frustration we found a ticket booth and rented audio tours. While walking around we started overhearing a pretty good tour in English. We hovered nearby and before moving on the guy announced it was a free tour. All right! We hopped on and caught the last 20 minutes of it. At the end our hero, native Oregonian Evan, handed out brochures for their tour company: 3 Millennium Tours. They had a tour going from the Vatican the next day which was on our itinerary and we thought that was a strong possibility.

From the Forum we headed down to the Coliseum and discovered that between the two was where the action was. In a matter of minutes someone was roping us into an English language tour and we decided to bite. It was ok, the guy reeled it off like memorized patter but it was better than no tour. He wore a headset/microphone and then had a belt-pack speaker that broadcast so we could all hear. It was a little funky but several tour companies were using them. In Venice I saw a few tour groups where the guide had a headset and an electronic base, and then everyone in the group wore headsets and little boxes on lanyards that looked like mp3 players. Apparently the tour guide could speak softly into their microphone and then it was locally broadcast to the group. Double bonus: it eliminates hangers-on who didn’t pay and it allows the guides to give tours in churches where we are supposed to be quiet.

As part of our Coliseum tour we could take a free photo with the dudes dressed up as Roman soldiers out front. Normally 5 euros. The guide encouraged folks to step up and a gal next to us said “I’ll go!”. She had a camera similar to ours so I offered to take her photo and then asked her to take ours. While other folks were getting their photos taken I looked closely and realized we really did have the same camera – both Canon Rebels, but hers had been lighter. Turns out she had a film camera and ours is digital. After chatting for a minute I learned that she was from Tillamook. It was also her first visit to Rome and she was excited about it. The guide started to move off and I followed. She said bye. Turns out she wasn’t part of the group, just wandered on and then hopped up for the free photo!

After that full day we headed back to our hotel. I needed a snack and so we poked into a small establishment for a coffee. I tentatively ordered a “latte”. The guy looked at me strangely but when I nodded he dutifully got me a cup of cold milk. Ah yes, I forgot the “café”. I bought some cookies and had cookies and milk for a snack. In general it turns out that latte is not a big drink in Italy anyway – it’s mostly espresso and cappuccino. We ended up becoming cappuccino drinkers in Italy. They were all good. I also learned where the name comes from. While in a museum in Venice I was admiring a pastel portrait of a monk and noticed he was labeled a “cappuccino” which I thought was a bit odd. As it happened I brought Under a Tuscan Sun as my travel reading on this trip and a day later I read that the drink is actually nick-named after the cappuccin monks who traditionally wore brown robes and white hats. Fascinating!

That evening in Rome we wandered a bit and found ourselves at the famous Trevi Fountain. We could hear it before we could see it. I thought it was amazing, though I’m ashamed to say what it most makes me think of is Las Vegas. I guess I’ve had more exposure to Caesar’s Palace than Caesar’s hometown. It's a bit strange when the copy becomes the original.

The next day we did take the Vatican tour and it was good. The guide also gave us a great dinner recommendation and we discovered our hotel was right by an area in Rome called Trastevere – chock full of great restaurants and little shops. Our restaurant that evening offered us an English menu and we discovered that with Italian food we don’t recognize it in English! We ended up asking for an Italian menu to decode that “spaghetti with bacon/porkcheek tomatoe [sic] sauce” is one of my Seattle favorites: Spaghetti al Amatriciana. I did recognize “Spaghetti with bacon and egg sauce” as Spaghetti Carbonara. After getting an incredulous “Mamma mia!” when we passed on wine that first night we ended up getting a carafe of the house red the rest of the trip. After all, we’ve all heard that phrase about “When in Rome…” and that’s exactly where we were.

Two days in Cinque Terre was just right to hike the five towns and explore each one. We stayed in Monterosso at one end. It was a good choice – one of the larger towns, but more of a beach-town whereas Vernazza was more of a picturesque classic. We tried some geocaching but were largely unsuccessful. That put a bit of a damper on the trip so when we finally found one I jumped for joy! Too many of them were placed directly on the main busy path. The one off-path virtual cache we tried required cutting through an old war bunker. As we approached there were signs of habitation. Darrin was looking at the GPS and I hesitantly called out “hello?” at which point an unclothed young woman holding some fabric to her front leaned out, grabbed the door and pulled it firmly shut. So much for that cache, fortunately the cacher agreed to give it to us as a “found” when I sent him email. In Cinque Terre we also had our best pasta dish of the trip: a pesto lasagna that was nothing like any lasagna we’ve had. It seemed to basically be a fresh pasta sheet folded up with some fresh pesto in it and on top, then baked so the non-pesto bits became crispy. It was so good we went back the next night to have it again and the staff seemed to recognize our return as the compliment it was.

Venice was fun. I think what makes is special is not just the canals but the complete absence of cars. Pedestrian environments rock. Venice is for shoppers, I could not believe how much shopping there was though many shops had challengingly short hours. Darrin read in the guidebook that Venice is becoming a purely tourist city and I believe it. Every single restaurant had menus in four languages and the food was not as good as the rest of our trip. We asked at our hotel for help finding a proper wood-burning pizza restaurant and good thing we did because it turns out they’re banned! No fires allowed in Venice, for safety. The only wood-burning pizza ovens are out on Murano, along with the glass factories. We did manage a half-day Murano visit to survey the offerings and Darrin bought me a birthday necklace. The guy we bought it from spoke French and so we learned that he actually made it, and that department stores sell his things for twice the price. He had two adorable twin sons who ran in eating kinder-eggs while we were there. So I got my fix: a bargain, a lovely necklace and buying direct from an artisan I actually got to talk to a little bit.

When we visited St Marks square there were little vendors selling pigeon food. Of course there are all kinds of famous Hollywood shots of people scaring up clouds of pigeons, but I’d never heard you could feed them. I’m surprised I haven’t heard, given how many of you have been here, because then I might have been prepared for turning away from the food vendor, little bag in hand, and being ATTACKED! No sooner did I step away from the man than a small cloud of pigeons flew up on to my shoulders, arms and head. Ack! Startled, I waved them away – their little claws are sharp! Darrin also waved them away, his concern being to check me for poo. I quickly realized that they can recognize the food bag and thought to hide it under my purse. Once it was out of sight the pigeons regarded me suspiciously but stayed on the ground. Now prepared for what was to happen, I pulled out the bag and poured some of the corn into my hands and held them out away from me. In seconds I was holding a little bouquet of birds. I’ve never really held a bird before, their little bodies were warm and soft in contrast to their cool feet and tiny claws. That handful gone I shook them free and Darrin had a turn. We spent the next 10 minutes experimenting with how to get the most interesting clump of pigeons for a photo. All on one bag – it was definitely a euro worth of entertainment.

Home again to London and our cosy deathtrap. I’m exaggerating, but only a bit. We were randomly selected to have our water tested as part of a routine Thames Water survey. A week later they were back for a second test. “They found something” I said to Darrin. He chatted up the man and discovered they wanted a more in-depth look at our lead levels. Great. We’ve only got 6 weeks left and I’ve switched us to bottled water for the remainder. Our next bit of death-defying excitement was walking into the bathroom to see that the halogen light fixture directly over the shower stream had fallen out of the ceiling and dangled down about 4 feet to a point that puts it directly into the water path. Darrin’s pretty sure that if it had happened while we were showering it would have completed a circuit with one of us in it. He stuffed the cable back in the ceiling and hooked it on other things to shorten it and then bent part of the fixture before pushing it back in the ceiling. It worked, when it fell out again this morning while we were actually showering it only hung down an inch, safely above the shower. We need to get out the glue before our next guest arrives tomorrow. Not to scare our remaining visitors, it’s quite a charming flat and we do have heat and hot water, but I’m glad we’re only here for six months.

Photos will be a bit delayed, Darrin’s laptop is dying. He’s managed to copy off most of the critical things, including photos, to an external drive he bought. He’s out of commission computer-wise for the next few days at least.

London and Germany in August

2004-09-09T16:38:00.000Z

Had to resort to a bulk-resize application to do a catch-up on photos. Still need to do Edinburgh & Ireland. You may notice a slight difference in quality, or you may not! I used something recommended by another traveling friend called irfanview, at irfanview.com. It’s even shareware! So now posted the British 10K, the Taylors visit and our visit to Berlin. If you have any interest in the photos by all means email me, the password is mostly to keep them from becoming part of Google’s internet database.

At the beginning of August we were honored by a visit from our friends the Taylors: Mark, Liza and Krista. Although the original plan was for them to stay in hotel, the nearby hotel I recommended (Kensington Close) turned out to have hotel rooms smaller than any European legend. Mark compared his unfavorably to a cruise ship cabin and we had to agree. So they moved in with us and we had a great week rushing hither and thither in the city to catch some sights.

A whirlwind summary will best approximate the feel of the week: Sunday we played in the Diana Playground in Kensington Park (their 5-year-old daughter Krista being our pass to get in). Monday we moved them in and headed off to see the two Tate Museums, taking the boat in between. Tuesday we introduced the Taylors to geocaching at the British Library and then spend the morning there seeing amazing ancient documents and freezing in the air conditioning, something I would greatly wish for later in Berlin. Then headed to the British Museum to see Mummies. We missed a major downpour while we tubed home and then got off just before many lines were closed due to flooding. Magic! Wednesday we lucked into a beautiful clear morning for an early ride (calling it “flight” seems too silly) on the London Eye, then we split between the Aquarium where Krista, Mark and I touched stingrays and made a badge vs. the Dali Musuem where Darrin and Liza got caught up in the displays. Then on to Embankment for picnic lunch and free music. Afternoon we split up on gender – the guys went book shopping on Charing Cross and we gals bought some chocolates at Fortnum and Mason and saw the Tamara de Lempika exhibit. Thursday we were dazzled at Buckingham Place (open through September while the Queen vacations in Scotland) followed by a fancy lunch out in St James, then split up so Shaula & Liza could do some shopping. We hooked back up at the V&A but too close to closing to see much. Then Friday was off to Germany! Phew!

It was interesting touring with a 5-year old. It made me realize just how much walking it takes to get around in London. Even if you decide to tube and bus as much as possible, it still requires a couple miles of walking to get around. Our test subject was pretty good about it, but it definitely maxed her out. The fun side was getting the kids packets that every museum was great about having (though often they were a bit old for her, 7-12 seems more the target age). It was an excuse to sit on the floor in front of an interesting painting and rest my own tired feet while she drew, or take the sheaf of paper and fan up and down with all my might to make the Calder mobile at the Tate Modern move. (My first attempt of just blowing in its direction was futile.) I had actually been tempted to do that the first time I saw it because it’s in this completely air-movement-free room. Hello, it’s a MOBILE! Working to engage a 5-year-old was the perfect alibi to actually do it!

General Germany observations:

German bathrooms have paper towels. If you’re not shocked then perhaps it’s more of an observation that UK bathrooms rarely do, preferring to rely on hand-dryers or these creepy cloth towel-rolls instead. In terms of low roasted-nut availability and high candy availability, Germany is about the same as the UK particularly with Gummy Bears! Gummy everything, really. Made by Haribo, which I now recall hearing Americans touting as being the only REAL gummy bear brand. I agree that they are notably better than all others I’ve encountered. Our hotel in Berlin left tiny packages of gummy bears on our pillows when we checked in. The gummy bears themselves were also smaller than normal. It was so adorable I was quite sorry we didn’t get it every night even though we never ate our 2nd pack. I did not see gummy vegetables, however, and perhaps that’s because of a lack of non-gummy models to study. Meat, potatoes and noodles were available in abundance and quite fantastic when we were spoiled by the home cooking of the Taylor relatives, but vegetables were rather scarce outside of the occasional salad.

And although this may be premature, I am proud to award Germany the prize of Most Refined Tea-Drinking Nation In Europe. Not the UK, not France, not Norway. It’s Germany where both our hotels had samovars of hot water and served loose-leaf tea that actually lists the grades on the tins! My prior experience with graded tea was reading about it on the web and maybe ordering a pouch or two. Let’s study an example: my Ka De Wa souvenir purchase was such a tin. Ronnefeldt Darjeeling Jungpana FTGFOP Second Flush. I will now translate for the bag-bound masses: Fancy Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe. Not all black teas will have such a complicated grade, Darjeelings are the most complicated. Particularly the “second flush” designation you will only see with Darjeeling which means it was picked in the second growth cycle of the growing year. There are 5-8 levels of tea grades and most bag tea is made from fannings, which are at the bottom. In the US you may have seen tea labeled “Orange Pekoe”. It’s not a flavor, but a grade. So that’s saying it’s not complete crap tea, but it ain’t Fancy Tippy Golden Flowery either. I’ll spare your inboxes the rest of the details, there’s a good description of teagrading here: http://www.lamyx.com/grades.html.

It’s hard to know what to say about Berlin. Foremost, it was HOT. Around 90 F most of the time we were there. It also had kind of an empty feel. We stayed in the former East Berlin and spent much time traversing the area that not so long ago was the ‘death-strip’. Despite the flurry of construction it still had an eerily spacious feel. The Brandenburg Gate is now surrounded once again by buildings, but I was hard pressed to feel any activity around us other than tourism. Darrin kept asking “where are the people who live here?” I don’t know how much of that was the legendary August decamping of the locals to parts with more hospitable weather and how much that reflects the city’s status as a promise yet-unfulfilled. I’m inclined toward the latter because I didn’t really see the sort of developed business that would support these possibly away citizens, and also because I noticed that the biggest thing people talk about when they talk about Berlin is architecture.

Everyone is an architecture critic. A friend who used to live there gave me a New Yorker article about the architecture. Our walking tour of Berlin talked a great deal about the architecture. It’s certainly interesting. In a few square kilometers you can see buildings built by Prussians, buildings built by Nazis, buildings built by the Soviets and new buildings built or restored just in the last decade since the fall of the wall. Architecture does seem to have loomed large in the city’s history as well. There are a few areas that seem somewhat Paris-like and I recall hearing references to a Berlin-Paris rivalry in history. During the Soviet era there was some amount of competitive construction on either side of the wall: The Soviets built the Fernsehturm, a 368 meter TV Tower that is frankly a bit tacky. In the west publisher Axel Springer built the Axel-Springer tower right next to the wall. The Soviets responded by building tower blocks aimed at obstructing it’s view to the east. During the Prussian era there was apparently some competitive archeology expeditioning, because some of the German museums have a collection of Egyptian and Greek antiquities that rival those in the British collections.

We went to a number of museums which were all amazing. The Pergamon museum gives the British Museum a race for the nickname “Pillage Museum”. There were entire facades of buildings reconstructed indoors. They had a Greek temple. They had another Greek building. They had the Ishtar Gate of Babylon which had been covered in blue ceramic tiles and was just amazing. Just as how I tend to think of WW2 in black and white, ancient history seems all white and clay brown. This brilliant cobalt blue was astonishing. Most fascinating to me in this museum and the Egyptian museum we went to were the objects that blended cultures. I’ve learned about Egyptian art and Greek/Roman art, but here were objects that showed the blending of cultures: Egyptian mummies with portrait-style painted face plates and masks instead of stylized faces. My favorite is a postcard I purchased at the Pergamon and have on our fridge. It shows two carved wooden panels. One has Jesus, with the apostles Peter and Paul. Jesus is holding a bible and has the recognizable long hair and beard, but he’s sitting like Buddha, has a Buddha belly and his free hand is making the teaching mudra which is very common in portraits and statues of Buddah. The way the three of them are grouped is very buddah-like. The other Panel is Mary with two attendants, again very buddah-like in her face and positioning. In her lap is the baby Jesus, one hand holding a bible, one hand with the teaching mudra. It’s quite fascinating, I’ll try to scan it and post it to our photo site.

We did do some geocaching whilst in Stuttgart. We owe serious thanks to Mark’s cousin Niels for this. Our PDA had been having problems and we ended up wiping its memory, leaving us unable to communicate to our Bluetooth GPS. This was not the first time we’d had such problems and we resolved to get a proper, low-end hand-held GPS unit. Niels escorted us to a local electronics store and generously translated between us and the clerk while we compared models. For once we were able to appreciate the fact that modern electronics just ship manuals with all languages in them because we were sure to get English. Chose the minimum model for the job, hit the cash register and discovered… Germans don’t take Visa! Or MC or Amex. They only take some German-network card. Between the two of us we emptied our wallets and just made it, but apparently this happens all the time. Shaula got hit again later when she found a sleeping teapot (hurray! Something I only know of being made in Germany.) and chatted with some expat Britons who decried the practice saying they had to load up on cash to go school clothes shopping in Berlin.

When we successfully used the new GPS to find a cache Mark made the amusing comment that he felt like we were a group of x-men: each with our own talent. Mine was map, Darrin’s was the GPS and Mark’s job was German translation. Thanks to Mark we were able to thoughfully write our log note in English and German, out of respect for the locals. With assistance again from his cousin we also did our online log dual-language.

Finally, Germany was our first country where we didn’t speak the language and English was not a 2nd language of the country. We got by well enough once on our own but discovered the key words we seem to need are: hello, one, two, this, that, please, thank you, yes/no, still water and “Do you have an English Menu?” Knowing weekdays helped me figure out that museums were open late on Thursday evenings (got in an extra museum that day!) and fortunately in Berlin more than enough folks had some English to help us along. We’re feeling bolder now, ready to take on Italy at the end of September!

Since Germany we’ve been to Edinburgh and Ireland which I’ll write a bit about later. We’re off to the beach in North Carolina at the end of this week. I’m still running (thank you sponsors for saving me from a fall-off!), I’m aiming to ramp up to 20 miles/week and seeing if I can hold that till the end of October, at which point I’ll consider the Seattle Half Marathon for the end of November. I have a 10K in Hyde Park on October 3rd. This week I took a 2-day economics class at the London School of Economics (fun!). We also passed a major milestone: I bought our return ticket: we fly back on Saturday, November 20th.

Global Thoughts & How I Learned to Love the Consulate

2004-08-18T22:11:00.000Z

So while Rick Steves has done much to build the romance of traveling around with just a backpack and a railpass, there’s much to be said for having a home base. It introduces a different set of needs and issues though, so for those who have the opportunity to follow in our footsteps, here’s my guide.
1) the best advice we got before we came: bring paper. Bank Statements and utility bills are great. Ideally at least 3 months worth. Britain is not the digi-land that we live in. Even now that we have a bank account, it’s helpful to go back to the branch where we opened it to get good service and we definitely want to bring our pre-printed deposit slips when we go to transfer cash in.
2) Scissors are the most important household tool I own. I packed a little mini-office of scissors, stapler, tape, paperclips, post-its and rubber bands. That was very helpful. Especially when it comes to renting a flat, signing up for utilities etc. You’ll need to do office-y things. Having the basics handy w/o having to run out and stock a home office from scratch is a must.
3) Forget pack light. But still pack creatively because airlines have bag weight limits and bag limits. We brought two big bags each, and then hired a car to meet us at the airport. I tried to get away with just 4 pairs of shoes, but three seasons and 6 months I’ve acquired/sent for more. A few good sets of mix-and-match basics got us going and then we’ve acquired a few new things along the way. It’s harder to buy things than I expected though, there’s something to be said for home where you know who carries what goods and what their price/value tends to be. More than one store has had “going out of business sale” in their window for the entire 3 months we’ve been here so far.

How global is the global economy? Prior to our trip I was feeling disappointed that it seems these days that no product is unique to an area, that in Seattle if you just go to the right gourmet store you can find any fancy chocolate or cheese. I once ordered something on the internet and only after it arrived did I realize I had ordered it direct from India. It seems like every town has its “fair trade” shop with handmade goods from every remote corner of the globe, I was beginning to become quite nonchalant about the idea of product availability.

I’ve actually gotten so blasé about buying things on the internet that multiple times I’ve thought “we’re in too much of a rush, I’ll just look for X on the internet when we get back to London.” I’ve been quite surprised to discover that not everything is available on the internet. My first experience was the Damman Tea I had in Paris. I did find Damman in a shop in Aubusson when we were there for the Tour and I bought a box even though they didn’t have the exact flavor that I wanted. Then in Norway we were too rushed for shopping. No way to buy a cheese-slicer magnet outside of Norway. More surprising is that I haven’t been able to find an Oleanna sweater – especially since what first drew my attention to the brand was another American we met on the train who said a friend of hers from home had told her to look for them. I assumed if someone in America liked them they must be available somehow. I almost bought one in Norway, darn it.

Even in the UK, after 3 months we have established that some things we just can’t find even suitable replacements for. They are: no-sugar-added hot cocoa, Triscuit crackers (of any variety, though we prefer the reduced-fat), Clean & Clear sensitive-skin facewash, and –bizzarely- decent loose-leaf tea! Kind visitors have imported the latter three for us and I actually picked up some cocoa in the import department of the famous Ka De We in Berlin. The no-sugar-added/low-sugar craze has not yet caught on here as I have probably noted previously.

Shoes are another economy that baffles me. I have the misfortune of being an American woman with D-width feet. American shoes come in B width, with the occasional A or C. D-width shoes are categorized as “wide-width” shoes which generally must be mail ordered and only come in unfashionable styles. I am therefore boggled to come to London and discover that D-width is the default and every style comes in it. What the Pho? Why can’t I get these shoes stateside? What is wrong with American women that we allow ourselves to be shoehorned into hobbling ourselves? I find it hard to imagine as a nation we really average narrower feet by two widths. No wonder we walk so much less.

On Money: As another example of the dedication to paper- because of the hassle of transferring money in, we got behind and bounced a rent automatic payment. (They are big on direct-debit payment plans here though. Something that was just catching on for our utilities in the US.) The solution? Get cash out, sneaker-net it over to the landlords bank and deposit it in their account. I was *highly* skeptical when Darrin walked out of our bank with the rent in cash (a months rent! About 4 times the max amount of cash we ever carry between the two of us) on the teller’s recommendation, but when he called the landlord the first thing she asked was “do you have cash?”

There are all kinds of ways to pay utilities, though Darrin notes that even still few of them are convenient. We opted to not do direct debit partly for fear it won’t be easily unchained when it’s time to go, but more because we’ve noticed our landlord has multiple unpaid balances from prior to our tenancy so we’re uneasy about being too ready a replacement. So for the water bill I have a little account card and payment schedule and once a month I take the card to the post-office and make a payment against it. For “council-tax” I have a payment booklet like for a car loan, and I can do that online with our HSBC “switch” card.

You may notice that I’ve added another link to my London Favorites: The US American Citizen Services at the consulate. When you move overseas the government recommends you register with the nearest embassy so they can find you in case of emergency. I scoffed at the idea since we’re in about the safest country we could be in (our major ally in our current conflict) and couldn’t think of why we’d need to contact our own embassy on a 6-month holiday jaunt. I viewed the idea suspiciously, I think it’s a combination of my displeasure with our current leadership and the west-coast government-is-them mentality rubbing off on me. The truth is after only three months I’ve already found three reasons to rely on the good ole US of A. First I’ve learned that it’s not really the Embassy we talk to – that’s diplomatic stuff. We deal with the consulate. Second, and more specifically, as an American citizen you want to talk to American Citizen Services. They do all kinds of helpful things – provide voter registration information, notarization services, passport services. They make recommendations for all kinds of things including places to stay in central London for per diem (hard to imagine!), doctors, dentists & lawyers.

We learned the hard way about notarization. We lost a credit card in Paris and had to cancel it and get a new one. Not such a big deal, until it turns out the bank wants a notarized document pointing out which charges are the fraudulent ones. Turns out in the UK only real lawyers do notarization, and it’s 45 GBP + VAT for the pleasure. Losing our credit card ended up costing us just over $100! I complained about this to a friend who has just relocated from Seattle. She asked around at work and learned that the US Consulate will notarize documents for US Citizens for $30. First lesson that the Consulate is someplace I should pay more attention to.

The second lesson was an more direct one: I lost my passport in Berlin. No idea how, but when we showed up to check in Friday morning at 11 am, I didn’t have it and couldn’t think of having seen it in the last 48 hours. We dutifully searched our luggage and called the hotel to no avail. We wasted a little bit of time asking around at airport desks but it’s pretty straightforward: go directly to the consulate. Do not pass go, do not collect your boarding pass. There’s some possibility that if we were returning to our home nation and we were in some kind of crisis they could have put us on a plane, but since we were heading to London: no go. “At least it’s not a weekend”, we reassured ourselves. We asked the British Airways desk for the contact info for the Embassy (consulate, I now know) and she wrote it down and told us they were open 8:30 am to 12 noon daily and were now closed. I was astonished, this was beyond what I had considered a worst case of hassle. “We have to stay here until Monday morning?” I exclaimed. “Yes,” was her answer. Now here is perhaps a glimpse into the difference between British mentality and American. By my watch, it was 11:55. Damned if I wasn’t going to at least call myself. I couldn’t get through on my cell phone and when I asked her to verify the number she just dialed and handed me her desk handset. When someone answered I just said “Hi, I’m an American citizen and I’ve lost my passport.” She said I’d need to talk to citizen services and transferred me. That person said that although they were closed, if BA was willing to put me on a flight later that same day, and I could come straight there, they’d wait for me and issue me a new passport. So I told the woman at the desk, and she looked up and found a 7pm flight and said she’d write a note but no promises.

We grabbed a cab over to the consulate. The bonus challenge was that since we were leaving we’d spent down most of our Euros, but luckily we found a cab that could take credit. It was not the same as the Embassy and Darrin was a little concerned over whether we were in the right place. “Where’s the flag?” he asked, but then saw one. There was a strange line of people out front that seemed to be students waiting for visas. We got to cut to the front and wait for the door to open, then ascend the steps, go through security, turn over phones, cameras and water bottles to be locked in a little locker, then upstairs to a big classic 50s office waiting room with tables and voter registration books around. They called me to the window, took my drivers license and had me fill out some paperwork. I used a photo machine across the room to take my photos and handed it all back in. The paperwork was like a family quiz. Quick: do you know where both of your parents were born? I know states, but I’d be harder-pressed on the city. Fortunately state seemed to be good enough. (Assuming you were both born in the state you grew up in, right? Mom, Dad? )

About 15 minutes later a genuine American (folks so far had seemed like international employees) reviewed my application, had me swear (or affirm) it was all true and sign it. Another 10 minutes and Presto! Brand new passport. This is officially a “replacement” and is good only for a year, but that will get me home again when I can apply for a new one. They gave me the official form for that. Back to the airport, where the departure guy spent a little bit of time looking for my Germany entrance stamp before giving up and just giving me a departure stamp, and then on to London where the customs guy flipped through Darrin’s passport full of stamps, my blank passport then pointed to where it says “Issued: US Embassy, Berlin” and pointedly asked “What happened here?” Leaving me to sheepishly admit “Yes, I lost my passport”.

So in the end, it’s not a major trauma. It was helpful to have a backup photo ID (presumably what a photocopy of the passport would give you.) I had my prior passport number because it was part of my BA ticket reservation that they printed out for me. Mostly, it cost money ($85 for the passport and 5 euros for the photos) and time (a mercifully short 4 hours, that was probably a bit lucky), so if you’re short on either then that’s when it becomes a trauma.

Finally, I relied on the US Consulate website when I came down with something that seemed to merit a Dr visit. Unsure where to start we checked their site and they recommended a few walk-in clinics. I called one and they said they had no Drs this week, so we opted for the one in Victoria Station. Not cheap, but I walked in, saw a Dr within 15 minutes, he ran the one test right there in his office and said “Yep, you need a prescription” and went and got it for me on the spot from a back room. No run-around, no go-pick-it-up. In, out, done, and I’m feeling better already. Kudos to Darrin for pushing me to just go.

A Tour de Britain

2004-07-31T20:32:00.000Z

We spent last week driving around Britain getting the lay of the land. Now we have photos posted! We also caught up on a backlog so we've posted photos not only for this trip but for our first geocache, our first day with Meredith and Peter, a short visit to Kew and some general odds and ends added. Enjoy!
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We brainstormed everything we might want to see and entered into Automap, then weeded it down to what seemed like a reasonable itinary. To avoid the London traffic we rented our car from Luton Airport and started outside the city. Our first stop was York. We knew it was a tourist attraction but didn’t really know why. It’s definitely set up to be a destination with tons of shopping and lots of interesting side-trips out in Yorkshire. The shopping is packed into a dense set of pedestrian-only streets and has a good assortment of interesting boutiques. One street, now called Stonegate, was Via Pretoria back in Roman times. We actually saw several Romans about, as they were having a Roman weekend while we were there. Even merchants were participating, at a booth of goods from New Zealand the proprietress introduced herself as Kiwipatra, and was dressed to suit.

While in York we toured the local Cathedral called the York Minster. It’s a cathedral because it is the seat of the Archbishop of York. A Minister because it was started as a missionary church in the heathen wildlands, back in 627 AD! York truly has more than 2000 years of history. The current structure was begun between 1220 and 1250 and took 250 years to complete. It is the largest medieval gothic cathedral in Europe.

We also did a little shopping, had tea at Betty’s (which was rather high on the fat/sugar content) and went to The Castle Museum because our guidebook said it was cool. It was cool, but unexpectedly so. Half of it is basically a history of York life over the last couple hundred years, with settings of dining rooms and main rooms of people at different class levels. We’ve seen this kind of stuff before but it was done very well here and was quite interesting. Towards the end they had a couple of mechanical amusement machines – drop a coin in the slot and watch the little figures enact a scene with the kind of technology that a cuckoo clock uses. One was entitled “The Last Rites.” Who can resist that?

It started out as a diorama with a building. We dropped a coin in and the 4-inch high front doors popped open revealing a scene inside of two black-hooded types standing on either side of a figure on the gallows – hangman’s noose around his neck, string-rope leading to the gallows. Ominous music played over heavy whirring as behind them a priest figure raised and lowered his arms and the presumed bible held in his hands. Raised and lowered, raised and lowered. It looked like the floor beneath the condemned was actually sort of a trap door, and there was enough slack in the rope to drop him down it, but I couldn’t quite believe we’d actually see a miniature mechanical hanging. Seconds ticked by and one of the front doors started to quiver as if to shut and then suddenly with a bang the trap door popped open, the condemned dropped down, the doors slammed shut and the machine went dark. I couldn’t stop laughing, it was just too bizarre. That’s the trouble with kids these days, entertainment is all about the troublemaking and not about the consequences.

From York we continued north, following highway signs simply marked “The North”, to the very northern edge of England where lies Hadrian’s Wall – a 73 mile long stone (and at one end, turf) wall built to keep the barbarians of the borderlands from bothering the Roman Empire. We stayed in a fairytale castle that Darrin found called Langley Castle. It was definitely dreamy and romantic and plays host to dozens of weddings a month. The evening we arrived there was a reception. We stayed two days there and it was definitely a high point.

In the area we checked out Hexham, the nearby town, and Hexham Abbey – my favorite church so far. It’s not a huge cathedral but it’s still stone, impressive and beautiful. The bulk of the structure was built in 1113. It’s also still a working church. It just had a cozier, friendlier feel than the larger cathedrals, though all of the buildings have class status built into them as to where the special people sit vs where the masses sit. They all now have pulpits that were added in the 20th century that puts the minister where the masses are.

A very friendly tour office in Hexham helped us set up a great day. The gal gave us maps, pointed us to an area called Housesteads that’s an old Roman Fort along the wall and then helped me plan a 4 mile walk along the wall from there to a point we could take a local bus back! So that’s what we did. There is a hike (they call them walks here in Britain) the entire length of the wall, we did a section of that. To top it off, our walk ended at a pub called the Twice Brewed Inn where we had some incredible local chocolate ice cream. Housesteads had a museum that helped fill in some of the details before we started. Hadrian was a roman emperor who visited Britian in 122 AD and decided they should build a wall to deal with the problem of constant conflict on the northern border of the empire. The original wall is estimated to have been 10-15 feet high, built with two outer faces and filled with rubble. The sections we saw now were 4-6 feet high, with strange consistency of that height, and about 8 feet thick. Was it built with some stronger base and weaker top that it’s all evenly shorter today? We didn’t find an answer for that.

We also found ourselves wondering: did Hadrian know about the Great Wall of China? Could he have been inspired by that? I decided I had to find out and did some research once I got home. It’s unlikely that just web surfing I’m going to find full text of a letter to Hadrian describing the Great Wall so I decided to focus on a few key questions: 1) Does the Great Wall of China predate Hadrian’s Wall? 2) Did the silk road connect Rome and sections of the Chinese Great Wall and 3) Was that before Hadrian’s wall was built?

Interestingly, the Great Wall of China started out as separate walls, built by separate factions, that were later united into a single great wall. The separate walls were built between 770 BC and 476 BC according to this site, and were unified into a single wall in 214 BC. So yes, the Great Wall predates Hadrian’s Wall by about 330 years.

There’s an exhibit running right now at the British Library on the Silk Road and from that I got a high-quality tantalizing 1.5 mb map. It doesn’t show a connection to Rome (the road just goes off the map), but it does show connections into China. Specifically, the route went through Lanzhou. That lines up with a map I found of the Great Walls of China here. So while there might be a great deal of overlap between the route and the Wall(s), at least one overlapping city between the two maps was specific enough for me. So silk road traders would have seen the great walls, and it’s hard to imagine a better piece of gossip than such a major construction project. As a story it is interesting even to those who don’t know the personalities involved, so it seems reasonable to presume that stories of the walls spread along the silk route. But to Rome?

This site offers a timeline of the Silk Road with some great clinchers: Romans most likely first encountered silk in 53 BC in battle against an army with silk banners. By AD 1, silk was a fashion rage in Rome. So by AD 1 there is an established trade between China and Rome. Well before Hadrian is born, becomes Emperor and visits Britian in 122 AD to announce the solution to their problems is to build a wall. It certainly is possible and even seems likely to me that Hadrian’s Wall was inspired by stories of the Great Wall of China.

Up to this point our touring has tended to focus on cities. This trip was a comparative wildlife safari! Of course we saw the usual assortment of sheep and cows, those seem to be everywhere. Our Geocaching adventures took us out into fields and woods where I was amazed at how a sheep bleat can sound right next to me when the nearest one is 25 metres away. On this trip we really got country with bunnies – er, Brown Hares, and we saw some critters that the UK Safari website convinces me were stoats. They were small and reddish. We saw one seeming to chase a Brown Hare, and another just scurried across the road – looking kind of like a ferret but with a definitely black tipped and fluffed tail. We saw a sign warning of “Red Squirrels” but we’re not sure what we were supposed to worry about. They don’t seem to be endangered so perhaps people are getting in car accidents when they run across the road? We later saw similar signs that said “Elderly People” so maybe that’s it.

Whilst tramping about in some woods we were both startled when Darrin flushed a bird by practically stepping on it. It could have been a grey partridge but we really wouldn’t know. We did agree it was a quail we saw cross the road in front of us later. On a failed geocache find where we didn’t get to the coordinates until well after twighlight we ended up shuffling around and poking sticks then hands into various holes. As we stumbled back to the path a wildland creature complained bitterly about what was probably a manhandling of their den. It was quite loud, I’m thinking it was one of the dangerous Red Squirrels.

As you look through our photos you may notice that Geocaching seems to be a big part of our trip. That’s partly because we’re better about bringing the camera for those parts (since it’s very gear-intensive anyway) and partly because it ended up taking three tries to cache Batman. The first time I was a spaz and forgot to actually leave him, the second time we didn’t find the cache and then the third time was the charm. It was also partly driven by scheduling – we’d tend to drive in the afternoon, rolling into our new town at about 5:00, leaving us only an hour before basically everything closes. So two nights in a row we hit an internet café and looked up a couple nearby caches to hit after dinner. We also discovered it’s a fun way to walk around and see sights that won’t be listed in the tour book but are known only to locals. However, I’m starting to develop mixed feelings since it can result in beating about in the brush off-trail when it comes to actually looking for the cache. I’ll have to experience a few more before I can make an assessment. As an internet-based community though, it seems mostly to be pretty good people. I was browsing “track-bugs” (items people move from cache to cache and log stories about) somewhat randomly and stumbled on this one that literally brought tears to my eyes.

On our return from The North we swung through the Lake District where we did a couple nice short walks to waterfalls and saw the waterfront in Bowness where tourists have been able to rent rowboats since Victorian times. Bowness was a little too cheap (but not inexpensive!) touristy, if we go back I think the more northern towns of Ambleside and Keswick are probably more our speed. We continued south and stopped near The Potteries in Stoke-On-Trent to visit Astraware, a PDA software company that Darrin has interacted with a few times. The Potteries is a collection of six towns that have been a center for pottery back to Roman times. Wedgewood and Spode were born here and many major brands of china including Royal Doulton are manufactured there today. We ended up skipping The Potteries which is fine because like Porsche, factories are closed until September and not doing tours. In York I discovered a pottery called Moorcroft which I really liked, but it’s expensive enough to require some extended longing before I’ll be willing to buy some. Turns out they do have a factory at The Potteries that I would like to visit, perhaps in the future.

From there we continued on to Stratford-Upon-Avon (“Just call it Stratford” the Astraware folks advised.) We dutifully toured Shakespeare’s birthplace and tomb and looked at brass rubbings which were interesting and would be fun for kids. If you go to Stratford I’d recommend planning to see a Royal Shakespeare Company show and rent a boat on the river in the afternoon, then that plus the Shakespeare stuff would be a great weekend outing. As a museum-ing and shopping destination it’s a little dull. We ended up skipping nearby Warwick Castle, saving it for a future daytrip out of London, and headed back to Luton to drop the car and return home, satisfied that we now have a better picture of England at least.

One last note on the hinterlands, little tea places are advertising themselves at every stop. The legendary cream tea abounds. I had the best scone I’ve had so far in Europe at the Hartside Summit Café, a stop at the 1,883-foot height of the Hartside pass between The North and the lake district. A nice, flaky cheese scone and a pleasant cuppa tea. Me, Darrin, and a dozen of the local motorcyclists that seem to use the café as a regular stop on outings. I commented to Darrin there was something kind of interesting about being surrounded by men who wear leather and drink tea. Definitely a change from The Ritz.

Darrin and Shaula learn to love Le Tour!

2004-07-22T21:14:00.000Z

Read now and get excited for the big finish this weekend, then go check out our photos which are posted and captioned.

Last week Peter and Meredith Han came visiting from Seattle. Their first choice of activity in Europe? Going to see the Tour de France! We were probably about average in terms of American fandom - we knew it’s a big multi-day bike race around France, that there are stage winners each day and an overall winner. The guy in the lead overall wears the yellow jersey, and I learned in French class that the guy who most recently won a day wears the green jersey, though this proves to not be the case. We also knew that Lance Armstrong is an American who has won many times in recent years and he’s sponsored by the US Post Office. Go Postal! Could redefining that term alone be worth the marketing $$$?

Fortunately, Peter was willing to take us by the hand and try to turn us into cycling fans. He told story after story about the tour and the cyclists on it, patiently responding to “which guy was that again?” He hooked us up with the official website and told us when the tour routes would be announced so I could book a trip. Peter also generously assigned homework by giving us a book: Off To the Races by Samuel Abt,the cycling editor for the New York Times.

The book was to me a somewhat confusing collection of stories about the big personalities of the Tour over the past years. Most of them are retired now, and they’re ordered by importance rather than chronologically which was difficult for my cycling-blank-page brain. None-the-less, I learned lots from the book that made it helpful to understand what was going on. First and foremost, Le Tour is much more than a single race. It really is a festival of cycling. Every stage is its own race, on its own day, sometimes with rest days in-between. Segments of the tour are not continuous, and the course changes every year. There are 20 stages over a period of about 3 weeks.

The stages themselves vary – some are flat, some are mountainous. During a stage, there can be a sprint from point A to point B where whoever is the fastest on that short segment wins points and a cash prize. Some stages have multiple sprints. That’s something that the support cyclists or “domestique”s can aim for. Just winning a single stage is definitely a resume builder, and cyclists particularly like to win on stages that might go through their own hometown or happen on their birthday or some such. Richard Virenque, a Frenchman, got out ahead of the pack to win the stage we saw on Bastille Day, which wins him a warm spot in the hearts of France. Finally in addition to the stage wins, the sprint wins and the General Competition podium (the overall) there is a white jersey with red spots for the best Mountain Climber – they get points for their finishes on mountain stages to judge that. The green jersey is worn by the best sprinter – who will not be a good climber, so that spreads the love around, and then there’s a white jersey for the best rider under age 25. Voeckler who has been wearing the yellow jersey is also the holder of the white jersey and will likely retain that one.

I also got some insight into how exactly cycling is a “team” sport. The most key point to understand is that if you’re drafting off of (by riding directly behind) someone else, it’s easier for you. So having support riders to “pull” you in their slipstream until you’re ready to sprint out ahead gives you advantage. However, part of the tension of the team is balancing letting support cyclists (who have their own egos and goals) aim for their personal wins vs working for the team: things like having to actually stop their bike and wait for the team leader to catch up so they can pull him, or chasing after a breakaway of opposing team riders to try to slow them down by getting in the lead and then slowing the pace.   Chasing after breakaways burns up energy, so it’s good to have support riders set up breakaways to make others chase them down and tire out, or do the chasing. Deciding whether or not to take the bait on these things is also where the strategy comes in.

All that knowledge fresh in head is still a little difficult to bring into play as 100+ cyclists are pedaling by in a matter of a minute or two. The sport really is best watched on TV or followed from a distance, when the various strategic moves can be summed up and pondered. So fortunately for we who cannot identify cyclists by sight (I did see US Postal Jerseys, and T-Mobile Jerseys) and even those who can, going to see the race in person is entertaining just for the spectacle.

Tuesday the 13th we woke up early near St Flour and had a fun drive down highway and through countryside to a cute little town called Aubusson, which bills itself as the Tapisserie (tapestry) capital of France. We got there at about 10 am, the tour was due to pass through at 2:30. We had time to walk around, grab lunch, buy souvenirs and evade the rip-off nougat salesman who tried to trick us into paying 6 euros (like $7) for a piece of nougat and a pathetic little euro flag. Meredith deserves credit for saying no to that one. We spent about 45 minutes walking up and down the stretch of road the tour was due to pass through on, choosing just the right spot so we could see a long segment of them approaching, and we’d be on a hill so they wouldn’t whiz by. (Turns out they weren’t going all that fast as they had to first come through the town which involved a near 180 degree turn past a VIP area and then splitting to pass around a big roundabout just as they came into our view.) Around noon we noticed maybe 10 other people along our ¼ mile stretch of road and decided we needed to settle into hold our perfect spot. It never got that crowded really. Meredith remembered that people sometimes chalk messages onto the road, so we bought chalk and entertained ourselves by chalking the names of the US Postal team (courtesy of Peter) and the slogan Go Postal! Someone the night before had actually painted some crude things on the road and shortly after noon a van pulled up and some guys with paint jumped out and altered or painted-over the slogans. Those tour operators are prepared for everything. Paint was definitely the way to go we discovered, because probably 100 cars drove by between the closing of the course and the arrival of the riders and the chalk would need touchups after about every 4 cars. So that kept us busy while we were waiting and used up all our chalk. Sidewalk-specific chalk might have worked better, or I think I’d do crayons next time.

Around 1:30 the caravan started to pass by. This is basically a drawn-out string of cars & vehicles driven by sponsors and VIPs. This was fun, because about half the sponsor cars would throw out free stuff! We went crazy, jumping up and down to get them to throw things. The nice part of it not being very crowded meant we got something from almost every sponsor. Meredith and I ran across to the other side of the road to increase our chances. This went on for easily an hour – a few minutes of rest, then a new sponsor spotted down the road, jump up and down and then OW! As they drove by we’d get pelted – I got hit with some candy in the head, Meredith was suddenly rubbing her hand from getting nailed with a keychain, and Darrin, who was making the most of his telephoto lens, seemed to be a particular target, nearly getting it in the upper thigh- as they say in basketball- two or three times. We got keychains, bags, hats, coffee, chips and even little salami sausages! Fortunately the water bottle trucks drove a little more slowly and did hand-offs. Official Tour Merchandise trucks would also drive by, pulling up every so often to announce their wares and have a couple salespeople jump off and work the crowd before hopping back on to drive another half mile up the road. Meredith and Peter bought a packet that included a poster which they wanted and gave me the yellow hat after a brief in-group fashion contest wherein each person protested that he or she looked the dorkiest in the hat.

By the end of the caravan we were wound up and ready to go, but the traffic dropped off and not much happened. You could feel the energy dissipate. Once or twice an official looking vehicle would drive by announcing something in French and eventually it became clear that a few riders were out ahead of the pack, so we’d get more than just a single view. Finally, around 3:30 the first two riders were spotted. They were totally surrounded by cars and motorcycles, it seemed very funny to me that it was a bike race. They rode by and then we waited, watching the time. A few minutes later a single rider came by, presumably dropped by the leaders. About 7 minutes later the peleton arrived. In the distance we could just see them split to ride around the roundabout and then smoothly blend back together (Darrin should have some good photos of this with his birthday telephoto lens.) The people lining the street cheered and we frantically snapped photos as they approached. Suddenly they were upon us, pedaling smoothly up the hill. There was so much to notice it was a blur – I saw the distinctively pink T-Mobile jerseys out in front, then I looked to pick out US Postal jerseys. Riders were about 6 feet away from me. There was a strange small commotion around me and I looked down to see a splatter of liquid and Darrin on my left saying “it hit me in the foot” and then looking to the friendly Dutch folks on my right and a woman had her foot on a bike bottle at the curb, its contents spilling into the street. Peter had said that the riders throw off their used bottles and we could get lucky – I had compared it to a drummer throwing their drumsticks out at the end of a concert – and what do you know, it had happened! I look up to see the last of the peloton pedal away and Peter stepped out to retrieve the bottle that they were kindly offering us, only to be collared and yanked back by the man who had been talking to us earlier because now the support vehicles were driving by with their huge roof-racks with multiple bicycles and dozens of wheels. It all happened so fast! But once things settled down the Dutch people were happy to let Peter gingerly pick up the bottle which was still about 1/5th full of a grape-smelling liquid (they joked he should have it tested for drugs – the never-ending gossip of cycling) and marked with two black Xs. It was from team Quick Step-Davitamon.

We had planned to hop in the car and drive north and try to catch the tour again, but after all the excitement we were beat. We grabbed drinks in a nearby café, bought a yummy whole-grain baguette and got in the car for the long drive home.   We perked ourselves up over dinner and stayed up to watch the Bastille-Day fireworks, set off about 11:15 pm in St Flour – a day early because the next night the cyclists would be in town and they would need their sleep.

Wednesday morning, July 14th, Bastille Day. The tour started in Limoges, 260 hilly kilometers away, and was due to finish in St Flour around 4:00. We now knew it would be later, but at a stage finish on a national holiday we also expected crowds. We did a little sightseeing in Neuveglise – the nearby town that the tour would pass through on Thursday- and then headed into St Flour. Large parts were blocked off for media and for teams. We ogled the podium set up and the finish line, looked at sponsor booths, grabbed baguette sandwiches and set off down the steep winding hill that the tour would finish on. It was lined with bright yellow barricades that said “Credit Lyonnaise” – a major sponsor. We found a small gap at about the 300 metre mark (distance from the finish) and attached ourselves to the rail.

This time even before the caravan showed up some sponsors had people walking down the course handing out things. We all got yellow Credit-Lyonnaise hats, which made the finish look very festive and yellow between the crowds with hats and the barriers. We got some coffee packets and I bought a Lance Armstrong Foundation bracelet for 1 euro. When the caravan started driving by, they would tend to throw things over our heads. Fortunately we had raked in the loot the day before and so were content to let the crowds behind us jump for goodies while we guarded our position on the rail.

There were speakers set up all along the course broadcasting a loud running commentary –all in French. Now and again Peter and I would actually understand bits – we got that two riders had broken away from the pack, then one – Richard Virenque, the eventual stage winner – dropped the other who was reeled in. We heard them announce that the riders were 60 km away, then 30 km away, then 5 km away. Just from the change in tone and pitch you could tell the riders were coming. We were on the final hill, which had a hairpin turn at the bottom and doubled back behind & below us – though because of houses we couldn’t actually see the prior section. Our final signal that the first rider was approaching was a helicopter approaching from the direction of the course, flying low, and then actually sinking down into a hover at the point of the sharp turn, facing towards us where it would see both the approach below us and then our section continuing up. You could see dust and litter blown up by the draft. A couple more cars, then a grouping of motorcycles and then a cyclist! All alone, we all cheered as he worked his way up the hill, passing right by us. We realized that we were on the inside of a mild curve so all the cyclists were probably going to cut right by us. About 5 minutes later the peloton arrived, again working their way up the hill right past us. I saw some blue US Postal Jerseys and suddenly Peter and Meredith went nuts, jumping up and down and yelling “Lance! Lance!” as a pair of US Postal riders rode by within feet.

We immediately moved to head to the finish line and see what we could see there and as we were moving Peter commented that we hadn’t see all the riders yet, so it must have broken into multiple packs. As we headed up the hill we heard some cheering and looked to see a few more riders pedal by. Everyone seemed beat. We found a new spot on the rail about 20 meters up from the finish and in view of a big TV screen. A 2nd peloton rolled in, and riders continued to trickle in for the next 10 minutes. A group of Quick Step riders rode back toward us and the barriers were parted to let them exit the course right next to us – turns out we were standing right next to their team equipment truck! We followed them back and watched as mechanics immediately broke down bikes and started washing them with soap and water. The riders had unbelievable legs – tons of muscle and no body fat – you could see every vein. They staggered into what looked like a giant customized RV after a few waves to the crowd.

For the next half hour or so we gawked at gear, straggling riders and struggled around the crowd looking for the US Postal van. Darrin and I were beat so we set a meeting time an hour away and headed off to have an ice cream and get dinner reservations at this great crepe restaurant we had eaten at a couple days before. An hour later we headed back into the fray to make our rendezvous. There was another small crush at the hotel where we had agreed to meet and it turned out Richard V. the man of the day, was heading to check in. When we hooked up with Peter and Meredith, Peter, after a several cycles of raised and dashed hopes, had bumped into Richard after a media interview and got his autograph on a program which he now proudly displayed. Meredith told tales of standing next to the wearer of the Yellow Jersey as he wrapped up media interviews. Another successful day of tour-watching concluded, we headed into dinner to celebrate.

At the time of this writing, Lance has made his move on some key mountain stages to take control of the Yellow Jersey. My pre-tour studies also prepped me to understand why there is so much fuss around Lance in this years tour. In the 100+ year history of the Tour De France (started in 1903) no rider has won six times. A total of five riders have won the tour five times each: Frenchman Jacques Anquetil, Belgian Eddy Merckx, Frenchman Bernard Hinault, Spaniard Miguel Induráin and our own Lance Armstrong. Only Lance and Miguel have won their five Tours consecutively. Three of these five tried and failed to win a 6th tour, Lance is making his try now.

The final stage of the tour will be this Sunday, July 25th. Will Lance make history? So far he’s looking good. Good websites to follow the action are http://www.tdfblog.com, http://www.velonews.com/tour2004/ and you can get live charts and graphs at the official site on http://www.letour.com/.

Go Postal!

Norway is for Nøtter lovers

2004-07-05T23:32:00.000Z

Norway Part 1: Oslo. Photos posted and captioned! Photos from the Norway-in-a-Nutshell part still to come.

Darrin wanted to see a Scandinavian country; several friends said the fjords of Norway were a must-do; the Norah Jones concerts in Amsterdam sold out months in advance, and Scandinavian Air advertised a fare sale in the local papers. Thus we found ourselves with a 5 day trip to Norway to see Norah Jones in Oslo, hang out for a couple days and do the Norway-in-a-Nutshell scenery tour.

Upon arrival we quickly noticed two things: people in Norway speak better English than people in the UK (at least to our American ears) and 7-11 is alive and thriving. Yes, “Oh Thank Heaven” not only for 7-11 and what I swear are the exact same Jimmy Dean Breakfast Sausages that I sold as a clerk in my college days (I didn’t find out what they’re called here) but also thank heaven for Norwegian snacking habits. Gone are the racks of biscuits and candy and stacks of pastries that we see everywhere in the UK and US. Norwegians love nøtters! (nuts to you.) Not just weird health-nut packages, but ROASTED and SALTED! (Sunt og godt! Might mean that, it’s what the container says). Happy Happy Joy Joy!

As frequent as coffee shops (which are surprisingly difficult to find given how cold it is in Norway) 7-11 and similar all have U-Mix self-serve nut bins with mixed nuts (roasted and salted!), a nut/dried fruit mix (the nuts are roasted! Mixed with the aforementioned and it’s perfect!), cashews (Sunt og godt!) and pistachios (in the shell, which makes it a bit awkward to blend them in with the others but we did anyway!) I swear we ate nut mix for lunch at least twice, we’ve been so deprived of properly roasted and salted nuts in the UK.

Every menu has peanøtters and chilinøtters on it – a glass full of nuts to have with your beer; which is the ubiquitous beverage. No matter the time of day, 80% of the diners have a pilsner glass of beer in front of them. In continuation of my microanalysis of European drinking habits, beer is definitely the beverage of choice in Norway, though perhaps historically it was not completely a choice. At the folk museum & village I learned that in the early 1900s Norway went through a prohibition period similar to the US, kicked off by concern about the workers doing too much drinking. When prohibition was finally eased, wine sales were allowed only through specific wine monopoly stores (vinmonopolet). Initially a private enterprise, it was taken over by the government after corruption problems. Eventually spirits were sold at such stores as well. So beer has been the only readily available alcohol beverage, possibly leading to its domination over wine. In 2003 wine and spirits sales were finally allowed in grocery stores, possibly contributing to a 5% rise in alcohol sales according to this website, which also reports that beer represents 77% of alcohol sales. But in general there just wasn’t as much candy & carbs around. Dark chocolate seems even more rare than in the US! Snacks were often meat-based (jerkey, lunchable-like meatballs & dip packages, hot dogs) and lots of ice cream stands with really good ice-cream. A popular native food is a sweet brown processed cow/goat cheese that is sold in large blocks. We tried some off a breakfast buffet, didn’t do much for either of us but it wasn’t nasty.

One oddity I noticed is that every single gift shop sold cheese slicers. The kind that look kind of like a cake server but bent and with a slot for shaving cheese. Like, the maritime museum sold cheese slicers, the folk museum sold cheese slicers, the sculpture park gift shop had cheese slicers. The tourist shop sold miniature cheese slicer magnets. I was beginning to think Norwegians were a bit batty and finally made a tentative inquiry to a shop clerk who told us that the cheese slicer was *invented* in Norway. Aha! And it does slice very well on that Norwegian cheese. I loved these cheese slicers as a kid, but unfortunately as an adult I seem to eat harder drier cheeses that are not so compatible with this technology. So I did not buy one, but every other cheese slicer was part of a larger set that included knives, other serving utensils and letter openers, so as a proxy I purchased a letter opener. I needed one for here anyway.

Norway is at the same latitude as Anchorage and is therefore covered in snow much of the year. However you’d think that was a state secret judging by the postcards for sale. We only found one that actually showed a scene with snow. We were curious since the city would have a significantly different feel in winter. They must swap out the postcard stock to match the current season, short as it is. We learned that peak tourist season is the first three weeks of July.

We ended up a smidge early for that season to catch the Norah Jones concert on the 26th of June. I estimate about 3000 people were there. On the way in there were boxes of earplugs, on instinct we each grabbed a pair (hey, they’re free!). That turned out to be a blessing, because to me Jazz is a mellow experience. The music was great but after the first song they cranked it up to rock-concert levels. I was starting to seriously not enjoy myself but the earplugs saved the day, adapting my personal volume to an only slightly muffled version of what I deemed appropriate. The concert wrapped up around 10:15 pm and we headed out of the dark arena into what felt like a 5 pm evening. Darrin commented that it felt like coming out of a matinee movie. Sunset lasted hours and mostly-dark came around midnight while we were there. Never saw completely dark. It was definitely quite weird, I found myself feeling strangely awake and yet a little woozy, as if some buried part of my brain was begging for sleep.

There are about 4.5 million people living in Norway, about a half million of those in the capital of Oslo. At least a couple hundred of those are not happy with George Bush and participated in the peace rally and march we stumbled onto on Saturday. They gave speeches we couldn’t understand, waved signs that said “something something something Irak” but the final clue was the larger-than-life paper mache of a pink guy with big ears standing on what seemed to be shredded Iraqi flags. I thought we might get something exciting like a burning, but those peaceful Norwegians merely towed him at the head of the procession as they marched over to what we later discovered was the American Embassy. I wish I had gotten a photo of the embassy: a characterless black 50s block of a building surrounded by concrete barriers and chain link fence. A global beacon of freedom and hope, NOT!

A visit to Paris

2004-07-02T00:52:00.000Z

Paris [most of them anyway] and Tesco 10K photos finally posted! Norway coming.

June 18, 2004
A Whirlwind in Paris

We decided to book a spontaneous trip to Paris, so last week I got online and found cheap(ish) flights and we booked ourselves into the Hotel Atlantis, recommended by friends. We flew over on Tuesday and back Friday. We were offline for that time but quite busy!

How to even begin? Paris is definitely different. Just by appearance it’s quite different – from the Eiffel Tower the city has an amazing uniformity of architecture and color compared to London. That suggests to us that it didn’t get the same amount of bombing in WWII that London did, perhaps because the Germans were already there. However on a guided tour of the Musee d’Orsay we learned that a big factor is that under Napoleon III much of the city was demolished and rebuilt under supervision of Baron Haussmann – the prefect of the Seine. This interesting MSN Encarta article talks about that and it seems he was one of three waves of government-sponsored mass-rebuilds, but the one that left the biggest imprint on the current look.

However, Paris has a uniformity to it only when viewed from above in the Tour Eiffel or the top of the Arc du Triomphe. At street-level what characterizes Paris most to is the distinct LACK of uniformity. Whereas in London you see variations on the same 30 chain shops repeated on every High Street, in Paris we were hard-pressed to find two of anything. We even read in our guidebook about a chain coffee shop called Columbus Café and in our three days of walking we only saw one. We only saw one Starbucks – we whizzed by it when being driven to our hotel. While this was initially challenging for Darrin – Paris seems to be completely free of blended iced coffee/chocolate beverages – we learned to enjoy it. There’s definitely a similarity of menu across cafes so once we got the hang of food that got easier. And the constant variety makes it enjoyable and each neighborhood or area a new experience. The repetitive parade of NEXT, ZARA, Café Nero and Sainsbury here begins to feel oppressive. We can’t imagine how Paris is free of chains w/o some kind of government regulation but we’re not sure what that is. Whatever it is, it seems worthwhile. All in all we’re both amazed at how comfortable Paris was. My French lessons definitely paid off, I was completely equipped to navigate the basics of tourism in French, but we could have limped along in English just as well.

After passing only a few cafés our first day Darrin remarked that they were all set up for “Stadium Seating” and I thought that was a great description. They’re surrounded by tables, but usually set up with two chairs behind the little table both facing the sidewalk. This is a land of people-watching like no other. Like pubs and London cafes the expectation is that you will linger, but UNLIKE London they bring the check immediately – so immediately that when you order things that don’t all come out at once (like your drinks and your food) – they bring a separate bill with each wave of served food. This is great because it puts us in control – we can linger all we want but we never end up feeling imprisoned for want of a bill to pay. Taxes and 15% service are pre-included in all the prices and they’re all priced to round numbers, seemingly to facilitate the very common need to mentally add two or three receipts when ready to pay.

Thanks Todd and Robyn, our hotel had a great location – close to the Louvre, the Tour Eiffel, lots of shops and the Musee d’Orsay. Also next to my new world-favorite café: Les Deux Magots. It’s got history – Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre used to hang out there, among others. Often this can be a point of concern since a tourist draw will mean they don’t work hard to earn their business, but we had the best breakfast here. I learned this trip that what I learned as café-au-lait now seems to be called café crème and at DM they served it with an empty cup, a small picture of coffee and a small picture of hot milk for me to blend as I choose. Mmmm. I have not had a decent café-au-lait or crème in London – we seem taken over by espresso here. The bread was wonderful, we had a wonderful omlette aux herbs as well. The hot chocolate proved too chocolate-y for me, it reminded us of the pudding Darrin got in Barcelona when he tried to order a chocolate caliente. We noticed that Tea, Coffee and Hot Chocolate all seem to be on equal footing in Paris, unlike the US where Hot Chocolate has been demoted to only for children and Tea hardly around. At first I was thinking Paris might be more of a Tea city than London – every other café has “Salon du The” printed on its banner, but much of that tea proved to be bag tea. Though at DM this morning I had the best cuppa I’ve had yet in Europe – it was a bag but a fabric one and I wish I’d saved the tag. It was called Damman – a quick web surf verifies its existence but nobody selling it online.

That leads me to another observation – how un-wired France seems to be. We were totally offline. There was a modem-jack in the phone but we don’t have international ISP access. We didn’t see internet cafes anywhere, thinking back I didn’t see people using computers in cafes. Maybe a PDA or two but that’s it. Darrin recently saw a list of the top 20 wireless network cities and none of them were French. We saw a couple ads on TV or buses for internet service but not many (a hilarious TV ad parodying world-cup soccer as would be played by modem – the players walking through the exciting plays…) We were puzzling over this when Darrin remembered the minitel. France created its own national computerized network called Minitel back in the 80s. The government distributed terminals for free and people used it for information lookup and bulletin-board type stuff. So for a while they were ahead on the electronic revolution, but then the web emerged and they seem still slow to switch over. For example our hotel has email, but not their own website. I couldn’t book our room via the web. Ditto for the B&B we’re staying in later this summer. (However they do have a quite cheesy website with horrid midi music here.) That might also be a side-effect of being primarily small businesses instead of big chains – the incentive to invest in a big complicated online presence is probably greatly reduced when you’re not booking business for 80 locations nationwide and the relative cost just not worth it.

Is there a connection between that internet distance and the overall more-relaxed feeling of Paris? June isn’t the big vacation month but Paris in three days never once had the busy-rushed feel of London. All the time in London, particularly on the tube, people are rushing by and pushing-past. We encountered crowds – once a metro train was so packed we passed it up for the next one (which was then nearly empty) but we never felt rushed like we do in London. That definitely requires more investigation. The Paris Metro is definitely a champion. Trains move quickly and come frequently. The whole system feels very automated. The London Underground in comparison feels held together with chewing-gum and sticky-tape: there’s a system for constantly advising which trains are working and which trains are not, workers go around and write updates on whiteboards and they’re constantly making announcements. The Paris metro in contrast seems to just work. However 3 days is definitely not enough time to encounter real transportation problems. We do find the London underground a little easier to navigate – their “circuit map” forces all the lines to artificially look east-west or north-south for each section. That makes it easy to guess which direction you want to go when rushing from platform to platform. On the Paris Metro we needed to know not just which line but the endpoint name for the direction we wanted to go and that felt more challenging. Appropriately it was on in Paris I learned the rudest possible way to ask someone to move so you can get off the metro train: simply poke them in the shoulder with a single finger and apply steady pressure to drive them out of the way. After having this done to me I was able to verify its universal rudeness by doing it to someone else the next day and getting a dirty look. We’ll keep that tool in the *back* of the travel arsenal.

So in three days we managed to cover the Tour Eiffel, stroll the Champs-Elysees and go to the top of the Arc du Triomphe, do the barest surf of the Louvre, have an amazing time at the Musee d’Orsay (more Renoirs, Manets, Monets, Degases and Van Goghs than you can shake a paintbrush at – all originals!) stroll around Sacre Coeur and catch a show at the Moulin Rouge. The amount of art to see raises the bar over the London museums which already have our brains boggled. So much Italian art that I’m starting to wonder what could be left in Italy. We will definitely be going back, next time for a week. Musuem in the morning, café all afternoon. Cooler weather – so we can enjoy the wide variety of warm beverages.

Bits & Pieces (oops, ended up a bit long)

2004-06-22T12:49:00.000Z

Photos- to minimize effort for viewers, new photos will be posted as new albums under Darrin & Shaula 2004 - so the Glasgow, Loch Loman, Stirling & Greenwich photos are all posted like that. We will also add dates to the album titles. All posted photos are now captioned. (So Dad, that's a statue of Will Shakespeare.) Paris photos & blog should go up before we go to Oslo on friday.

Metrication- It's been a bit interesting, as I mentioned before, runners still talk about miles for runs, even though races are often 5 & 10K. Most foodstuffs are converted to metric - water is all half-litres, my can of V-8 is 330 mls, we bought some cute mini-cokes at 150 mls each. I have a 250g hunk of butter. Milk is still pints & half gallons though (2.232 litres for our half-gallon) and pubs, of course, still do pints & half-pints. In Glasgow Mark had us do a bit of whiskey tasting and when I asked how much whiskey came in a glass he said "25 mls" (I've since noticed in pubs that there are official dispensers attached to bottles - no generous "shots" in this country. Though that hardly indicates restraint as I've noted.) Recipies have long been weights and not volumes in this country. I've only been buying historical tea recipies and those are a mix of grams and oz.

Nutritional Labeling - Most packages list nutritional info for a serving and also for 100g of whatever it is, which is cool - makes it very easy to compare nutritional content of two items. It can be alarming for treats like my 45 g chocolate bar (how many calories? Oh, right, I'm only getting half of that) that might just list the 100g version. We noticed that sometimes the labeling will include what % of the product that ingredient is, and figured out that it seems to be required for ingredients that are called out in the title or subtitle. So Honey Nut Cheerios seems to be a good example. "Cereal Grains (61%) (oats, wheat, barley, rice, maize), sugar, wheat starch, honey (3%), brown sugar syrup, ground almonds (1.4%), salt, palm oil, trisodium phospthate... etc". Can be quite eye opening, as in Walkers Pure Butter Shortbread: "wheat flour, butter (31%), sugar, salt." Yikes!

Pubs - not being big drinkers, we've gone for cider (hard, of course) when in pub situations. I've learned I'm definately a half-pint gal, though we've shared a pint a few times. You just sip it slowly over the evening so you always look like you have a drink, but once you go dry someone will inevitably offer to buy your next round. A popular drink here is a "Larger-Top", 3/4 pale ale beer and 1/4 "Lemonade". Initially I was really thinking "ew", also to the "orange lemonade" another companion was drinking. However I learned that "Lemonade" really means sprite-like-beverage. Still, the beer version sounds weird. The good news is the Orange Lemonade is something all pubs have heard off and ususally involves fresh OJ, so we've found a distinctive pub beverage for non-drinkers. As for diabetics, I'm thinking they must just die early in this country, carbs and sugar are everywhere, more so than even the US I'm tempted to say. Especially in the post-atkins world. That's just barely starting to catch on here.

Travel Insurance - seems to be culturally accepted as a standard here. They sell it for EVERYTHING, even weekend getaways booked on short notice. Expedia knows this - I started to book a trip to Germany via expedia.co.uk and at the end it offered me an option to add travel insurance as well as add transport to Heathrow. I ended up switching to expedia.com where we already have an account with all our passport info entered (there is a value for convenience! and the ticket price didn't end up much different after exchange rate.) and they only offered the heathrow express add-on, but no travel insurance. On our trip to Paris we got a little insight into why it might be common though. I booked a cheap Easy-Jet flight on the web - out of London Luton. London actually has 5 airports: Heathrow, Gatwick, Stanstead, Luton, and I think another called City. We'll end up doing them all. To get to Luton we need to walk to the tube (6 mins), take a tube to London Bridge (20 mins), then catch a train to the London Luton Airport stop (45 mins), then catch a free shuttle bus to the airport (10 mins). All those are independently operated transport services that have no obligation to us personally WRT our next "connection". In fact Easy Jet & Ryan Air themselves don't do multi leg flights - you're welcome to book multiple flights but if one late makes you miss another, it's your problem. Anyway, despite leaving 3 hours before our flight we barely made it because the train link had a problem and we waited 45 minutes before a train (which is supposed to leave every 15 minutes) finally showed up at 10:20. It was a bit of a tense ride because Easy Jet says if you don't check in at least 30 mins before departure (we were departing at 12:10) then you miss your flight, and we weren't sure how the airport shuttle would work. I, of course, had not bought the travel insurance (7 gbp/person). We got to the airport and I rushed ahead while Darrin struggled with the suitcase. "Where's your travel partner?" The desk person asked. "Coming with the luggage" I replied. "Well, you've literally got 5 minutes to check in," he stated flatly. Eep! I ran a loop around the lobby to make sure Darrin knew where to go but he was there before I got back and we checked in literally with a minute to spare. Soooo, guess that worked out okay! Not sure what would have happened had we missed it, but I have an uneasy feeling we'd have been out a plane fare.

Money: Somehow the Bank of Scotland gets to issue its own pounds. Maybe it's like Denver mint vs Philedelphia but in Scotland we got Bank of Scotland pounds. Back in London a cashier commented briefly on one but otherwise they seem completely interchangable.

Cars: we can tell we live in a high-end neighborhood because of the cars. Hardly anyone has garages and so we get a good look at the assortment of Porsches, Jaguars, BMWs and Lotuses parked on the street. I've seen a few Porsche Cayenes driving around. I can count four mini-coopers looking out my window right now. Love those and the smart cars. Darrin noticed that in France all the cars were Renaults, Citroens, or Pugeots. He suspects more government intervention. (and after I read this to him he confirms it: the French govt owns 44% of Renault.)

Crime & Punishment - Punishment in the US seems much more severe than here. I think I wrote earlier about they guy who hit Tony Blair with a condom full of purple flour - he got fined 600 GBP. On the other hand, there've been at least two cases of horrible repeat-offender (we're talking 20+ documented incidents over years for each of them) sex criminals in the news that make me glad to live in a country with the death penalty: those dudes should fry, but here they'll get 30 years.

Clothing - after working so hard to get down to size 10 US (and even as low as size 6 in some lines as US sizes seem to be in a process of sizing up) I'm a solid size 12 here in the UK. sigh ;-) What's really amazing me is how incredibly consistent that seems to be - to a point where I'm ready to start buying stuff off the rack w/o even trying it on. I'd NEVER do that in the US, where in the last year I've started to feel like I need to take at least 3 sizes to the dressing room to reasonably hope of picking the right one.

Slang - on a final fun note, the different slang here makes for different wordplay. There's a composting campaign with the tagline "Everyone Loves a Rotter," showing a scary-looking guy composting. A local underwear shop is called Knickerbox, and a popular title for gym classes is "Bums & Tums".

Football at the pub

2004-06-18T21:40:00.000Z

But first, a message for our sponsor: YOU! Help keep me running by sponsoring me for a mere $20 to run in the British 10K on August 1st! Give the Taylors a reason to get up in the morning on their first day here - to come cheer me on! See a photo of me and details at http://www.justgiving.com/shaula10K

The Euro 2004 Football tournament started last weekend and we decided watching England vs France in a real pub was a must-do....

June 14, 2004
Last night we decided to go catch England’s opening game in the Euro 2004 football tournament (That’s soccer to you Americans). It’s been hard to miss that it’s coming: cars are driving around with England flags on them, stores are selling memorabilia, sports pages are analyzing and hyping, radio stations are giving away trips to Portugal to see games live. The first game for England was against France – that particularly close sibling rivalry – so that seemed to add to the drama. We don’t have a TV and we wanted the authentic pub experience, so in the afternoon we visited various nearby pubs to see who had a TV to show the game. Several pubs had tiny TVs in tiny spaces. We queried one barman in a somewhat more promising pub and he directed us to The Greyhound around the corner. Sure enough as we approached they had flags flying, blow-up footballs decorating the trees out front and lots of colors hanging inside. They had one room with a large screen projection TV and a smaller TV by the main bar. Gametime was 7:45, they recommended arriving early.

We’d hoped to show up around 7 to get seats but got busy and arrived around 7:20. It was standing room only at that point, though we later learned from our fellow fans that they had arrived at 6 and all the seats were already gone. They managed to score space at a standing table, we were just behind them. We’ve learned we can each manage a half-pint of cider fairly easily, so we decided to get one pint of cider and one plate of food so we could each have a hand free. Turned out to not be much of an issue, the place gradually became completely packed and by the time we got our food we’d finished the cider. Generally at a pub you order at the bar, bring your drinks back and then the barkeep delivers the food. For the game it was so crazy that we had to keep an eye on the bar, finally make eye-contact with the barman holding our food (which apparently had been sitting out for a while by the time we and he managed this since it was barely warm) and then Darrin squeezed over and fetched it.

Darrin had read up that England would be lucky to tie the game and it seemed from the start like France was the stronger team – most of the game seemed to be played in England’s half of the field. But in the first half England got a penalty kick, Beckham placed it well and another England player headed it in. The bar went wild. It was definitely better to watch the game in the group setting because we could tell what the exciting plays were and it got us more caught up – like how TV adds laugh tracks to comedy. I did actually enjoy it more than past games, and it was helpful that the guy next to us was friendly. He mentioned he’d spent 2.5 years in Ft Lauderdale, Florida. So interestingly it does seem that the people who are interested in talking to us are people who have spent time in the States. He filled us in on some player features – like pointing out the 18-year old who is the 2nd youngest player ever to play in this tournament and who did make several noticeable plays during the game. Our football lesson from Chris Williams earlier this year also helped us follow the game.

Our new friend Neil (“Nelly” to friends) easily put away a good 3 pints of beer while we were watching, and was visibly intoxicated by the end of the game, as was one of his other companions, though the remaining two seemed pretty sober. Who knows how much they had in the 1.5 hours before we got there. I find that somewhat disturbing. I’ve noticed a steady stream of media (a tv special in our hotel in Glasgow, an article in the Times Sunday Magazine, other things) raising the alarm about the problems of drinking in the UK. The pub culture is just huge – weekdays at 5:00 there will be a crowd on the sidewalk outside every decent pub of folks having their pint. It spills out since the inside is so full. After the US with such strict alcohol laws it’s just strange to see crowds of people on a sidewalk holding glasses of beer, and during broad daylight no less. A friend said there’s no such thing as open container laws, you could take a pint on the tube if you wanted. In fact, yesterday morning as we were heading down to the platform someone kicked over an empty half-pint glass that had been left on the stairs.

At halftime lots of folks streamed out of the bar – not sure why, maybe they didn’t want to invest that much time, maybe they were writing it off as a won game? Either way, it let us move up to be able to put a glass on the standing table which was helpful when I got a water for the 2nd half. A whole game of football lasts 90 minutes, and we were at about minute 88:30 with the score still England 1, France 0 when Henry from France got a penalty and managed to get a goal off it. Nelly had told us earlier that Henry is the #1 player in Europe as voted by fellow players. We’d been getting the idea the people behind us were rooting for France, in part because they’d say “Come on En-rie (the French pronunciation)”, but when the game became tied a pub that had for the entire game seemed to be primarily England fans suddenly erupted with what was clearly an equal number of fans of Les Bleus. That wave continued as in the next two minutes France quickly scored a 2nd goal, ending the game with France 2, England 1. Ouch! As it happens we’re going to Paris for a few days later this week, we’ll have to figure out what the equivalent of a pub is and go root for the home team there.

Stay Tuned, details and photos of our spontaneous trip to Paris later this week.

A PR (personal record)! or a PB (personal best)?

2004-06-13T14:52:00.000Z

Call it what you will, this morning I made my goal of breaking a 9 minute mile for a 10K distance in the Tesco 10000. Hurray! 9 minute mile for 6.2 miles would be 55:48, I have been aiming to break 54 (I try not to think about the .2) and I ended up around 54:30. Except this morning, I wasn't really aiming for anything except to run.

I decided to do day of race registration and I was just feeling really uncertian about getting there, would there be openings, etc etc. It's so far west of London that it's off all our maps! The tube stop shows up just barely on the greyed-out edge of our biggest map, but then getting to the leisure center from there all I knew is "buses available". Race start time was the British Early Hour of 10, though I'm starting to sympathize, getting around on public transportation takes time. We got up and got out the door shortly after 8. Took the tube out to the endpoint of Ealing/Broadway, then looked for buses that went past "Ruslip Road". Identified a couple, and then fortunately a more detailed area bus map posted at one stop actually showed the leisure centre (what we would call a fitness center or a community center - this one has one of only 2 50 meter pools in the london area, maybe the UK?). Got off the bus in the right spot and strolled over to the tent to discover that, phew, there was indeed day-of-race registration.

We left our flat about 8:10, and arrived at the race start around 9:10. Plenty of time to register, stretch, do a warm-up lap around the field (warming up at all is a new thing for me), hit the portables (didn't notice a name, they were always Don's Jons in DC, they're Honey Buckets in Seattle) which were pretty much just like home - though now that I think about it, they were actually different - it involved a flush. So it had a closed basin and then something like a big stick-shift to one side that produced a chemical flush when pulled back. Not sure how that would work after a particularly successful pre-race visit ;-)

There were only about 250 runners, definately weighted toward the "Fun Runners" (yay, low pressure). Prizes were Tesco (a big supermarket) gift certificates of 150 GBP, 100 GBP and 50 GBP. So not exactly on the calendar of Britian's top runners. Rather it's a fundraiser for the Ealing Swimming Club. I saw a woman named Helen I recognized from a Serpie wednesday night run but she didn't seem to recognize me so I didn't worry about it. However, I recalled that we both did the 3 parks run (7.25 miles) the same night and she finished about 8 minutes faster than I did, so it occured to me she'd be a good person to try and pace. And she was wearing the highly visible and distinctive Serpie jersey - red with two horizontal yellow stripes. When we lined up for the start they kindof had chutes - I guess they were the finish chutes already set up - just with wooden stakes and tape. I couldn't hear what the announcer was saying but suddenly there was literally a gun and I heard a women behind me say "oh, I guess we're off" and the group started moving. The gun was fun (I'm sure it was blanks) - it gave me a flashback to my swim team days when we had gun starts.

Usually in a 10K my biggest worry is finishing. By now however I should be getting pretty confident that I can finish a 10K. It also helps that I've done 2 of the three-parks runs with Serpentine, the 2nd with a gal named Fran who pushed me to run a little faster than I normally would. From that I knew that I could hold what felt like a pushed pace for 7 miles. I decided to throw off my usual race strategy of quickly latching onto someone to run with and keep me distracted on the theory that most people start out too fast for themselves, whereas I am less prone to doing that. So by latching onto someone quickly I'm actually slowing myself down because they won't be able to hold that pace whereas I could. Not long after the start I spotted Helen about 30 meters ahead and decided to try to stick to her and maybe even catch her. I managed to hang on until the 5 K mark, getting within about 10 meters, and then I was starting to feel beat and she seemed to put on a burst. It was a completely clear and bright morning, and getting a bit hot.

I settled in and focused on maintaining what felt like a hard but doable pace. The course was not completely flat but rather had some long shallow grades of up and down. I was able to gradually catch other runners which kept me busy. I also kept thinking back to a yoga workshop I took a couple weeks ago with Richard Freeman. He had us doing a difficult pose and kept saying "One more...". After everyone groaned he fixed us with what seems to be his trademark goofy-wide-eyed look and said "You don't know that you can't...until you can't... hmmmm?"

As I wrapped around to a point where I thought the announcer had said would be only 2 K left (more like 3k really) I had fallen in with a small group of guys. They were discussing how much might be left and I chimed in that I had also heard the announcer say this was a 2 k left point. Two of the guys put a little speed on leaving behind a 3rd. His shoulders looked very hunched and I was ready for a distraction so I caught up to him and commented "you look like you run like I do - shoulders hunched" and started a conversation. Turns out he's from Ealing and he has cousins in Vancouver, BC. He asked if I was Canadian and I said no and he said that I talk just like they do. I explained that Vancouver was quite close and I like to "get up to Whistler for a bit of skiing, eh?". He asked how I liked London and suggested we check out Kings Road when I said our neighborhood seemed a bit quiet at night. He also said that Ealing has a jazz festival in July. Up to this point I had been trying not to think about time but he mentioned he'd been hoping to break 50 but wasn't going to make it. I decided to mention I had a goal of 54 and he said "I think you'll make it".

Shortly thereafter we passed the finish area, but it was one of those courses we all hate, secretly there's still about a mile to go because the course goes past and loops around. Argh! I got a little demoralized about then, and he got a little motivated so I told him he could go on without me. I finally passed the 9K sign (only 5K and 9K were marked) and just focused on hanging on and not slowing down or walking. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to sprint for the end, Darrin managed to catch me for a photo and then I looked up at the clock and saw it reading 54:24 and decided I could push for it the last 50 meters. My watch reports a finish time of 54:28, gun-time will probably be about 10 seconds more. It should be posted Monday morning GMT, here. look for Tesco 10000. This was not chip-timed though, just race recorders. My previous personal best for a 10K was 58:something.

Hurray! Thank you Chuckit, thank you Serpentine, thank you Richard Freeman! Hey, instead of a finishers medal I got a fun paper-weight - a block of white marble-like substance with a Tesco sticker and an engraved plate with "Tesco 10000" and the date. It's cool! Shirts were extra and cotton and I decided to pass. With day of race registration the fee was 10 GBP, about $18 - not bad given my finisher award and they also gave me a bottle of powerade. We'll post photos of me and my finisher prize later this week.

Good news for you folks, by the time you wake up Sunday morning we will have posted all our photos up through Saturday - Glasgow, Greenwich and the inside of our flat. Check those out and enjoy! We decided to organize them mostly by date to make it easy to tell what you haven't seen yet.

Greenwich Nice Time

2004-06-11T15:25:00.000Z

Yesterday we went to Greenwich. We got off to an easy start (left the house around 10:30) and there was so much to see we never actually got into the observatory! So the good news for visitors is we are definately up for a trip back. We walked up the hill but they closed at 4:30 and were definately not letting anyone else in. Darrin got some photos of our lockout.

We did see the Cutty Sark, the only remaining victorian Tea Clipper ship and the fastest. True to boat building form, building the Cutty Sark bankrupted the company that started it and someone else finished and ran the boat. Also unfortunately, the Cutty Sark was launched the same year the Suez Canal opened - the canal that connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. That canal opened a shortcut to China that was half the distance, but usable only by steamships because the Red Sea has no wind. So although it was the fastest tea clipper ever built, the Cutty Sark ultimately set most of its speed records hauling wool back from Australia as the steamships took over the tea trade.

When we got on the ship there was a sign saying "Guided Tours - ask at desk". Our experiences in the British Musuem have convinced us we get 10 times out of the experience with a guide, so Darrin asked at the desk. Over the intercom we hear "tour guide please report to the front desk" and a few minutes later the guy shows up and says "just you two?" Well, we were just asking... He gamely starts the tour and soon enough other folks glom on. It was really fun, at one point he was talking about burials at sea and another visitor mentioned noses and he says "oh yes...". Apparently the sailing method for burials at sea was to sew the body up in old sail before sending them overboard. There's a story from the Battle of Trafalgar where they were preparing someone to go over: As they were finishing up they accidentally stitched through his nose and he gave a yelp! Oops, this one's not dead! So the tradition started that the last stitch should always go through the nose, to be sure they're really dead.

In the gift shop I picked up a pretty good book about the history of tea equippage by a british expert in the decorative arts. It talks about the different tea pots and furniture and how they changed over time.

We had previously seen a sign for a tour of Greenwich starting at 2:15, it was now 2:05 so we hopped straight over to the next tour. It was already so late in the day because we started by taking a boat trip from Westminster to Greenwich to get there. Between tube and boat it was lunchtime when we arrived and I was starving so we had lunch first, at a little local place where we finally had some British meat pie! I had chicken/broccoli/stilton (YUM!) Darrin had chicken & mushroom. Both had uber-flaky crusts and came with side salads for a very satisfying lunch. No wonder one of the British Heart Health ads is "Fear the Pie" (in addition to "Get off the Bus One Stop Early" and "Take the Stairs").

Darrin had a taste of my pie and then had to get a mocha to get the Stilton taste out of his mouth. That's how we got turned back when we first tried to tour the Cutty Sark (no beverages) and instead discovered the footpath UNDER the Thames! That was pretty cool (literally, and clammy). We learn on our afternoon tour (also just the two of us, this one 4 GBP/person) that it was built in 1902 (!). More info on foot tunnels here. Our guide was a big fan of victorian engineers. My tea-book author also called out victorian inventiveness for the huge variety in teapot and equippage (her word) design. After our afternoon guide filled in background on the foot tunnels and gave an abbreviated Cutty Sark description (since we had just toured it), we also saw the Gipsy Moth IV - the boat used by Sir Francis Chichester - the first guy to solo 'round the world in a sailboat, a church founded in honor of a local saint and the Painted Hall at the Royal Navy College (now a music college) and the chapel there. All places where meaningful events happened with various and sundry royals (who are nothing but a blur to us americans). By that time, it was 4:00 and our brains were full. We had a snack and a rest and decided to head up through Greenwich park since it was such a beautiful day.

As noted before, when we got to the top the observatory was closed but we enjoyed the view of London, met a friendly New Jersey man who was glowing from the reconnection with his 20+ yr old British Roots (went to America at age 17 to make his way) and on the way back bought some famous Goddard Pies to take home for dinner (though they were nothing special, the lunch place is where we'll go back!). The morning had started cloudy and cool but the sun came out later and the boat ride home was lovely. I'll have to start remembering my sunglasses.

Photos of all the above are on darrin's laptop and we'll send mail when we get them up. Cheers!

Is this Art?

2004-06-02T15:55:00.000Z

We went to the Tate Modern today. There's also a Tate Britian of more classic works, a Tate Liverpool and a Tate somewhere else. We started off not feeling very enthused and picked it off our list of things to see (we went modern today after going medieval yesterday at the Victoria and Albert). However going to this gallery meant discovering a whole new section of London for us, further East than we've been. It's probably a 6-8 minute walk east of the Royal Festival Hall where we went and saw a photo exhibit (I wrote about that in my paper journal because of lack of internet access). Turns out it's just across the River from St Paul's Cathedral which is also on our list, and right next door to the rebuilt Shakespeare's Globe! London for me seems to be the opposite of what I hear of Europeans coming to the States. I've read stories of Europeans coming with a week's itinerary of Niagra Falls, Mt Rushmore and the Grand Canyon, having no idea just how big the US is. When I've read about the reconstructed Globe being "outside" of London, I imagined an hour's drive at least. I had no idea it could be a half-hour tube ride from home. And so easy on public transportation - even outlying areas have tours on the "London Walks" beat - day trips where you meet at the train station and buy a ticket. But still, it's just a day trip, and it can all be done on public transportation! In the US you're toast w/o a car rental or an organized tour.

Perhaps it's because we started off with a good short tour (free tours abounded today and yesterday) but the whole visit to the Tate Modern today was a exploration into the meaning of Art. Our guide started off explaining that in classical painting there was a heirarchy of value: historical story painting at the top (illustrating bible stories, myths or historical events), then portraiture, then landscapes and at the bottom was still life. We move into modern as art took on all kinds of forms, particularly after the invention of photography freed painting from the role of documenting reality. After starting off with a couple abstract works we went in to see a very famous Warhol of Marilyn Monroe heads repeated like stamps. The guide told us that Warhol is particularly famous for reducing art to being about the Idea. It seems his era was one of exploring the idea that Art is any output of an Artist. Modern Art certianly seems to validate that theory - some works certianly don't seem technically difficult, so it's the social position or identity of the person who made them that makes them valuable. I found myself thinking after a morning at the Tate Modern that it's like a riddle about a lightbulb: How many people does it take to define a work of Art? Looking around the Tate Modern I concluded three: the artist to create, the gallery owner to validate and display and the customer to purchase. Or it could go Artist, to Admirerer/Recipient, to Gallery/Museum - in the not-uncommon case where we saw a work that was a gift to the museum from someone who received the artwork as a gift or inheritance.

Can an Artwork be defined by as few as two people? I think so. Once art is no longer about painting stories we all know (or rather stories its contemporaries all knew) it seems to come down to dialog. I think that's why so many supposedly fabulous works of art are difficult to appreciate - if you didn't see last year's salon that this is a response to, or you weren't familiar with the standard technique that this is an innovation of, trying to appreciate an artwork is like trying to get the punchline without having heard the joke, or make sense of a strange statement w/o having heard the preceeding conversation. I had this experience at an exhibit in Seattle - the artist paints bras, and one work had a bra and text that said "C'est n'est pas un bra". 'But it is a bra' I said to the artist. 'C'est n'est pas un pipe' she replied. huh? Turns out there's a famous work of a pipe with that text that she was making a play on. I saw a postcard of it at the Royal Festival Hall, which is what makes me remember it. What that original was a response to that made it famous, I have no idea. We've all heard that a picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words. If person A can create something that communicates to person B in an inexplicit way, then that would seem to be art. But of course the next trouble we get into is when person A is trying to make statement A with a work, and person B buys/is-attracted-to the work because they get message B out of it. Now what?

At first I wonder why I feel so much more inspired and excited by going to the museum here vs home, but *hello*, at home I don't run into a roomfull of real Picassos, or real Warhols that I actually recognize, just by rounding a corner. There was an amazing collection of busts spanning probably 100 years of art history, all laid out in a grid in a huge hall. I recognized the artist who did the bust of Einstein, Jacob something, I think he did the statue of Einstein that's on the Mall in DC. The building itself is a former powerstation and it has wonderful high ceilings and large spaces.

There was also a Picasso, of a dove, and the placard said it was used on the poster for the World Peace Congress in 1949, and that at the next years congress Picasso gave a speech about how his father had taught him to paint doves, and how he stood for "life and not death, peace and not war". It seemed to be making the claim that this is how the Dove became the symbol of peace. That amazes me, I need to do a little more research to believe it, but wow.

The work that made the biggest impression on me was an italian artist who had taken a huge old beam - probably 3 ft square, maybe 60 feet long - cut into two 30 foot sections, stood on end to be tall, and uncovered the tree within it. He had followed a tree ring the length of the beam, and where he encountered knots he followed those out to uncover the branch they represented. So what we saw was about 3 feet high of old beam, with a real tree (branches all broken off at 1 ft or shorter) seeming to grow out of it. It was just amazing, because it basically was a real tree, what the real tree looked like when it was probably about 20 years old instead of the hundred+ it must have been when cut down and sawed into a huge beam. It looked just like a fir tree the way the branches were grouped, the placard said it was American Larch. I can't remember what the tour guide said about it - something that didn't resonate for me about the younger self we still all have within us. For me it was so incredible to think of that wood coming almost full circle from tree to beam and back to tree again. It was an incredibly environmentalist message about how the wood we use as objects really was once a real tree and that tree still lurks within. What does the artwork really mean? It means whatever who currently controls it cares to use it to represent. Me describing it to you, it's a reminder that everything we make we do by deforming the natural world, and while I believe we're part of the natural world, it's worthwhile to be mindful about our effect upon the rest of it so we have no regrets.

schedule update

2004-05-30T21:30:00.000Z

Alas, until I have a real internet connection I cannot easily update the web page schedule. So here are a couple updates:
1) Oslo is a go, we'll be gone the Friday to Wed around where I had tentatively booked it. (And Norah Jones tix are supposedly in the mail!)
2) We're going to plan on going to Ireland after Edinburgh and it looks like some of Darrin's brothers are going to fill the gap between that and going to North Carolina, so that's now filled. Since Ireland is now a short trip, we'll just see my cousin and a few sights in the north and still be up for going back to see dublin/the south.

So mid-July is still good, Friday Aug 13 to Fri Aug 20th is doable. For Sept/Oct We do really want to go to Italy but we'd be happy to have folks come along, would make renting a car more fun and cheaper :-) That's also still a big block of time. I'm strongly leaning towards the short-and-sweet hawaii trip over the extended version after realizing that we're time-adjusted 11 hours off of Hawaii time and there's just no way to adjust for that in a weeks time, so we might as well make it a short trip and not even try to adjust (hey, the race is is 17 hours long, we'll see some on any sleep schedule!)

We also want to do a 2-3 day trip to Prague, if you're already booked let us know if that or anything else is something you're burning to do on your visit.

Interlude

2004-05-30T20:41:00.000Z

Today's blog will be a prose piece entitled "10 minutes on Wardour Street"

Itchy Feet, Dorothy Perkins, Virgin, Harrods, Birkenstock, Offspring, Muji, Sachejuan, NEXT, H & M, Marks & Spencer, Topshop, John Lewis, New Loon Supermarket, Kurt Geiger, The Officers Club, TM Lewin, Selfridges, Debenhams, Surprise, NEXT, HMV, Legends, R&E, Sainsbury's, Tiger Club, Boots, Itchy Feet, Singalong & Co, Selfridges, H & M, Phones 4 Less (who lingered long), SOLE, Selfridges, UKOK, H & M, H & M, Bureau, Selfridges, Marks & Spencer, Puma, H & M, H & M, Stanfords, Topshop, WH Smith, FCUK, Lillywhites, Fortnum & Mason, See Woo, John Lewis, J & D Sports, Micro Invika, Claire's, Borders, Marks & Spencer, Vinyl Junkies, Royal Academy of Arts, Sunglass Hut, Debenhams, Sainsbury's, Selfridges.

British Food & more

2004-05-25T20:56:00.000Z

So we kick off each day with chips, eggs and scones, lunch is fish N chips and dinner is a jacket potato with rarebit or beans. NOT! Although I did finally find a place serving my dream cream tea which happily is quite near home. It had two nice, reasonably sized scones split and toasted(!) with strawberry jam and devon cream. Tea came with loose leaves, a spare pot of water and the little cup filter. They also do english muffins and cake. YUM!

The three most common eating places we encounter are: coffee/sandwich shops, italian restaurants, and french patisseries. Now that we're in a flat for breakfast we're doing cereal and yogurt chez nous, comme d'habitude. Lunch/brunch is either at a coffee/sandwich shop (Pret A Mangez, Cafe Nero, American Bagel (hey, they have a bathroom and the bagels are decent) or EAT) or a patisserie (maison blanc, patisserie valerie, or any one of a dozen others.)

The sandwiches here are fun - I like crayfish with rocket (brit for that fancy salad green we call arugula) and lemon mayonnaise. I get the one with "less mayonnaise" and I'm afraid to find out what normal is. Usually patisserie lunch means quiche & salad though Patisserie Valerie has some good club sandwiches. Dinner has most commonly been we each have a salad and we split a thin-crust 13 inch pizza at any one of the dozens of restaurants that serve that exact thing. We're doing a tour. So far we've tried Pizza Express, Ask, Cafe Uno and a non-chain called Soprano. We still haven't tried a Zizzi yet though we've seen several. Our favorite so far is Ask. Good salad, good pizza. We were enamoured of Pizza Express in January, but their ceasar salads have been overdressed and the pizza isn't quite as good as Ask (though they are all so incredibly similar we're talking a fairly narrow band here).

On the flat front: a wardrobe arrived today for the guestroom (which has no closet). The landlord likes to shop at Argos, think BEST crossed with Ikea. Someone will come assemble it later this week. We discovered that if we turn the heat on then we have hot water. That's definately not right but it's pushed off the crisis point and so has not yet been resolved. We'll be following up tonight on open issues but we're basically equipped for living at this point. No thanks to Tony, the youngish guy who helped open our bank account. We asked him for a good place to buy sheets & towels and he responded defensively: "I'm a bloke, I don't buy that stuff." Ah. We changed our address on the Navy Federal account to be our address here so we can buy stuff online and ship to our UK address. We were able to just do it online and when we chose "foreign address" it reformatted the web page to take one. How super handy to have an account that deals with international living seamlessly. Thanks Dad!

I am now the proud possessor of a Borough of Kensington & Chelsea library card, as well as a Life Centre membership card - my new yoga studio. Literally a 3 minute walk from our flat (ditto for the library, actually) it has 5 different classes a day, every day. Today I went to a Mind/Body/Spirit convention. It was a bit disapointing but I got a lovely yoga mat bag for toting my mat around. I had lunch in the cafeteria and joined a woman sitting alone and had a nice chat. She refers to the London Eye as "The Millenium Wheel". She said she did it after dark at christmastime and it was wonderful to see all the lights. We'll save that one to do with visitors probably, but I think we're going to do Grenwich this Friday. It's hard to get away from the sense of a work-week structure, in part because what little interaction we have with others (workouts and events) wraps around that schedule.

Darrin took some patisserie photos, we'll probably have to wait till we have access at home to upload them. We have the season finale of Alias recorded on a server in Seattle and we're looking forward to downloading that. Unfortunately as we learned with the last few episodes of Star Trek, it takes about 9 hours so we can't just do it in an internet cafe. One more reason to look forward to our Glasgow trip!

Urban density is really brilliant- there is just everything do do because there's enough people to support it. Everything is close together and accessible. What's so awesome about London is the connection to nature - most buildings are only 5 stories high so there's lots of light. Many residential neighborhoods - actually, make that streets because there's not the same business/residential seperation here - have setbacks and people put little gardens in or have window boxes, and then there are just parks and gardens tucked everywhere. But the parks are big. We walked through Holland Park yesterday. Several fields, a cafeteria, a restaurant, an azelea garden, enclosures with peacocks (who are darn loud when they want to be). It's quite amazing. Tomorrow we're going to go be groupies in the vicinity of the Chelsea Flower Show (tickets are long gone but there's enough hype about it that we're curious and suspect there will be overflow stuff going on in the area) and hopefully we'll go check out a nearby park - the Chelsea Physic Garden (NOT psychic which is how I first read it - think healthful and soothing). It's supposed to be, well, healthful and soothing.

Just a Quickie...

2004-05-24T21:55:00.000Z

Because I have 5 minutes left before the internet cafe closes. Today we had our first exposure to European Efficiency. Darrin called to get our phone hooked up and learned we can't get a land line until June 3rd. Further, we can't get DSL until 7 days after our land line is connected. We do not understand why.

However, as we previously observed at the bank while we were opening our account, brits are quite efficient when it comes to closing time and they've turned out the lights already. (I have four minutes left, darn it!)

Darrin got aggressive about hunting for wireless hotspots today so hopefully we'll have a better solution to survive in the meantime. Unfortunately today I had time only to clean out my spam because we didn't get here until late.

Accomplishments today: I blew off several self-assigned chores (check out yoga studios, go to the bank and see if we have checks yet, try a different grocery store because I don't like our closest one) and got engrossed in a book instead. I read Touching The Void, which was so gripping I couldn't put it down. I ended up blowing off my run and doing stairmaster at the gym (another accomlishment, we joined a gym today) so I could keep reading. GREAT BOOK!

Flat Sweet Flat

2004-05-22T14:23:00.000Z

Our address: Flat 3, 30 Campden Grove, London W8 4JQ. If you want to send something bear in mind that mail here is not very reliable or secure - we saw a programme on TV saying that 1 in 7 pieces of mail is just lost. This is consisistent with our experience visiting in January, our friend Chris mailed a book to our hotel and it never came. We asked a few agents about it and folks are in agreement: since the mail system was privatised a few years ago it has been nothing but downhill as the private company cuts staff in an effort to squeeze a profit out of the system. Apparently it used to even deliver mail twice a day. Now it's quite unreliable. For financial transactions direct debit is huge - opening a bank account is proving to be very helpful. Our landlord wanted direct debit for the rent (which frankly is our preference as well), and utilities actually offer a discount to do direct debit for bills.

We have rented from a small individual landlord, so the much vaunted "professional cleaning" and "professional check-in" did not occur. The landlord's son and a friend did the cleaning (so we'll be doing our own later today) and they just told us to make the inventory list. They're pretty casual about the whole thing. The apartment was just refurbished (as were many we looked at) so we have the joy of debugging. We're building a list of odds N ends that need correction and I'll propose some improvements to see if they'll fund, but we had a bit of a crisis this morning when we realized we do not have hot water. There's a pump, there's a tank, there's a boiler, but the tank is not warm to the touch and the pump pumps furiously and running lots of water gets us nowhere. Fortunately the landlord has a handyman in regular employ, but as today is Saturday he's not available until this evening. Hazard of taking posession on a Friday. But in general we're pretty happy. We've taken a few photos, we'll take more, and Monday we'll call BT and get some internet access for home. Right now we're in the Easy Internet cafe on Kensington High Street.

Stocking up and trying out the appliances has been nothing but lessons learned. As we were warned from several sources, the in-apartment washer/dryer (it's all-in-one) is primarly for entertainment value. A full cycle on a tiny load this morning took about 3 hours and the stuff was still pretty damp when done. The shower has a built-in clothesline and most household-y stores stock lots of drying racks. I took our sheets down to the laundrette (which is only a block away, something I was paying attention to as we looked at flats because of the aformentioned warnings.)

The dishwasher needs salt. I tried just dishwasher powder and it doesn't all dissolve and the dishes don't seem clean, so I went back and stocked up on salt and rinse aid. I filled all the appropriate dispensers and started another load so we'll see how it goes. I recall now having heard of this, but I didn't realize what an issue it was. Every store stocks lots of "descaler" and "machine cleaner" and "lime removers". Naturally, I thought dishwasher liquid would work better than powder and that's why I grabbed a plastic jug instead of a cardboard box but Psych! it has powder in it! On my trip for salt & rinse aid I looked more closely and there is actually liquid detergent in some of the plastic jugs. However, packaging is not itself a clue as to contents, which I guess it is in the USA since I didn't give it a 2nd thought until too late.

The apartment did come with basic dishes & cookware, but not linens. We went out and bought a full set first thing. We'll be more leisurely on the 2nd set so we can either get different sheets for ourselves or just fill in a 2nd guest set. We like the ones we got though. Dishes we have the basics, needed to fill in a few things - like a kitchen knife. I bought that at a nearby household goods store along with cleaning supplies and some more power adapters. Interestingly, all the knives and good scissors were in a locked case behind the counter labeled "It is illegal to sell a knife or weapon to anyone under age 18". Yup. All the standard kitchen knives were labeled as weapons.

If you come to visit, pack a set of sweats to wear lounging around in the morning and getting to/from the bathroom. some kind of slippers or sock feet are recommended as well.

Questions, Answers, Observations

2004-05-20T22:44:00.000Z

First, full flat details and photos will come this weekend. We take possession Friday at 1pm GMT.

Q: how do we schedule a visit to London?
Look at our schedule and let us know when you want to come. Things in pink with question marks are tentative and we can reschedule around visitors.

Q: How goes the political coverage from the UK? Cultural Differences?
News here is interesting. We notice that the press likes to turn things into personal conflicts where careers and reputations are at stake. The media seemed very happy when the editor of the Mirror was forced out after not backing down about photos of British soldiers abusing Iraqis (which were proved to be fakes). Interestingly, it was large shareholders in the paper that forced him out.
They've been trying to build up the same thing about Rumsfeld, but obviously without success. I found his little victory tour out to the troops at the height of the scandal reporting here somewhat embarassing. Of course it doesn't always pan out that someone takes the fall, I think we've read headines predicting the imminent replacement of Tony Blair about 4 times already.

We're really facinated by watching Parliment debate - we don't see "spinning" or scripting or making speeches just to the TV cameras when no one else is in the room. They seem to really debate.

Q: Are you getting out and meeting people?
I've now done two runs with the local running club The Serpentine Runners and met several neat people. I had one funny experience - ran with a nice gal about my age named Stephanie who is Italian and we hung out for the run and a bit after. She was headed out of town and as we were saying goodbye she said "give me a kiss" which caught me off guard for a moment but I recovered quickly enough to follow along a cheek touch on each side. She was quite nice and hopefully we'll hook up again. I've met another gal named Karene who seems about my pace/distance, maybe a tad faster than me, and saw her both times and she helped me figure out the routine.

I actually did a 7.5 mile run wed evening- the longest I've done since I got injured last December and I feel great! I was encouraged along by a friendly fellow named Andrew who had posted earlier in the day requesting companions for a slower run of that distance. It's the "three parks" route - Kensington, Hyde and St James. (Last saturday I did the "two parks" just Kensington & Hyde which is a 4.25 mile run.) After the wed run I picked up Darrin and we joined the crowd at the local pub and ended up having 1/2 pint of cider basically for dinner. We got talking to some new friends and the evening just flew by and we missed the cutoff for ordering food at the pub. Suddenly it was 11 pm and we ended up hitting McDs for some dinner because it was open and quick! Got to be more careful next time :-) Someone else was having an "orange juice and lemonade" which turned out to be like 3/4 sprite and 1/4 fresh OJ. I'll order that my next pub visit. They're big into carbonation here. The big sport drink is most easily found in a carbonated version that's much like that OJ & lemonade. Another guy was drinking a "Lager Top", which he reported to be 3/4 Lager and 1/4 "Lemonade", and now I'm thinking that "Lemonade" probably nationally means "sprite/7-up like beverage".

We're signing up to help with the Welsh Castles relay, sounds kindof like the Hood To Coast. We don't dare drive, but they need navigators (heck, I can read a map) and water station volunteers. So hopefully that will combine meeting people with seeing more of the countryside. Or maybe it will just be a growth experience, we'll see ;-)

Saw Troy the new movie tonight. Beat my expectations. Movies here have assigned seating and somehow we got the wrong tickets so we were unhappy with our seats but fortunately the theatre wasn't too crowded so Darrin was able to move us. Lesson learned: double-check the tickets when you buy them. It feels a little funny to have assigned seats - it means we buy tickets earlier and show up later. There are even MORE commercials before the movies here. egads, it's easily a half hour.

We found a flat!

2004-05-19T08:48:00.000Z

It's not totally settled so let's not get too excited, but yesterday we put an offer on a flat and it was accepted. Last night we started requesting faxes from references and wiring money around, today or tomorrow we'll collect all that papwerwork and go sign the lease and hopefully move in friday! It's about mid-way between Kensington and Notting Hill on the west side of Hyde Park - so about a 6 minute walk to either area. Very well located for getting out and about. It's a period conversion, so we'll get a london-y feel. It's two double bedrooms and one bath and with utilities should just be within my max budget goal. We looked at 38 flats in 4 different postcodes with 8 different agents in 5 days of looking. Phew!

So this weekend look for photos and flat details and start looking for those cheap flights!

more links: www.londonfreelist.com was the one I couldn't think of (and had a gosh-darn difficult time refinding!)

Flat Hunting & catch up.

2004-05-17T17:12:00.000Z

Not much to say, flat hunting is a bit tiring. No photos to post, neither of us have been taking any. Feeling worried "what if we don't find one we like?" but in truth it's only been 4 days of looking. There are a couple that might work. Made progress on a UK bank account today, we signed lots of papers, we'll get an account number tomorrow and we can start the process of transfering money over. Hopefully cash in a UK account will make our flat signing move more quickly once we pick a flat.

Flats come in "purpose built-blocks" - basically a square brick apartment building, most of which seem to have been built around 1980, some of which are brand-new but in crappy immediate neighborhoods. The other is "period conversions", 100+ yr old houses that have been broken up into apartments. We seem to be leaning towards "period conversions", more of a "in london" experience I suppose.

Today was quite warm, I'm betting London gets a bit warmer than Seattle. I've come up with a shorthand for celcius-farenheight conversions and I did the math to verify it: take celcius, multiply by two, subtract 10% of that and then add the 32. Easy to do: today was expected to have a high of 25. 25*2 = 50 - 10%(50) = 45, + 32 = 77. TaDa!

They don't have gatorade in London, they have Lucozade, which most of the time seems to come carbonated (ick).

I'm developing some favorite london links for finding transport & stuff:
www.londontown.com - arranged our taxi pickup at Heathrow on here. Good if you have lots of luggage, otherwise I'd opt for the cheaper heathrow express.
www.londontoolkit.com - will help you figure out the Heathrow Express and all airport connections.
www.lastminute.com - haven't used it yet but looking
there are a couple other but I forgot where I wrote them down for now.

I have yet to have a scone with clotted cream and jam. They seem to be primarly for tourists (and thus in tourist locations). I haven't given up yet though! I did have (and like) a scotch egg, and double gloucester cheese. Lots of tea and pastries - good thing we're walking so much.

Blog updates by email

2004-05-14T18:06:00.000Z

Thank you Google! Blogger now has a feature where it will send email to an address of my choosing every time I update my blog. I set that address to a distribution list which is easy to maintain with our new email server solution, so if you would like to get email notifications every time I update, send me email and I'll add you. That will make it more fun to keep up since you'll only have to check when there's something to see.

I took the liberty of putting a few of you on the list already, so you'll get an email notification about this post. Once added, feel free at any time to email me and ask to get removed! I won't take you off my christmas card list just for that, I promise.

London: Home Sweet Home

2004-05-14T17:23:00.000Z

It's a little weird how comfortable London & Britian feels. Definately the tube reminds me of the DC metro, but it's more than that. I think it comes down to growing up in a nation of european descent - passed on after 200 years primarily by the books we read: The Secret Garden, The Little Princess, the Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, The Once and Future King, the Paddington Bear series, actually having a Paddington Bear since childhood! The "classics" we read in school: Charles Dickens, George Orwell, Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, Emily Bronte. I've been steeped in British place names, ways of speaking and British literary culture all my life. Now the rubber meets the road and we'll see how those tales and fantasies wear against the wheel of real daily life.

There are of course the modern adaptations - getting the hang of metric for example. I'm looking forward to the temperature being above 20 degrees celsius, I think that will be getting springy. 12 and I was almost wishing for gloves, definately glad for a scarf. 17 and I felt adaquately prepared but not for many days, 20 and and I'm taking my jacket off in sustained sunlight. 22 I might begin leaving my jacket at home and I'm thinking 24 or 25 and I'll be in short sleeves. Next week it's rumored to get up to 28! I think I'll break out my short skirt. It helps that I remember from science class that 25 is scientific "room temperature".

Last night I finally went for my first run. Treadmill, alas, despite being a block from Hyde Park. It was getting towards evening, I was having trouble getting started and it was my first run recovering from my cold so I didn't want to get out far and not feel well. I cranked the treadmill up to my current favorite of 6.2 and I was barely walking! "This thing is broken..." I complain to Darrin, "It seems to go barely half the speed I'm telling it". I push it up to 7, 8, still barely running. "Maybe it's metric" he says. Oh, of course. I joined the local running club online and I've been lulled by the fact they still talk about their runs in miles. Guess I'll have to refigure my comfortable speeds and distances. So bumping up the speed still more, trying to figure "6.2 x 1.6... we'll that's at least 6 x 1.5..." Hit 10 kph and realize "oh yeah, I'm working to do 10Ks in less than an hour so I should be able to run at least 10 kph". I did finally get a good 40 minute run in. Now that I think about it, the London Walks book I just bought also measured its little day hikes in miles. So going metric is going to be tricky since it's not just a straight mental shift....

So we've now had three days of looking at flats. And the verdict is not that surprising: either they're stylish and likable, or they're well located, but so far not both. Our price range has crept up a bit, but not too far from what I established as our very outside range and the ones we're looking at above that I'm hopeful about negotiating down. We're passing up the ones where the guest room is just a crappy futon, or doesn't have room for anything more than the bed, or only has a "single & a half" But hey, we ourselves will only be getting a double. The land of Kings is not also the land of King beds. Apparently those are from California. We have a couple desperation fallbacks, but nothing we're willing to jump on. Since this was a short week due to travel & illness (stayed home sick tuesday) we'll likely extend our hotel stay into the third week so we don't have to make a choice till next thursday and then we'll have time for paperwork to settle. Letting Agents seem to work 9-5 weekdays which is a bummer. So basically this week we've met a few agents, seen a few things to establish parameters and now we hope our perfect thing pops on the market in the next few days (turnover is reasonably high) and they call us. Fingers crossed!

hotel living

2004-05-12T16:31:00.000Z

Our friend Noi recommended the hotel we're staying in: the Thistle Marble Arch. Kudos to Noi, it is indeed an American-sized room in a nice hotel. Though clearly not set up for a two-week stay. No dresser or bureau to unpack into (and the front desk was confounded when I asked about this) and we have to get our key "renewed" after 7 days. But otherwise quite nice. We have a little fridge which is handy, we've stocked it already with water and fruit.

This past March we went with on a big group vacation which had many fun evenings of shooting the breeze over happy hour. One evening the conversation turned to hotel living and a member of our party (I believe it was Kathy) dropped the information that hotels don't actually change out the glassware in your room, they just wipe it with a disinfectant. Horrors! This must be urban legend. She insisted she had valid information gleaned first-hand from a daughter who had worked in a hotel in Arizona. "Think about it" she said, "have you ever seen glasses on a maid's cart?" I feel like I can remember the distinctive ring of a cart full of glassware being pushed, but I must confess it feels like a childhood memory of probably my first hotel stay.

I've stayed in several hotels since that trip and I've sidled up to more than a few maid's carts and she's right - I have NOT seen glasses on their carts. Then, while in DC for the Emily's List conference, it happened: I saw a maid wearing gloves and spraying four drinking glasses that she had set on the top of her cart! Egads, it's true! I've discovered that handsoap is a reasonable detergent for washing dishes in a hotel sink, but I'm thinking I'd like to start packing a little dish detergent. When we arrived in London I was delighted to see that our room includes tea-making facilities: a pot, cups & saucers, an electric hot-water kettle, and tea/sugar/milk/biscuits. Don't forget, in British, biscuits=cookies! Hazelnut Chocolate Chip to be exact. The first night I made my favorite green tea which I had brought with me. The next morning I went to have a sip of the cold left overs (which I often do at home) only to discover they had developed an oily film. ICK! Back to the handsoap, and renewed resolution to ALWAYS wash hotel room glassware & crockery before use.

Departure Day!

2004-05-10T18:01:00.000Z

I was reminded of the triathlon adage about never using gear on race day that you haven't trained with. This came to mind late Saturday evening as Darrin, after musing on and off for the last couple months about how we should handle email connectivity whilst away, concluded that rather that rather than deciding between taking the server with us or leaving the server at home he would choose the third way: simply removing the home server from the loop! It turns out this is a fairly sensible solution for the way we run our mail, in fact it's hard to explain why we secretly had a 2nd mail server running at home, so I won't go into it. Sufficeth to say that the result of this decision is that Sunday Morning, the day we need to leave at 3 pm to get to the airport, I am installing a new version of office and converting from having all my email on a server to having it in a local store and changing how my computer receives its email. Of course this requires re-installing office 3 times before deciding that something is corrupted about my mail account and so recreating my local mail accounts... etc. Very exciting stuff for the day we're trying to leave.

Fortunately, we've been laying out our clothes and items for the last couple days so really all we had to do on Sunday was put them in suitcases. That went fairly smoothly. Also on our wrap-up list was covering the cars and disconnecting their batteries (so they won't get run down by the clock). This felt a little strange since getting the cars washed was unfortunately bumped due to time constraints so we had the sheepish experience of putting covers on dirty cars. But for 6 months covering even dirty cars seemed to make sense. Darrin's car was a particular circus. We unlocked the car, popped the hood, disconnected the battery, closed the car up, covered it, and then Darrin thought to verify the car was locked. It was not. Well, guess what - there is simply no way to lock the passenger door of the boxster without power. At least not that we could find. So after messing around for a couple minutes we uncovered the car, I touched the battery cable to the post so Darrin could lock the car, then reclose the hood, recover the car and finally done.

Flight was fine. I have a cold so I'm not feeling so great. The flip side is my efforts at decaffinating and time-shifting plus the cold medicine knocked me out and I got a fair bit of sleep. We are now doing our best to stay up until 10 pm to aid in the adaptation. We just took a caffiene hit at 6. Jet lag advice sites report that the effects of caffiene last 4 hours. That should get us through until 10. We have succeded in our first mission: check into the hotel and acquire a mobile phone. I don't know what would happen if one of you tried to call since in the UK mobile phones work that caller pays. We have appointments with estate agents to look at flats for tuesday, wed and thursday now.

Fashion observations: 3/4 length coats are definately in, pointy toes on shoes very in, and lots of high heeled boots. Trent, my fabulous hairstylist, assured me that curly was going to be big this summer, but once I thought to look I've so far only seen very straight. Good thing I brought my roll brush for blowing it out.

The joy of credit cards

2004-05-04T19:21:00.000Z

So some of you have heard me talk about my 4+ month mission to align our credit cards. It actually started over a year ago when I decided it was crazy that we didn't have any kind of milage card. That is its own saga which I will defer on for now.

This story begins 4 months ago when I decided to find a card for travel that would have perks and not charge a currency conversion fee. You may or may not know that VISA charges a 1% fee on currency conversions. Most banks then charge an additional (compounded!) 2%. There was a big lawsuit about it a few years ago that the WSJ covered. The resolution was a big settlement for VISA to pay for secretly adding the fee, and now it's no longer considered secret so charge away. Except we're still all going on that old fairy-tale about how credit-card companies seek out an optimal exchange rate so they're the best way to go. Phoey! Though they are better than paying USD at merchants and letting them change for you.

So anyway, I called around and discovered that a card I already have but barely use does not charge the fee. (that's how I learned it's 1% to VISA and 2% to Bank, so I'm still stuck with the 1% to VISA unless I want to get MORE complicated.) That card is: Navy Federal Credit Union! a credit union with world-wide members No surprise. So after probably 3 rounds per CC company I finally got the Navy Federal Card I wanted, and I almost have the milage card I want (make that about 5 back-and-forths).

Am I done? NO! Bizarrely, of the 2 Drivers Licenses, 4 credit cards and 1 travel card that Darrin and I will be carrying between us, 1 Drivers License, 3 credit cards and the travel card somehow all manage to expire on our trip! Ok six months is a long time, but these cards all live on multi-year intervals. The good news is we've figured this out beforehand for all but one card Score one for the ANALytical over-planners like me!, which we will have to just wait for the new one to come when it comes and get it forwarded because it's too late now. I noticed for one card and got it re-issued early (phew!). That should have been a clue to check the other cards, but it wasn't. Darrin discovered his DL expiration when we went to get international drivers licenses. The travel card and the other credit card just showed up new in the mail in the last few days, and Darrin noticed our ATM card expiration yesterday as he was photocopying his wallet contents (protection in case of theft). So I just did a pass over everything one last time, and we're good except for the one card we know now to get someone to look for in the mail in July.

One last postscript, we finally did the math and if we managed to spend 20,000 on our visa this summer the 2% fee would only be 400. So is it worth all the hassle? (which includes re-learning how to import the transactions into Microsoft Money because it doesn't work nicely like our last primary visa did.) We'll see. I'm bringing the docs on the travel perks so maybe one of those will prove worth it.

Marching on Washington!

2004-04-27T23:47:00.000Z

Went to the march for women's lives on sunday and it was great! it's important to remember that it's not just about abortion but about all kinds of reproductive rights including access to birth control and emergency contraception, even just access to information about those topics! The situation really is that bad! It was great to be in DC for a day and know that most folks were like-minded.

Favorite slogans: guys wearing t-shirts that said "feminist chicks dig me" (available from the BUST "boobtique") t-shirts saying "This is what a feminist looks like" (avail from feminist.org) [side note, tuesday night in DC there's a lovely sunset]. A chant: "not the church, not the state, women will decide their fate". A button: "The Million Muff March". A sign shaped like a pink dress reading "give bush a pink slip". Lots of plays on "bush". "Abort Bush in the first term". "Reproductive rights are human rights". I'm proud to call myself a feminist, especially given I truly believe that "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people".

I thought the day-of was incredibly well-organized. Scads of volunteers were working to get everyone to sign-in that they were there. you got a "count me in" sticker for doing so, and I paid attention and it really seemed like most people had signed in, so I look forward to what kind of count they release.

Look ma, I'm a coder!

2004-04-22T06:16:00.000Z

How might we BOLD? How might we link to the incredibly exciting sights we're going to see? The incredible bites we're planning to eat? And the amazingly deep observations we of course will be making.

Ready, Steady, Go!

2004-04-22T05:51:00.000Z

Ok, here's a blog with potential. Heard about it from no less geeky a source than The Screensavers on Tech TV, interviewing now-author Wil Wheaton. So far so good, let's see how it handles photos. It's nice and simple though. Appropriate for something owned by those stealth-world-conquerers at Google.