Saturday, May 10, 2008

To England and back...

My mother has been deliberating as to whether she should come out to California for a holiday for some time now. After finding a lot of excuses why not to do it, she finally decided a couple of weeks ago to give it a try. So, at the grand old age of 89, she has made another trip to California.

Since she needed assistance in traveling that far (and who wouldn't at 89) I flew back to the UK to pick her up. In trying to find the most painless way of doing this I decided that flying in and out without spending much time there would be the easiest. That way I wouldn't suffer the disruption of the time change and be jet lagged too much. For the most part that was true, though it was a lot of sitting in airplane seats - and, of course, all of them were in coach class.

So I left San Francisco on Wednesday night, arrived in London on Thursday afternoon, my step-brother brought mum down to Heathrow and we then flew back to San Francisco on Friday morning. We arrived back home in Sacramento on Friday afternoon - all told a 48 hour round trip for me. It wasn't too bad at all, though I don't think I will make a habit of it. Of course, my mum took it all in her stride and didn't have any problems at all. Here we are waiting in Heathrow for our flight...


I flew out to the UK on United and I flew back on Virgin Atlantic. That coupled with my earlier trip in the year on British Airways means I have sampled all the carriers serving that direct San Francisco to London route recently (sorry about my rather large carbon footprint). In these troubled times for the airlines, it was interesting to see how they are coping and what services they are trimming to save money. The best flight, by far, was Virgin. They seem to have maintained a reasonable level of service with an OK meal, a continuous series of snacks and drinks (at no extra charge), and a very good entertainment system. Poor old United on the other hand were by far the worst - an atrociously basic meal, an extra charge for wine and beer, a miserable entertainment system, and no extras (like a glass of water) between dinner and breakfast. The saddest thing was the puny ear-bud style headphones that United give you now, which rendered the entertainment system just about unintelligible so close to the engines as I was.

Sunday, May 04, 2008

Bee Progress

We have gone from famine to feast on the bee front lately. As I already mentioned, I inherited a swarm of bees in one of my empty hives. Furthermore, I had already purchased two packages of bees (a package is a queen plus 2 lbs of bees in a box – all ready for installation in a hive). Well, the packages were delivered last weekend and I installed them in two more hives. So now I have 3 hives of bees in the backyard – that’s a lot of activity, and it might even be illegal (I think you are only allowed 2 hives in the city of Sacramento – but who’s counting).

With all the nice weather this last week and plenty of flowers in the local gardens all is well with the bees and it was a veritable hive of activity in the backyard. They are all surprisingly mild mannered too. So far no aggressive behavior and no stings.


To cap the week off, I went to a bee keeping class last weekend. Dr Eric Mussen from U.C. Davis gave a one day class on Intermediate Beekeeping on Saturday. It was quite the information packed day, he covered a lot of ground and I certainly learned a lot. I only wish I liked honey more - that would make it the perfect hobby.