We're a Family Again!

Well it's been longer and harder than I think any of us expected, but it's over now. The doggies came in on Wednesday and Diana is here to stay as of today. We're a family again!

I'll say that I travel on business more than a lot of people, although business travel to me has always seemed like just part of the job, some people struggle with it. I've been gone up to about 2 1/2 weeks at a time, but it's nothing like this. The thing about business travel is you are always so busy and so exhausted, you don't have a lot of time to miss you family.

Here, I've been living here, gong to the office daily, coming home to an empty house. Diana has been dong the same, in NC, waiting for the clock to tick down on the doggies. Now it's all in the past.

The boys have arrived in the UK

James just called (07:08 am) and the boys have landed and the airport personnel reported that they are fine and well they were out of the crates and watered and feed. Now James is just waiting at a area cafe until they pass customs. Just two more day until I leave. Yesterday I got the boys off and visited my co workers at state it was a great visit seeing everyone. Today I take the truck back to Catham county and visit James's dad in Spring Hope and then dinner with a friend.Sometime I need to pack. Well got to go it's trash day need to get everything out.

An update from James: getting the doggies was a piece of cake. It was expensive to do this, but well worth it. I talked to a guy that had brought his cat over by himself. He said it was such a hassle he paid a pet moving company to bring his dogs over.

Anyway, they are here safe and sound. I've taken them for a couple of long walks and while they enjoy it, you can tell they are jetlagged and exhausted, per below

Easter Adventure days 3 & 4

OK, so it hadn't been what I'd hoped for, lots of crawling around medieval ruins and imagining "Knights in white satin, never reaching the end". Instead, lots of wind and rain.

I will say Calais is much different than Paris. I found most of the people generally nice and helpful, and willing to speak English. Several of them were actually very nice. Overall, I found the cultural experience to be rather positive. Hey, remember, it's an adventure. These are the parts that make it good!

So Sunday I'm up bright and early, check out and get a taxi to the port. Pig Pen singing "Let me jump on your wagon and ride..." None of the customer service numbers for the ferry companies work as it's a weekend (BTW, it seems a matter of pride here that customer service numbers go to UK or French call centers, of course, that means they all work UK and French hours!)

Anyway, the wind has stopped, the ferries are running and I can get on the (:45 ferry. Life is good. The French port is better equipped than the British one, so I grab a coffee and croissant and wait for my ferry.

Interestingly, the French side has a security check point, much like you see at airports. for boarding the ferry. The Brits don't have this. Also, the British immigration officers love to talk to you, so after getting my passport stamped, I'm in a conversation with the guy about weather and crossing the channel. I think these guys live in the UK and cross for their job. Interesting commute.

Anyway, the ferry crossing back is a piece of cake. Smooth, flat channel, empty boat. I make friends with a Canadian couple heading to see their kids (adults) in the UK. A pic of the white cliffs of Dover from the ferry coming back. Oh, BTW, if that looks like a snowstorm, it is.



Ferry lands, we get on the little bus for the terminal and Buddy guy is screaming "Somebody's been sleeping in my bed, and you know that's a terrible thing to say"

Get to the terminal, I gotta pee, hit the head, come walking out through customs (there was none of this BS in France when landing) and Warren Haynes is screaming "And you still don't understand Why they hate you, Mr. Man"
and as the doors open, there's 12 cops standing there. One immediately walks up to me and motions for me to step aside.

Now, I'm a 47 year old white guy, with nothing but a backpack. They were either profiling someone or were bored. I've seen bored cops, these weren't them! I assume they were stopping everyone driving down that sidewalk that day!

Anyway, he had 40 questions about where I'd been and what I'd done. Told him that mainly I'd ended up hiding from the wind and rain. He asked me for a receipt for my lodging and i told him it was in my backpack somewhere, but I'd need to dump the whole thing and search every pocket to find it, but I'd gladly do that for him. Suddenly he was a fine feller and started joking about the weather.

I gotta say, that was the one point in the adventure that irritated me. Really don't think I deserved that level of harassment.

Again, I decided to walk from the ferry port to the train station, as now I knew the way. It was snowing like mad!

Now, I get to the train station and there's no trains. Engineering works on the tracks. You have to take a bus replacement service to Ashford. the name meant as much to me as it probably does to you, so I hop on a bus. Cream playing "That same thing..."

Of course, what I don't realize is that this bus is now a local train, and will stop 12 friggin times before it gets to Ashford, and it takes an hour and a half. This was a 2 hour train ride down, now working on 4 hours back.

Got home it was still snowing, though not overly hard. Here's a couple of pics where I tried to catch it. You may have to look full size to see the snow.



Somewhere in this process I got one of those chills you just can't get rid of. When I finally got home about 4:00 pm, I turned the heat up in the house and sat here in my coat and hat for a good 30 minutes until I began gradually peeling outer layers off. It was about 6:30 before I got reasonably warm!

So it was an adventure. Not one I want to repeat, but not one I regret taking. Some good things, would have been better with better weather, but who woulda thunk it would snow for the first time in 2 years here on Easter weekend?

One final note on the pics, Google Photos has a capability to link photo locations to Google maps and Google Earth. You can follow that here or from any of the photo links

Easter Adventure, Day 2

OK, have already blogged about the food. As I mentioned, I did well on selecting the hotel. Not a 5 star place, but, by European standards, very decent for the price and location.

On Saturday morning I awoke to a gale outside. Not sure I've ever been in wind this fierce. Also was raining. Not hard, but with the wind so string, it took no time to get wet.

I was determined. So after finding a place that served the biggest ham and cheese omelet I'd ever seen (had to have been 8 eggs!), I went looking for historical sites. Near the market square, I found a 12th century tower where Edward III received the town's surrender. Apparently, all of ancient Calais was destroyed during WWII and this is all that remains. It's at



And across the street was a cheese shop I thought would interest Cassidy



Then wandered down to the main city square and got these photos. Lots of Hooker on this trip "I'm a boogie Rambler, boogie night and day".

The Story of Calais was that in the 13th century siege,when the town wished to surrender, Edward III required 6 of the prominent citizens to bring him the keys to the city, naked, with nooses around their necks, a very humiliating display. These "6 Burghers" are the pride of Calais.





Also there was a memorial to citizens from Calais who have lost their life in various wars. Remember European countries have many more wars in their history that we do, but this one starts in th e19th century with some of the colonial wars. It has an addition for Afghanistan.



There's a few other pics in the album at here

I also toured the WWII Museum. It was in an old Nazi war bunker and they had a nice collection of uniforms, weapons, newspaper articles, etc. And enough in English to makes it worthwhile.

However, by mid-day, I was as cold and wet as I wanted to be. I stopped into a pub and had a pizza for lunch and dried off and warmed up. The rain and wind kept coming, so I spent the afternoon in my hotel room watching rugby on BBC. Now, I don't have a TV in the UK yet, so the ability to watch 4 hours of english-language TV was a treat itself.

I discovered that the port of Calais had been closed down for a while Saturday due to high winds, and I was concerned about getting out on Sunday. I was basically tired of staying someplace with nothing to do and no ability to get outdoors, and got anxious to get home.

So my plan became to get up Sunday and call the ferry ports to see what the schedule was. There was an option to take a train to Dunkirk (not the French spelling) and catch a different ferry from there. It's about 12 miles.

The forecast fro England on Sunday was for heavy snow, and I had concerns about getting from Dover to Richmond. The adventure continues....

Food in Europe, Part 2

I talked a little about food here earlier. Wanted to catch you up on some things.

We had a business off site for 3 days a few weeks ago. Nothing like this event would have been in the US. In the course of 3 business dinners for large groups in 3 nights, I had ostrich steak, Welsh lamb chops, and a marinated duck breast. All except the ostrich I had had before, but none this good, especially the duck. I normally don't care for duck, but there were no options. This duck breast was in a light sauce and tender and juicy like I'd never seen.

On to Calais. After I arrived, I asked the lady at the desk for a restaurant. I was starved. She recommended I go back to the main street and take the first place on the left. It was called "Au Vieux Forneau", don't know what that means but it didn't seem to involve the rude French asshole, so I tried it.

Best decision I made the entire trip. Wonderful place, the staff spoke passable English, and the food was superb! that night, I had what the French call a "menu" which means you order 3 courses for 1 price. They start with a "chef's little bite" meaning whatever the chef wants to serve you for 1-2 bites. In this case, it was a shot glass of vegetable soup. Yes, it literally came in a shot glass! Absolutely wonderful soup.

Maybe I've been in the UK too long now, but it seemed very reasonably priced as well. The salad was a mixed salad covered by a cheese pastry. Awesome! Followed by a thinly sliced steak and veggies, and a cheese plate for desert. Also had 2 glasses of an impressive house red and a brandy to top it off.

Was so good I went back Saturday night and asked the head waiter to bring me a fish. "Les poissons
Les poissons
How I love les poissons"
No, I don't have this on my MP3 player!

Anyway, they brought me a 3 fish pot. I was a little nervous. Being from NC, fish is supposed to be battered and fried, with hush puppies and cole slaw. That's how God created them. This was a crock pot with 2 fishes and shelled mussels in it cooked in a sauce. Again, wonderful!

Overall, I found the food in Calais to be excellent, with good service, and almost everyone not only did, but would speak English.

My Easter Adventure, Day 1

I've actually begun carrying a notebook around with me to take notes so I cab blog accurately afterwards. This is a very long entry, but I hope you'll find it worth the read.

Trying to organize my thoughts on this one. The important thing to remember about this adventure was that it was just that, an adventure. Every time I started thinking about it in a different way, it began to suck, and I'd start to get a little pissed off and grumpy about the whole thing.

Easter is a 4 day weekend here in the UK, with Friday and Monday as holidays. Since Diana is not here yet, I didn't want to spend 4 days couped up in the house here by myself. In looking at options, I thought I'd take the train to Dover and ride the ferry across to Calais, France. I had been reading some books about the hundred Years War and English occupation of Calais from the 13th century, and thought I'd knock around the historical sites some. Just me and a backpack. An adventure.

The London papers and radio/TV had been emphasizing that traffic and transport in general over the long weekend was going to be a mess, as there was a lot of roadwork, as well as engineering work on the subways and trains going on for the weekend. I thought, well. I'm on an adventure, have no specific timetable, I'll take a backpack, book, an MP3 player, a dose of patience and go for it. All three played an important part in my journey!

I'm an early riser, so I was on the tube to London Victoria station by 7:44. Arrived, bought my ticket and had 30 mins for the train. Grabbed a coffee and a sandwich and chilled. Train left on time, wasn't crowded, about 2 hours to Dover Priory station. No prob The Dead are signing "Going down the road feeling bad". Once there, a bus comes by every 30 mins to take you to the ferry port, but it was only about a mile or so, thought I'd stretch my legs and walk. I was on an adventure, and I was going to see what I could see. The Who signing "I wear my war time jacket in the wind and sleet..."

The day was extremely windy, probably 40-50 mph winds, and cold. I know You Rider comes on "March winds will blow all my troubles away". I was prepared, so it wasn't that bad. Had heard that Dover was a nasty port town, but got a very different impression of it. At least the area between the train station and the port seemed rather nice. Below are some pics of Dover Castle and the waterfront area. Click on the pics and they should take you to larger ones.



OK, so I get to the ferry port, and it's packed. The winds had been so high the night before they'd canceled several ferries, so they were backed up. I bought a ticket on the 12:40 ferry, that was scheduled to leave at 1:40. It was now 11:00. My adventure has hit a snag, but nothing big. The biggest downside was that the 1 snackbar at the port was completely overwhelmed by people and the 2 guys working couldn't keep up. I got the last sandwich they had and a cup of coffee and settled in for the wait. Slipped the MP3 player on, read my book. "Let your soul shine ...". Life is OK.

One of my concerns was the ferry crossing. I'm not too proud to admit I'm prone to seasickness, and the wind was extremely strong. However, these are some big-assed ships, holding up to 20 tractor trailers in each. I'm thinking I can make it. Oh, and I knew they'd have a bar, so if necessary, I'd have something to puke up :) A photo of the ferries below



Well the 12:40 ferry finally left about 3:00, and it was packed. However, they did have a bar, with pints of Boddington's for 3 GBP each :) I've found from experience that a little alcohol (not a lot) helps with the seasickness. It numbs your inner ear some (honestly!). Well the crossing was a bit rough, but I was OK. As I hit the head on the ship after we docked, I noticed some others hadn't made it quite so well.

I had made a reservation at a cheap hotel through booking.com, but I really didn't know where it was. Plan was to grab a map at the tourist info place when I got to Calais, about 2:00 pm-ish, and figure it out from there. It was now 5:30 pm and almost of the offices in the ferry port were closed down. There was one open that was labeled "Information" and several of us lined up there, as we could see a guy in the back. I don't know much French, but we soon found out that "Information" translates into "rude French (is that repetitive?) asshole sits behind this window".

Hey, I'm on an adventure, and this is not my first experience with "Information" in France. I was a little bleary from the ferry ride, and had little incentive to wait 30 mins for the bus downtown. I found a map on the wall and thought it was a walkable distance. Stuck in my headphones and I'm off. John Lee signing "boom, boom, boom boom, gonna knock you right down..."

The area around the port in Calais is NOT a good part of town! I was very happy it was still daylight for a while, else I might have ducked into a cafe and called a cab. However, the lord looks after drunks and fools, and I've been both in my life, so I got into the city center of Calais in a little over an hour. But the tunes were excellent!

The center of the town is very pretty, but I had been travleing for 8+ hours now and wanted my hotel. I found the train station, but by this time it was almost 7:00 pm and nothing was open. Figured, ok, I ll just grab a taxi and have them take me to the hotel. As I asked the taxi driver at the station, he laughed, turned around and pointed down the street and said it was 100 meters from here. "Can you answer? yes I can. but what would be the answer to the answer man?"

I'll close on this entry by saying the hotel was better than I was hoping, and I was in a hot shower about 15 minutes later. The trip I had expected to take about 4 hours had taken more than 9 hours. I was tired, hungry and exhausted.

Hey Everyone It's me Diana

This is my last week in the Cary, North Carolina. The boys leave Tuesday afternoon and arrive in London wednesday morning. James is planing to rent a car and drive to the airport that morning
(wish him well) London traffic and driving on the wrong side of the road (hahaha)I think this will be a challenge. James says He'll be fine. I spent Easter week-end in Ga visiting my dad and sister it was a great visit. I hope everyone had a great Easter also. I leave for England thursday evening I have a great friend who will take me to the airport. I can't wait to see James and start my adventure in England. I hope to hear from you all soon. Be safe and live life to the fullest.

Diana comes over for St Patty's Day

For those who don't remember, I'm here in the UK by myself for a couple of months until the doggies can come over. Yes, it's a bit lonely, but I've had some visitors and overall it's been tolerable. These guys are worth it


They are scheduled to leave the US on March 27th and arrive here early the next day. I can't wait. Diana then will depart the US on Mar 27th and arrive here for good on the 28th. Then we'll be a reunited family :)

Anyway, we had scheduled a couple of visits for Diana to come over. We've been together for almost 16 years, and almost 3 months apart has been tough on both of us.

This weekend was her final visit before the 28th. She'll leave on Tuesday and it'll then be 10 days before she comes back.

While here this weekend, we had 1 great day of weather and 1 really crappy day. On the first one, we took the train about 30 minutes out of London to Windsor and Eaton. Windsor is a castle the royal family still uses and it dominates this small town. Here's some info about the castle as a Royal Residence

Across the river is Eaton, where one of the most exclusive colleges in England is. Both towns are very picturesque, although Windsor is a bit touristy.

On Sunday, we went back into London for the St Patrick's Day celebration in Trafalgar Square. They've been shutting the subways down on the weekends for a few weeks to perform track maintenance, but this Sunday the trains were shut down from here as well, so we had to take the buses.

A quick look at a map and where the photos were made (Note: This is a blog technique I'm still working on)

http://picasaweb.google.com/nourider60/StPattySWeekend/photo#map

A double-decker bus is THE way to see London, though today it was so rainy all the windws fogged. We spent a little time at the celebration, then came back home as it was just miserable outdoors. We did stop for lunch and have a pint of Guinness and a bowl of Irish stew to mark the holiday.

Pictures are below. You guys tell me if you like this slide show format. It's the second time I've used it and have no feedback.

Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona dár gcairde agus teaghlach
Happy St. Patrick's Day to our friends and family.

Cassidy's Visit to London

I was thrilled for Cassidy to come over for a few days of her spring break. She was only here for about 3 days, but we did as much as possible during the time. It was a fun, exciting weekend and I thought I'd share some of it.

She arrived on Thursday morning and we spent Thursday with her napping to recover and just walking around Richmond here. I think her highlight of the day was the Spanish tapas place we had dinner at. Cassidy loved it.

Friday we went into London and she felt she had to see Harrads, where Cassidy found something she liked. I finally convinced her it wouldn't fit in her suitcase :)

That evening, we went to see Monty Python's Spamalot in London's west end. What a funny play! Lots of surprises. One thing we had to try was the Monty Python's Holy Grail Ale

Then on Saturday, we went to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. It's a huge tourist event, and we were able to see the new guards march in, the horse guards come by, but once they got inside the gates we couldn't see anything because of the crowds.

The it was off to the houses of Parliament. Westminster Abbey and Big Ben, where Cassidy had to compare her watch for accuracy against the clock. We ran into some friends and had our picture made, then it was off to souvenir shopping. Finally it started to rain and we hopped a double decker bus for a ride across town to the train station.

You can see the slide show with Cassidy's pictures here




Overall we had a great time. I hope she comes back soon.

New Blog Elements

Have been playing around with linking some additional elements into the Blog. You'll now find a Google calendar pinned to the top, which should help you see what's happening with us and what our plans are.

On the right, you'll see a link to the journey planner for transport for London. This is a key site here in finding how to get around London and the best route to get to different sites.

Below that you'll find a link to my LinkedIn profile. If you're not a LinkedIn member, I encourage you to join. It's a great professional networking site and is useful in maintaining touch with past colleagues.

Finally, I've added a Skype button, as we're using this to communicate with people back home. I've bought Skype credit and use it to call landlines and mobiles, and it works well. There's also an IM capabilitiy in it, and it links with video on webcams.

The Beauty of No TV

For those of you who don't know about it, the UK has a TV License requirement. It's about $300 to get a license to own a TV. This funds the BBC.

So you think, ok, $300 is a lot, but then I get a cheap TV and I'm good. NOT! The cheapest TV I've found is about $400 for a 15" flat screen. No tube TVs here anymore. And you have to buy a digital box converter for it. This is all before you add cable and/or satellite subscription on top. On the digital boxes, you get 3-5 channels, all variants of the BBC. woohoo!

Well I've got a deal with another ex-pat who is leaving at the end of this month and will sell me his 32" TV and the digital box for about $400 total, so I'm waiting for that. The box also has a multi-band DVD player in it.

Agagin, for those who don't know, the TV and DVD algorithms here are different, so it's not just a matter of shipping your US stuff over.

So, now I'm without TV. This is not as bad as it sounds. When I was stationed overseas in the 1980s, I actually enjoyed not having TV. Now, I have all of my music on HDD, so I spend all of my time at home listening to my music collection.

This is actually really cool. I've used the iTunes "Party Mix" feature to scan through all of the music (many GBs) and randomly play music.

I imagine all of us have a lot of music on CD, and we listen to very little of it. I think people either tend to listen to whatever is new, or get new stuff and listen to the good old stuff. I probably fall into the latter category. This mix really forces me to listen to my entire collection, including stuff I haven't listened to in years. I'm really enjoying it.

I do have some DVDs I can play onthe computer, and have been downloading some though bittorrent sites. But generally, it's music and books for me. Ahh, the simple life :)

Happy Mum's Day

It's Mother's Day here in England. Actually, they call it Mothering Day, but it's the same concept. Apparently one of the traditions here for Mother's Day is yellow daffodils. That's the traditional flower for it and everyone has a corsage of yellow flowers.

It's another lovely day here as well. Low 50s (about 12 C) and mixed clouds and sun. Apparently February 2008 was the sunniest February on record, which everyone here is blaming on global warming.

So, Happy Mum's day to all you Mum's out there :)