Olde English Bread Pudding

In recent years I have become a one-dish wonder (this is opposed to my previous career as a zero-dish wonder). Every time I have ever been asked to bring something to a dinner party, pot-luck event or whatever, I have produced a bread pudding.

Many years ago I came across this recipe for Olde English Bread Pudding, and being a big fan of bread pudding, I gave it a try. It was good, actually, even though I say it myself, it was great. So since that time, I have rarely diverged from that standard. With my limited cooking skills, why risk a change when you know something will work out and taste good.

Anyway, for posterity, here is the bread pudding recipe.

½ cup of Sugar
3 Large Eggs
2 cups of Whipping Cream
½ cup of Milk
2 tablespoons of Butter (at least)
½ Loaf of French Bread (day old preferably)
pinch of Salt
1 tablespoon of Vanilla
3 tablespoons of Currants (at least)
¼ cup Apricot Jam
1 tablespoon Grand Marnier (at least)

1. Cut bread into squares and butter lightly (1/2 in to 1 in)
2. Arrange bread in layers in a buttered dish sprinkling with currants as you go
3. Whisk eggs and sugar together until blended
4. Bring Cream, Milk, Salt to boil and remove from heat
5. Gently but constantly whisk egg/sugar mix into cream/milk mix
6. Strain mixture over bread in bowl
7. Add remaining currants and butter to top
8. Bake in bain-marie for 40 mins at 350 or until golden brown.
9. Boil jam and sieve to remove the chunks and stir in Grand Marnier
10. Spread jam and Grand Marnier mix on top of the pudding.


Of course, as you will recognize from the ingredient list – it will taste good, it has to taste good with so much butter, cream, and sugar in it. While there are undoubtedly skills involved in cookery, your degree of success is enhanced if you liberally use these unhealthy ingredients.

A very Happy Christmas to one and all....

Well it is almost a year that I have been writing this blog. When I started I didn’t really expect to keep it going, but I was surprised how I have enjoyed writing it. I have also enjoyed reading other friend’s blogs and it has become a great way to keep in touch.

One of the things I said when I started was that the blog could be viewed as an ongoing Christmas letter – and it can, all the eventful (and so many more of the uneventful) things in my life this past year are here. So this year the Christmas Cards went out and instead of a Christmas letter (which I have never done anyway) I just made a reference to my blog site.

So to everyone a very Happy Christmas (or, if you would prefer, a very p.c. Happy Holidays) and all the very best for 2006. If you are coming here as a result of my Christmas Cards, then welcome and please check back from time to time.

Driving Two Extremes

This week I got to drive a couple of different cars. At the weekend my friend Becky kindly allowed me to drive her Toyota Prius – the most popular of all the hybrid vehicles. I am getting ready to buy a new car and the Prius is right up there on my list so I was keen to take it for a spin. I do so much want to buy a Prius because it is the right thing to do, but I am afraid I found it a bit cramped for my 6ft + frame. The visibility wasn’t great either, though I could get used to that. In all other aspects it is a great vehicle but I just wish it were a tad larger inside.

Then this week I went to Oklahoma City and went from the sublime to the ridiculous. I reserved a Compact car but on arrival I found they were out of that size and so I got upgraded to a Lincoln Town Car. The Lincoln Town Car is a huge boat like gas-guzzling monster that I would be embarrassed to drive down my own street in. But, in Oklahoma City no body knows me so I had a blast cruising down the freeway, in what must be one of the largest saloon cars on the market today.

What a contrast in those two vehicles. It’s not just that the Lincoln is a larger car; it also doesn’t strike me as being well designed or as well made as the Prius. The controls for things like the side mirror adjustments, the lights, the gear shift, etc all seemed a bit clunky and just did not feel like they were built to last. I am afraid that is the feel I get when I get inside most American cars – there is something they just don’t get about good design. That of course is just my humble opinion.

It was interesting to find that in the links to the automobile sites above, the Toyota Prius's catchphrase is "so advanced it makes the future seem obsolete" while the Lincoln Town Car is just the Flag Ship of the Lincoln Fleet. The nautical comparisons are quite appropriate for the Lincoln I think.

The California International Marathon…

This weekend was the highpoint of Sacramento’s running year, the California International Marathon, from the town of Folsom to the steps of the State Capitol in downtime Sacramento.

Now I had planned on running the entire marathon, I was even somewhat trained for it, but for the first time ever, I listened to my body (that’s what everyone tells you to do isn't it?). I had been wrestling with this leg/hip problem for at least 4 weeks and I just couldn’t get things working right. I think the term is – I had a hitch in my giddyup. So I listened to my body and just ran a half of the marathon (as part of two person relay team).

It was just great, 13 miles is my preferred distance anyway - long enough to feel like you have done something, not long enough to damage you for weeks to come. It was perfect conditions for running too - clear, cool and dry. While the winner, a Russian guy, finished the whole 26.2 miles in 2 hrs 18 mins, I turned in a respectable (for me) 1 hr 50 mins for just half that distance. I was well pleased.

It's begining to look a lot like Christmas..

As predicted, after the Thanksgiving weekend, the inflatable turkey on the roof of the house across the street was removed and replaced with a Santa on his sleigh complete with reindeer.

Then the next day it got better with the arrival of an inflatable globe containing various Christmas characters in the front yard. The amazing thing about this device was that it somehow has it's own little snowstorm going on inside the globe - snowflakes are somehow being circulated around the globe.

But that was not all, a couple of days later, a trio of snowmen appeared on the front lawn.

It's just all too weird for me, though I must admit I feel a bit Scrooge-like for poking fun at it. Thank goodness this is the only house on the street that is resorting to this kind of tacky display.

Waiting for George....

I don't know if this got covered anywhere else, but the BBC had a great picture of Navy students waiting to hear from their (and my) illustrious leader. It appears that they were a little more attentive when George was speaking.

The Shipping Forecast

I have just been reading a book on that strangest of all BBC Radio phenomenon - something that warms the heart of many a Brit of my generation – The Shipping Forecast. For the benefit of the American readers, the Shipping Forecast is a weather forecast for mariners that is broadcast four times a day on BBC radio (you can get it on the internet now too). While it’s intended audience was sea farers around the British Isles, it has become something much more than that and it is now equally important to many of us that have no connection with the sea at all - important not for its weather predictive capabilities, but for its comforting reassurance that all is still well in the United Kingdom (even though the weather may be foul).

The Shipping Forecast has been broadcast on the BBC since the 1930’s and it continues today even though a ship at sea must now have far better weather forecasting technology available to it. It is something I grew up with as did many of my generation and while I don’t really pay attention to the content, the words area almost poetic – “Thames, Dover, Wight – south westerly veering north westerly five or six, decreasing four. Rain then showers. Moderate with fog patches, becoming good”.

The book "Attention All Shipping" by Charlie Connolly is mainly a travelogue of the authors travels around the various sea areas in the Shipping Forecast, and I don’t know if I could recommend it, so to save you the trouble of reading it here is all you might ever need to know about the Shipping Forecast.

• It is produced by the Meteorological Office from a building in land-locked Bracknell of all places.

• The Met Office was created by Captain Fitzroy, who was the Captain of the Beagle for Darwin’s journey to the Galapagos (guess who else was on board – a scientist named Beaufort – the originator of the Beaufort Wind Scale).

• Fitzroy pioneered many of the early weather prediction methods and first coined the term “Weather Forecast”.

• The Forecast is a carefully crafted piece from 350 to 370 words long, read very precisely to fit into the allotted time slot on the radio.

• It is broadcast four times a day on Radio Four (00:48, 05:35, 12:01, 17:54) (it used to be on the Light Programme when I was a kid).

• There were originally 13 sea areas but now we have a total of 31 - check out the map.

• The forecast describes each area or group of areas in three sections – winds; weather; and visibility. For example, "Forties, Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger South veering southwest 4 or 5. Rain or showers. Moderate or good."

There was apparently much uproar in the UK when in 2002 the old sea area of Finisterre (off the north west coast of Portugal) was renamed Fitzroy in recognition of Captain Fitzroy’s contributions. People apparently got quite passionate about disrupting this age old tradition.

These days I take great comfort in hearing the Shipping Forecast on Radio Four over the Internet whilst I am comfortably tucked away in my house in California. I particularly like the 00:48 GMT broadcast where it is preceded with the music Sailing By (written by the British Composer and fellow Derbyshire resident Ronald Binge – what a name, and what absolutely awful light music).

New Orleans...

Another unexpected and short business trip this week - this time to New Orleans. My business was in Houma outside of New Orleans but I arrived early enough to take a quick drive into the city to see what the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina looked like.

The first thing you notice flying into New Orleans is the large number of blue roofed houses. FEMA have a blue roof program, which, as I understand it, provides a temporary blue plastic covering for damaged roofs on buildings that are going to be rehabilitated. There were a lot of blue roofs around the airport.

Driving into New Orleans, on the city streets rather than the freeway, there was dramatic evidence of what the storm and subsequent floods had done. Entire neighbourhoods devastated and for the most part deserted of people. Streets filled with all manner of debris – household, automobile and plant matter. Water and mud stained vehicles damaged beyond repair. Houses forsaken by their occupants each tagged with painted symbols denoting that they had been checked (presumably for human and animal contents). No businesses were open and no one was living there (as far as I could tell).

Moving out of the poorer neighbourhoods and into the downtown area there was more activity and signs of life but still nothing close to what you would call normal. In the French Quarter the damage didn’t look to be so bad, but there were very few people. I parked on Jackson Square with no difficulty (something you normally would never be able to do). I went to one of the few businesses open – the Café Du Monde for beignets and coffee. This is quite the tourist trap in normal times but that afternoon, the wait staff outnumbered the customers.

Traveling out the other side of the city to the east, the neighbourhoods became poorer again and the damage again became more significant. Block after block of debris strewn streets and deserted houses. Presumably these neighbourhoods will all be bulldozed – it just doesn’t look feasible to salvage any of them.

Strange, there was no smell. I expected to smell the rot and decay but that afternoon there was a strong breeze and the air smelled fresh.

I don’t know how you rebuild after something like that. There were many painted signs indicating that “the residents will be back and New Orleans will live on”. But whatever it becomes it won’t be the same. The French Quarter was already too much of a manufactured tourist experience for me. I can only imagine that it will get more so.

Here are some photos....











And of course, in the French Quarter, it doesn't look so bad.

My ride home...

This evening I was driving home and someone bumped into the back of me (in their car that is). It wasn’t anything too bad, but we both pulled over to the side of the road and got out. It was then that I saw the lady in the offending car was on her cell phone. The accident was apparently so inconsequential to her that she was still carrying on her phone conversation while we were stood outside our cars. I said that perhaps we should exchange information and she stopped talking long enough to give me her driver’s license (I am not sure she should have done that, but she did) and then she just continued on with her phone conversation.

Now I find that amazing on so many levels – that she should be as so impolite as to continue a conversation after being at fault in an accident, however minor, - that she should be so stupid as to let everyone know that she was perhaps not giving her full attention to driving the car at the time of the accident.

On inspection there was no real damage, at least not to my car, and so we continued on our way – me puzzled at what a strange and rude world this is, her probably just wondering who she can call next.

The Holiday Season on 10th Avenue

It’s that time of year again when my neighbours across the street place inflatable dolls on their roof - a giant pumpkin for Halloween, a turkey for Thanksgiving and then a snowman for Christmas. It’s all quite unusual for our street which is normally quite unadorned even at Chrismas time. But a couple of years ago, some new folk arrived across the street, and they have this inflatable doll thing going on. I don’t know them at all (unusual in itself) and they seem quite reserved and private in every other way (I never see them talking to other neighbours on the street) and they don’t have children (so it’s not for the kids). Nevertheless, right on schedule, just before Halloween, the blow up pumpkin goes on the roof. The day after Halloween, the pumpkin is replaced by a turkey and then right after Thanksgiving we get the snowman.

I used to fantasize about getting a gun and shooting holes in them, but I realize they are those constantly inflating devices and you need a really big hole to deflate them – a shotgun might do it. But then I don’t have (and never will have) a gun so it’s just a fantasy. It’s probably not a good idea anyway.

Here are some photos.




Oh, I forgot to mention – at night they are illuminated!

Houston Texas

I made a quick trip to Houston this week - in one day and out the next. Every time I visit Houston I am impressed by the shear size of the place and the number of people there. This last week there were more people there than usual. With a significant number of refugees from Hurricane Katrina already in town, last week we added some 5,000 quilters for a quilting conference and untold numbers of baseball fans for the World Series of Baseball. I struggled to find a hotel and ended up staying in less than salubrious accommodations on the southwest side of town.

Fortunately there were no reported incidents of drunken quilters armed with needles attacking unsuspecting baseball fans and, although the Houston Astros lost the World Series to the Chicago White Sox, we at Infostat gained a new customer. Congratulations to the White Sox, once again an American team clinches victory in the World Series of Baseball.

Another Weekend, Another Run...

This Sunday it was the Nike Women’s Marathon and Half Marathon in San Francisco. Although it was a Women’s race in name, they did allow males and I entered the Half Marathon. The course was a nice tour of San Francisco – starting at Union Square, moving down to the Embarcadero, through the Marina district, through the Praesidio and over the hill to Golden Gate Park and then finishing by the Ocean.

Of course any run in San Francisco has to deal with hills and we had our fair share. I have never seen this before, but at the top of the 1 mile hill from the Bay up over to the Pacific side, they had an Oxygen station. A series of oxygen masks to help you catch your breath after the climb I guess - I didn’t see too many takers and I didn’t participate. Apparently this is a service you can get in certain bars these days.

At the finish line, being a women’s race sponsored by Nike and Tiffany (the jewelers), we each were presented with a Tiffany necklace and a Nike shirt that was a shade of light blue that was just a little too feminine for my liking. That's what you get for entering a woman's race - there are other benefits however.

Shana Morrison

Saturday Evening I saw Shana Morrison (Van Morrison’s daughter) and her band (Caledonia) play. The band was excellent, and Shana wasn’t too bad either – she has a very strong voice and tends to wail a bit too much for my liking, but, all in all, it was a good show – I particularly liked the 2 or 3 of her dad’s songs that she did.

Dallas, Texas

I just spent a couple of nights in Dallas this week on a quick business trip. I had not been to Dallas for a long time (in the early 90’s I used to visit quite a lot) and I realize that I haven’t missed it one little bit.

When I got in my rental car at the airport, I was struck by the number of religious radio stations at the bottom end of the FM dial. Usually when I get into a rental car I tune the radio in to the local NPR station and, without exception, these all seem to be at the bottom end of the dial. In Dallas it seemed like there was an awful lot competition from religious stations in that part of the spectrum. Not that there is anything wrong with that but it did make me realize that I was in the Bible belt.

The other thing I noticed was the frigid air conditioning in my hotel room. It is just another characteristic of Texas as far as I can see - warm muggy weather outside, and frigid air-conditioning inside. My hotel room was particularly extreme in this respect. I wore a sweater in the room, and took it off when I went outside.

Another issue I had, and I don’t mean to be picking on Texas, but when I came to the rental car counter I was offered my choice of a compact Chevrolet for $69 per day, or a Hummer for $99 per day. Now I have never been offered that before, and I bet you can’t get rental Hummers in Sacramento at all, never mind at only a $30 premium over a Chevy. There’s just something wrong about that.

That’s just a few of my gripes about Texas, I am back home in California now, where I know where my NPR station is and where I can control my air conditioning and where I can still grumble about Hummers.

The Bizz Johnson Marathon

This last weekend I ran perhaps the best marathon I have ever run. It wasn’t the best in the way of a personal best time, in fact it was quite slow, but it was the most scenic one I have ever done. It was the Bizz Johnson Marathon in Susanville. It was a trail marathon on an old railroad bed that was just stunningly beautiful from start to finish.

The Bizz Johnson Trail is more normally a mountain bike trail that winds down from just outside Westwood to Susanville. The nice thing about running down an old rail road track is, one it is in the down direction, and two none of the grades are very extreme (a steam train cannot go up or down and steep grades so everything is nice and gentle). The tunnels were pretty cool (in more ways than one) to run through too.

I have never really spent much time in the North Eastern part of California, but the area is quite beautiful and, being in a remote corner of the state, it is not as developed as some of the other areas. So nothing but rave reviews of the Redwood Trails marathon in Susanville, and equally good reviews of the Bizz Johnson trail and Susanville (worth another visit and perhaps a cycle trip down the trail next time).

Eliza Gilkyson

Eliza Gilkyson played at The Palms in Winters last night. It was a great show and I higly recommend her music. The Palms is surely one of the treasures of this area, I can think of no other club that offers such a small intimate venue to see such great music – unsurpassed not even in the Bay Area, to my knowledge.

I didn’t know much about Eliza, other than she had a great voice and that she did a wonderful track on that Nod To Bob album of a few years back to commemorate Bob Dylan’s 60th birthday (a great album by the way). I thought Eliza was some young upstart singer from Austin, but, no, she was my age, an old gal who has been around for quite some time (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Her encore song was a sing along version of “Bear Necessities” from the soundtrack of Disney’s Jungle Book. It worked great – and as I later found out (I know I need to get a life instead of searching the internet for the music to Disney songs) Bear Necessities was written by Eliza’s father, Terry Gilkyson,. I guess the musical talent was passed on in the genes.

No Direction Home

How I enjoyed the Bob Dylan documentary No Direction Home the last couple of nights. I really reminded me what a prolific a writer he was in those early days - the songs just seemed to pour out of him and he was moving forward at such an amazing speed. It kind of reinforced my feelings that he wasn't a very political person; he just wrote the anthems of our age and, while he no doubt cared about stuff, he perhaps wasn’t as committed to the political struggle as were his early mentors Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger or even Joan Baez. What didn’t come across too was his sense of humour, he just does not appear to have a great sense of humour - the interviews with him were, for the most part, pretty dry stuff.

It also showed what an immense burden was placed on him, in those days – he writes these wonderful songs like Blowing in the Wind, The Times they are a’Changin’, etc, etc and everyone expected him to be the spokesman for our age. That’s a lot to expect of someone in his early 20’s who just happens to have a knack for writing great songs.

I loved all his stuff back then, I still love it now and yes, I agree "Like a Rolling Stone" is the best song of all time....

San Pablo Bay Trail Run

Today I ran the San Pablo Bay Half Marathon – a trail run down in China Camp State Park (near San Rafael). It was one of the races put on by the Redwood Trails group. They are a pretty informal group (I think it might be one guy with a few helpers that put on a series of trail runs in and around the Bay Area). They are a low budget thing as far as aid stations and facilities go but the races aren’t large (perhaps only 100 or so in the Half Marathon) so there’s perhaps not much money in it.


Nonetheless, this race was great. The trails were good, the views of the San Francisco Bay were wonderful and the weather was perfect. China Camp State Park is a beautiful area, just a stone’s throw from San Rafael and San Francisco. I had never been there before and never thought that there was anything quite that wild on remote so close to the city. Well worth a visit, though I think it is the domain of the mountain bikers at the weekend - so be careful.

The not so Great North Run (for some)...

This last weekend was The Great North Run in Newcastle, England. It is a half marathon distance run that generates a lot of interest and of the order of 50,000 entrants. I did it a few years back, me and Paula Radcliffe, though I didn’t see much of her, she was up front somewhere.

Anyway, in this year’s event, a total of four people died. That’s a lot of casualties for one race - probably a combination of a warm day, unprepared runners and a bit of bad luck. Anyway, it is more fuel to those who think this running game is not entirely the best thing for someone (especially for someone of my age) but I am having none of it.

Running at the extremes...

My interest was piqued by an article on the BBC site yesterday about a 3 year old marathon runner from India. It is a tragic and sad story about a young boy of 3 and ½ years who is being coached to run long distances (as much as 30 miles at a time) with a view to getting him in the Guinness Book of Records. Now there are all sorts of warnings about young children not running long distances until their bone structure is fully developed, but that doesn’t seem to be an issue for this young lad’s owner (yes owner – the unfortunate child has been twice traded for $20 and is now owned by someone who is out to exploit his running skills).

In my industry, we hear so much about the booming Indian economy and the educated work force in places like Bangalore that we forget that India is still very much a caste-based society where some less than savoury things, like the trading of young children, go on. I wonder whether we will be seeing this young runner, Budhia Singh is his name, competing in Boston in about 20 years time. I very much doubt it.

Indians don’t usually have a reputation for long distance running, but there was another article on a marathon runner from India at the other end of the age spectrum. A 94 year old ran in the Edinburgh Marathon this year. He has the over 90 world record at 5hrs 40 minutes set in Toronto. Running in your 90’s seems a bit more inspirational than running as an infant.

The Ashes return to England.

I couldn’t let it pass without a comment. As you all must certainly know by now, England won the latest Test series against Australia and regained The Ashes. You can read all about it on the BBC.

Perhaps some of you on this side of the Atlantic were not quite as tuned into this epic cricket match between England and Australia that has been captivating the English all summer. Yes all summer – there are 5 matches each of 5 full days, so it is by no means a trivial exercise.

Also perhaps some of you are wondering what "The Ashes" are – well they are (allegedly) the burnt remains of a set of cricket bails encased in a small urn. They mark the first win by Australia against England in a Test series in 1882 and are symbolic of what was thought at the time, by the Australians at least, to be the “death of English cricket”. Fortunately it wasn’t the death of English cricket and England and Australia have been fighting over The Ashes ever since.

With the win yesterday (actually it was a draw in the match but a win in the series), there has been much joy and jubilation in the country - the St George's Cross has been flying, the patriotic hymn Jerusalem has been sung, and more than a few beers have been drunk, I am sure.

Bees Make Honey....

This weekend I took the top box off my bee hive and retrieved 10 perfect full frames of honey.

The bees were amazingly calm. I was fully suited and I had the smoker ready but I didn’t really need any of that. The bees calmly accepted me removing frames one at a time and carefully brushing them off. This is such a far cry from my hive of a few years back – they were so aggressive I couldn’t even get close to the hive without getting stung. Now I can remove frames without any worries. The difference, apparently, is the Russian queen I purchased a couple of years ago. At least this Russian queen has calmer offspring.

So now the kitchen is overtaken by the honey extraction process. Since I don’t have an extractor (a centrifugal device) I just mash up the honey comb – wax and honey and all - and filter it through a mesh into a big bucket from where it is bottled.

At approximately 5 lbs per frame that will be 50 lbs of honey. What on earth am I going to do with all that? I don’t really like honey that much. So let me know if you want some!

The fat boy runs....

After my extended stay in the UK where I participated all too much in the local fare (don’t let them tell you that English food is bad, a little unhealthy maybe, but by no means bad), I started back with a run last night.

When I run I normally wear a water bottle in a pack around my waist. Much to the amusement of all, the belt required considerable extension to make fit around my apparently wider girth. It was a bit of a struggle, but I made it through a slow 8 miles. Not bad after such a long layoff.

On the bike again..

The first thing I wanted to do when I got back was go for a motorcycle ride. I had really missed that. So on Monday, the Labour Day holiday, I took a trip up north to Oroville and then up into the Sierras to the town of Quincy. The road up to Oroville is nothing remarkable – straight as a die through rice fields and fruit orchards but Highway 162 from Oroville to Quincy is a wonderful motorcycle road - sparse traffic, and with the exception of a few rough spots in the mid section an excellent road surface with lots of nice curves. Every now and again you find these remarkable roads in the middle of nowhere through difficult terrain with such an excellent surface and it always leaves me wondering where they got the money from to pay for it all.

Quincy itself is also quite a nice town. A little remote perhaps and maybe really remote in winter time, but at this time of year a really pleasant mountain town. A little hippyish, a little artsyish, a nice atmosphere to it. The high point was a wonderful lunch in a coffee shop – restaurant – beer bar – music venue combination called Pangaea. I highly recommend it if you are in the neighbourhood.

Back in the U.S. of A....

After almost 5 weeks I am now back in the USA. Things with mum appear to be getting better and I left her in the, hopefully, capable hands of social workers, friends and family.

Since I left there have been a continuous stream of people showing up at the door so she has not been short of company. Regretfully, though they have the best of intentions, the Social Workers have been failing her with poor communications between the various groups (a local group and a district rehabilitation group) and limited availability of staff. On Sunday morning, someone showed up to get her up and dressed, but was apparently waiting for someone to answer the door (the door was unlocked) before they entered which sounds more than a little disconcerting when the whole purpose of the visit was to get my mum out of bed! On Monday, two people showed up each not aware of the others visit.

I have faith that it will all settle down with time and that my mum has enough additional support from family and friends to tide her through this initial period until the Social Services gets its act together.

Yet another UK update.

I am reaching the end of what will be my longest stay in the UK since the 1970’s. While the circumstances of my visit were not the best, many aspects of the trip were surprisingly quite enjoyable. I have rediscovered so many things that I appreciate about the "old country".

Before I leave I am learning the ins and outs of the UK Social Services and what they can do for my mother. So far I have been quite impressed. There is a concerted effort to maintain an older people’s ability to live in their own homes rather than place them in nursing homes. After my mother was released from the hospital, the Hospital Social Services group takes over and they move in with a “rehabilitation team” to get my mother back to as high a level of independence as possible. Initially they are going to visit her 4 times a day, once to get her up in the morning, once to prepare lunch, once again for an evening meal, and again at the end of the day to get her ready for bed. As she becomes more capable, and hopefully she will, they will drop off visits until she is stabilized and at that time the local Social Services department in Staveley, my mother’s home town, will take over with the routine visits. So that is up to 4 visits a day to provide assistance with dressing, bathing, feeding to allow an individual to remain independent in their own home. And all at no cost! The benefits of socialized medicine and care!

So that is the plan for my mum – so far there have been a few hiccups and miscommunications, but I am hopeful that all will work as intended. I don’t know a lot about how things work in the U.S.A. but I am doubtful that it would work quite as well, and I am certain it wouldn’t be entirely free. I will have to check up on that.

Out of Hospital...

After 3 ½ weeks, my mother was finally released from hospital today, She is now much better and hopefully just needs time now to recuperate and to get back some of her mobility. After spending most of the last 4 weeks in a bed, she is understandably a bit shaky on her feet.

So for me 3 weeks of hospital visits come to an end. In many ways it was kind of sad to say goodbye to everyone at the hospital. The patients who all wanted to go home themselves but weren’t quite as lucky. The nurses who perform such a heroic job of caring for the patients - my hats off to them. The other visitors who came each day just like me. The doctors who all seemed so young to me (once upon a time a doctor was very much an older person, now it seems that they are barely out of their teens. Anyway, it was all quite a community at the hospital. I am grateful to have been a part of it for a while.

Bolsover Castle

I am continuing to explore the historical past of my home town area. The other day, I went to visit Bolsover Castle. A dominant feature of the landscape around here, but a place that I hadn’t visited since junior school days. The castle has been there in some form or another since Norman times (12 Century), but the present day structure mostly dates from the 1600’s when it was rebuilt as the country home of William Cavendish a big buddy of Charles the First (the one who got his head chopped off!). After the Civil War it wasn’t such a good thing to be a buddy of King Charles, so William had to exile himself to Holland.

The castle has been restored and it is a quite wonderful site now. Hats off to English Heritage for doing a great job in the renovation and providing a great guided tour. I am finding it quite fascinating to re-discover all the old history of this area of Derbyshire. There is so much of interest here and I never really paid any attention to it before.

An Archaeological Dig in Staveley

The old hall in Staveley (my home town) is hosting an archaeological dig in its grounds. The hall has been around for a long time – an early incarnation of the structure is mentioned in the Doomsday Book of 1066. It has undergone various construction periods over the years, perhaps reaching its prime in the Civil War period (1600’s).


At this dig, they have two or three proper archaeologists and the rest is volunteer help. Anyone can show up and after a bit of orientation can work away with a shovel or trowel to unearth the treasures of Staveley’s past. There have not been a lot of discoveries so far – some pottery and glass fragments, animal teeth and bones from the old kitchen and some old pathways, but who knows what secrets lie hidden there...

It is nice to see the community getting involved in discovering Staveley’s past. In my time growing up there, most of us couldn’t wait to get out. We weren’t interested in the unearthing the past.

Sutton Scarsdale Hall

I was early for my hospital visit the other day so I took a detour to the village of Sutton Scarsdale, a couple of miles from the hospital. In Sutton Scarsdale there is an impressive building that would perhaps be classed as a stately home, if a stately home can be a ruin. A grand residence built in the 1700’s for xxx and occupied by various residents through the years. There are rumors that one owner was the model for Sir Clifford Chatterley in D.H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterly’s Lover (D.H. Lawrence being a local lad).

The hall was sold off in 1919 to be stripped of its contents and to be used for building materials. Some of the interiors were shipped to the USA and apparently still reside there in museums in Los Angeles and Philadelphia. Now all that remains of the hall is a bare shell – just the masonry, no windows, no doors.

It must have been impressive in its day, it is still quite a structure.

Another UK Update

I am now into my third week over here in England. Mum is getting slowly better. She still has to undergo one more procedure to remove an errant gall stone and then the doctors think they will be able to release her. The operation (a non-surgical endoscopy) is slated for next Wednesday. Then the challenge will be to get her back on her feet and moving around again after what will have been over three weeks in bed.

So things are looking up and mum is certainly more lively and cheerful. However, her neighbour in the next bed is not doing so well and is not expected to survive for long and that makes for an uncomfortable contrast. Yesterday, Friday, at my mum's bed we were all laughing out loud at some humorous thing, I don’t know what, and I looked up to see one of the family members crying at the next bed – just 6 feet away. That made for some very strange, almost guilty, feelings. We were all so happy at one bed and they were so close to us and so desperately sad.

But life goes on in the hospital, this afternoon (Saturday), I arrived there and the neighbour’s bed was empty, all tidy with clean sheets and ready for the next occupant. She had passed away in the early morning lying in the next bed to my mother – very sad and very creepy indeed.

Hello there, sports fans....

What a great couple of weeks of sport over here in the UK - at least my kind of sport anyway.

First, two truly fine Test Matches between England and Australia. For those American’s reading this who are not cricket fans, a Test Match is an international cricket match typically lasting 5 days with so many nuances and fine points that I couldn’t begin to explain (but check this link out). Suffice it to say that the matches were amazing and the entire country has been so enthralled by the games that we hardly noticed the start of football season (U.S. translation = soccer) last weekend.

Then we had the World Championship of Athletics in Helsinki. Last weekend we had full coverage of both the Men’s (Saturday) and the Women’s (Sunday) marathons on the BBC. That was start to finish coverage of both races with no advertising. That would never happen in America, over 2 hours each day of people running through the streets! Not even ESPN 7 or 8 or whatever number they are up to now would have found time for that.

The really sad thing is that I bet no one in the US even knew that the Athletics World Championships were taking place. What a shame.

Is she a chav or an angel….

The Oxford English Dictionary came out with some interesting statistics this week. In English you have many more ways of insulting someone than praising them, and if you are a man you have more word choices for describing an attractive woman, than a woman has for describing a handsome man. There are apparently some 350 words in the dictionary that are insulting while there are only 40 words that could be considered complimentary. There are 50 words to describe an attractive woman and only 20 ways to describe a good looking man.

In the latter situation, I don’t think it is because there are so few good looking men around, I think it is that men are just more imaginative (out of desperation) when describing the female of the species, whilst women just couldn’t care less.

By the way, if you don't know what a chav is (I didn't but likely every UK resident does) , it is a "young lower-class person typified by brash and loutish behaviour and the wearing of [real or imitation] designer clothes".

Guy Fawkes' 400th Anniversary

There was an interesting article in The Guardian the other day – pointing out the similarities between Guy Fawkes and his 17th Century religious terrorists and the present day London bombers. A few details might have been stretched or omited to make a good story but the basic premise was that the Catholics were the Muslims of 1605.

So for example:
• Guy Fawkes (a Catholic) represented an extreme and minority fringe of the Catholic Church
• King James (a Church of England man) was proud of his tolerance of Catholicism (he was a multi-culturalist)
• Guy Fawkes like the present day bombers was British born, but went overseas for training.
• After the failed attack, King James authorized a bit of a crack down on the poor old Catholics and they were persecuted and shut out for quite a long time. In fact, the Catholics didn’t gain acceptance again until the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829. That's 200 years!

There are certainly some interesting comparisons here. Are there lessons to be learned? Surely we do not want to go down the same path towards isolation of the Muslims as we did with the Catholics in 1605.

What is also interesting is that this year is the 400 year anniversary of Guy Fawkes and his failed attack on the British Parliament. We seem to celebrate anniversaries at the drop of a hat these days, yet, this core part of every English child’s upbringing is hardly getting a mention on its 400th birthday. (For those Americans who don't know about this, on November 5th every year, the English celebrate Bonfire night with fireworks, a bonfire and the burning of an effigy of Guy Fawkes on top of the fire.)

I suppose it would be a little odd to make a big deal about this sort of event these days and I suppose, in a way, we do celebrate it every year on November 5th.

An update from England...

I have been over in the UK for almost a week now and I am sort of settling in to the time change and the routine now. It has been a week of hospital visits and nothing much else really. Mum was and still is pretty weak – at the ripe old age of 86 you don’t quite bounce back to health very easily. The doctors think they have found the reason for all her problems – nothing to do with the fall she had – they discovered a liver infection that had likely been causing all sorts of problems for her in the last few weeks.

A drain in her side and a cocktail of antibiotics and pain killers appear to be doing the trick - although it all appears to be happening very slowly.

On the positive side, it is good for me (and for anyone really) to be around the hospital environment for a while. It helps remind me of what, most likely, we all have to look forward to if we live beyond our 70’s. Medical science has done wonderful things for curing so many problems, but there are still so many chronic diseases that cannot be cured but only ameliorated with pain killers, anti-coagulants, insulin, etc. The quality of life just does not look that great for so many of these patients. The lucky ones are those that still have their mental facilities, I guess.

UK Bound

I am off to the UK again – my mum is in hospital after a fall - hopefully she will be alright, nothing is broken but at the present time she is just not recovering very well.

So here I am in SFO waiting for the Virgin flight to Heathrow – 10 hours of blissfully comfortable travel I am sure!

It is peak travel time and I had to buy a ticket on short notice. It took a fair bit of digging around on the internet but I finally found something reasonable – by reasonable I mean less that $1,000 (actually $990) – that’s probable very reasonable for short notice at this time of year.

It is surprising how all the various multi-site searches like Expedia or SideStep or Priceline or CheapTickets all give different pricing answers to the same flights. You would thing they are all searching similar databases, but all the results are different. Priceline turned out to be the cheapest this time (last time it was the British Airways home site). There just doesn’t seem to be one place to go for the best deal, you have to try them all and see what anomalies pop out.

Mt Shasta

This weekend we (George, Brian, Paul and I) went up to Northern California to climb Mt Shasta. Shasta is a beautiful mountain, one of the southerly volcanoes in the Cascade range. At 14,162 ft it is also one of the higher mountains in the lower 48.

We were climbing the Avalanche Gulch route and there are two common ways of doing this – one is to pack in quite a long way up to Helen’s Lake at 10,000 ft and overnight there before going up to the summit. The other is to pack in a short way to the Sierra Club hut at Horse Camp at 7,800 ft and then do a lengthier ascent to the summit from there. So the trade off is the distance you have to carry a heavy pack up the hill to camp at Helen’s Lake, versus the length of your ascent on the summit. Acclimatization also comes into it to as you have a longer time to adjust to altitude if you stay overnight at Helen’s Lake. We were divided - Brian and Paul started out Thursday and went up to Helen’s Lake, while George and I went in to Horse Camp on Friday (the thought of carrying a heavy pack all the way up the hill was too much hard work for me).

There is another of advantage of taking the Horse Camp route in that it makes for a shorter overall trip and when you have to pack out everything from the mountain, and I mean absolutely everything, then shorter is better. If you want to know just how you pack out everything then check out this link.

So it was an early start on Saturday morning - a very early start. We were on the trail by 1:00 am under the light of a full moon. The idea was to get up the hill before the sun turned the snow to mush making it too hard to climb and before it loosened too many rocks to come tumbling down on our heads. The going was pretty good, though going uphill at that altitude is never really very easy. We arrived at Helen’s Lake around 5:00 am, joined Brian and Paul and started out on the hardest bit of the climb – up from Helen’s Lake to a band of rocks called Red Banks – Red Banks because they are… brown, well at least a reddish brown anyway.

The full moon and the view down the hill just as the sun was rising.

Approaching the bottom of Red Banks as the sun was rising.

Looking down towards Helen's Lake and from where we came from the top of Red Banks.

The sun had just risen by the time we poked our heads out of Red Banks and I was pretty exhausted. Still once past Red Banks the worst is over and it was on up to the summit up something called Misery Hill. Misery Hill is very aptly named, it’s a slog up to a false summit through very loose scree, and it is nothing other than shear misery. Once you reach the top you can then see the real summit and that gives you the inspiration to carry on that little bit further. We reached the top around 10:30 after 9 ½ hours of uphill grind.

On the summit!

The way down is of course much easier and when the snow conditions are right, as they were, you can just sit down and slide down the hill. When a few people do it over the same course, tubes form in the snow and it is like shooting down a giant slide. Allegedly you stay in control using your ice axe but sometimes I was going so fast, I wonder how in control I was. Whatever it was certainly a fun way down.

For me I was then afflicted by some nausea, fatigue, headache thing that I can only attribute to the altitude. I just felt really bad for a while and just wanted to curly up and sleep (which I did when I got to Helen’s Lake) but then it disappeared when I went further down the hill. Everything except the fatigue that is – I was pretty exhausted after what turned out to be a total of 17 hours out on the trail.

Yours truly after it was all over.

It was fun, but it was really hard work. For the second time in my life, I resolved to never ever do that again. I have been up the summit of Shasta three times now, I think that’s enough.

The March of the Penguins

I went to see a very nice film this weekend – The March of the Penguins - it is a wonderful film about Emperor Penguins and their long treks over the Antarctic ice to procreate. The story of these wonderful animals is amazing and it is told with equally amazing photography.

The penguin’s story is so heroic - the long trek across the ice in single file to the place they were born, the finding of a mate, the protection of the egg and then the chick from the cold, and the long treks back to the sea to get food. The really amazing bit is the male’s role in keeping the eggs protected from the cold by huddling together in a group with the eggs balanced on their feet while storms rage around them. They keep this up without food for much of the Antarctic winter while the females go off to find food.

You cannot help but anthropomorphize these animals; they suffer all kinds of hardships and deprivations in one of the most hostile environments. They struggle through all this with great resolve, a little humor (at least it appears so to us humans), a lot of love and often some sadness and at the end of it all there is a cute little penguin covered in downy feathers.

Highly recommended to anyone.

Who makes these lists...

I was dismayed to learn that yet again another moderate Muslim was refused entry to the U.S. yesterday. His name was on a list of inadmissible persons. Sheikh Dr. Zaki Badawi, who has a honorary knighthood in the U.K., who was even invited to a State dinner for George Bush by Queen Elizabeth, who just last week stood up and condemned terrorism, was yesterday prevented from entering the U.S.

Last year it was Cat Stevens, or Yusuf Islam as he is now known, who was refused entry, now Dr. Badawi. What message does this send to Muslims everywhere, when their moderate leaders are being denied access.

A little motorcycle ride...

Some great motorcycle roads this weekend – Highway 128 from Winters over to the Napa Valley, Skaggs Spring Road from Geyserville on 101 over to the Coast, Highway 1 south on the Coast to Bodega and finally the Oakville Grade Road from Sonoma Valley over to the Napa Valley. Some of the best scenery in California and really good fun to ride. My favorite bit was the Skaggs Spring Road which I had never been on before.

Again I was struck with how nice the area around Sebastopol is – a great climate, none of Sacramento’s heat, quite rural and yet still close enough to San Francisco and all the city things. And, unfortunately, I was again struck with how unremarkable Sacramento is. I never seem to come back to Sacramento and think – what a beautiful place Sacramento is. Certainly it has it’s good points and certainly it is my home but it is not scenic, it is not spectacular in any way, and it pales at the side of the country I saw at the weekend, and, above everything else, way above everything else, at this time of year, it is too damed hot (way over 100 degrees today).

Oh the shame...

Last Friday, I happened upon the chance to ride in a Hummer Limo. I had been invited to a friend’s (actually more a friend of a friend’s) art gallery opening. We met at the artist’s house in Sacramento and then to everyone’s surprise this huge Hummer Limo arrived to take everyone to the gallery (it was a surprise gift for the artist). This thing had to be seen to be believed – a stretched version of a Hummer, that most tasteful and economical of all vehicles (and most despised too) with an interior décor right out of a third-rate Reno Casino.

So we all rode to Davis in this machine and it emptied us out into the streets of downtown Davis – now Davis to those who don’t know is the most liberal and “green” community in the area and this is saying something. So it is decidedly un-cool to arrive in Davis in such a vehicle. Whatever – it was a pretty fun ride, and something worth doing just once. Oh and the art was pretty good too.

The Entente Cordiale suffers another blow...

French President Jacques Chirac dealt another blow to Anglo-French cooperation today when he was overheard saying to Gerhard Schroeder and Vladimir Putin a couple of humourous things about the British.

"One cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad..."

"The only thing they have ever done for European agriculture is mad cow disease..."

"After Finland, it is the country with the worst food..."

Pretty funny for a President, apparently Vladimir and Gerhard were rolling with laughter. I think if I were Finnish I would be really upset.

Alaska Trip Statistics

Just in case this is of interest to anyone (and I don't know why it really would be) but here are some mileage and gasoline consumption statistics from my recent road trip to Alaska.

I rode a total of 4,981 miles, using 121 US gallons of gasoline (that would be Premium gasoline, being a BMW, the bike likes only the most expensive of gasolines!). So the average consumption rate was only 41.2 mpg. That's not as good as I would have expected. The cheapest gas was $2.32 per gallon in Springfield, Oregon. Canadian gas was, of course, more expensive with the most expensive being the equivalent of $3.53 per gallon in Ft Nelson, British Columbia. The most expensive gas in the USA was $2.86 per gallon in Mt Shasta City, California.

I am surprised that I even have this kind of information but I started logging it and kept up with it over the whole trip. Maintaining and analysing this kind of information is a bit sad really, there were so many wonderful things about the trip and here I am blathering on about gasoline usage! So sad.

Anyway, I hope you liked the trip log, as my friend Lee said - paraphrasing Michael Palin - "traveling to Alaska by motorbike, in the rain, so you don't have to!"

Trip Photos

One thing about riding a motorcycle is that it is not such an easy exercise to snap a picture of some passing scenic view. It becomes a major production to stop the bike, make sure it is secure on the kick-stand, remove gloves, (if you want to use the view finder - remove the helmet, which is a production in itself), locate the camera in some hopefully waterproof zippered bag, and then take your picture.

So I tended to take pictures when it was convenient, more so than when there was something worth capturing. Nevertheless here are some photos from the journey.

First is a shot of the Fraser River Canyon - a very dramatic road through an impressive canyon.


Now here is what turned out to be quite typical - cloudy, rainy skies, with a glimpse of lighter skies in the distance that I kept forever chasing. This is from somewhere in central British Columbia.


Just to prove that I was at the start of the Al-Can highway, here is a photo of yours truly underneath the arch marking the start of the highway in Dawson Creek, BC.


In Watson Lake, Yukon Territory they do not have much to attract people, so they created this - a Sign Post Forest. Quite enterprising of them, because everyone stops, everyone wonders around and it really is the quirkiest thing on the highway (kind of like the giant ball of string in Darwin, Minnesota, or Cawker City, Kansas, except better - here you can actually nail up your own sign).

Another shot in between rain storms - this is pretty typical for this part of the world. It is beautiful though - isn't it?


There were times when it wasn't raining and the scenery was stunning - check this out on the road from Tok to Glenallen, Alaska.


Next we have the Matanuska Glacier - this is quite close to Anchorage.


On the return trip now, this is a glacial lake just south of Beaver Creek.


In Haines, Alaska - the northerly tip of the Inside Passage, here is the good ship Columbia, the ferry that took me to Bellingham.


The Inside Passage is a great waterway, you are always near land, very near land on both sides.


Here is a nice shot as the sun set as we were passing between Victoria Island and the British Columbia mainland.


This is a nice view of Mt Shasta as I approached it from the north side.


Finally, this is the machine that behaved so well - my BMW 1200 GS

The Return Trip – Day 7

The final day was an easy ride from Bellingham down to Sacramento.

It was quite a trip and I would do it again in a minute. All told I did 4,981 miles. It was 3329 miles up to Anchorage and, with the ferry, only 1652 road miles on the way back. The bike is a little worse for wear – it is running a little rougher (it is now overdue a service), it is very grimy and I have just about worn out the back tire.

The Return Trip – Day 6

The ferry docked in Bellingham, just north of Seattle around 8:00 on Thursday and it was back on the motorcycle again; back to lots of traffic on I-5 down through Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Portland, etc. The traffic was pretty heavy for the whole day and other than that it was an unremarkable journey. With the exception of Seattle that is, which looked absolutely stunning on the drive through on the freeway. It is a truly spectacular city from this perspective, made even better by the wonderful weather.

Indeed today was the first day of the whole trip without rain. Isn’t that something? That evening I made it as far as the City of Mt Shasta - that's a total of 630 miles - it didn;t seem that long, but that was the most miles of any day I think. Mt Shasta was looking splendid in the evening sun, there's still plenty of snow on the lower slopes should anyone be silly enough to want to climb it later (check this space!).

The Return Trip – Days 4 and 5

After the ferry left Ketchikan, it was a 38 hr straight through trip to Bellingham, Washington. We did not stop anywhere in Canadian waters. Again the wildlife was less than abundant; though I am sure it was lurking around somewhere we couldn’t see it. No more whales, no more orcas (Orcas although they are named Killer Whales are actually a member of the Dolphin family – I didn’t know that), just a few bald eagles and a bunch of sea gulls.

On Thursday evening we passed through the Seymour Narrows. As the name suggests this is a tight spot in the passage, but what it is really famous for is the location of Ripple Rock, or more precisely the destruction of Ripple Rock which was achieved in 1958 by the, then and now, largest ever non-nuclear human generated explosion. This ‘rock’ was always submerged by some 8 feet at low tide, but that was enough to cause many passing ships to come to grief and, at all times, the disturbances it caused in the water flow made it an extremely treacherous passage. So finally, in 1958, after taking hundreds of vessels and hundreds of lives, the Canadian Government blasted it to bits in this huge explosion that was a seismic event detected all over the continent. It was quite an engineering operation and the link is well worth checking out – it wasn’t just a few sticks of dynamite in the right place.

The blast reduced Ripple Rock to something 40 feet below the surface at low tide but its effects on the water flow can still be seen. We came through just off a slack tide but, even then, the eddies and currents looked quite nasty.

Interestingly, just adjacent to Ripple Rock on Vancouver Island is a small community, once owned by Bing Crosby – maybe that’s where he dreamed of a White Christmas and maybe even experienced one or two of them.

The Return Trip - Days 3 and 4

The last couple of days have been on the ferry down from Haines. We left on Monday evening and stopped in Juneau in the early hours of Tuesday morning - too early for me to get up and I think too early for Juneau to get up. Then we moved on to Sitka where we had a couple of hours in the afternoon to have a look around.

Sitka had a very nice feel to it, that is with the exception of all the touristy enhancements for the large cruise ships that come to town. When these behemoths arrive the town is overwhelmed with literally thousands of tourists for just a few hours - they are whisked around town on various tours with the obligatory shopping opportunities on the way and then they disappear just as quickly.

I guess all the towns up the Inside Passage are much the same (Skagway, Juneau, Ketchican, etc), they do this deal with the devil when they agree to let cruise ships in - great wealth for a few shop owners, certainly a lot of jobs, but the town is never quite the same.

From Sitka, we went on to Petersberg (in the middle of the night), Wrangell (early Wednesday morning) and then in the afternoon Ketchikan (where I am posting this). Ketchikan was chaos, with three cruise ships in port at the same time (our little ferry docks out of town and discharges maybe 75 folks, the big cruise ships discharge 1500 - 2000 or so each). All the streets and shops were thronged with people just a short while ago, now the ships are gone and the streets are dead - how strange.

The ferry trip has been great - not crowded at all, there are plenty of viewing areas to watch the world go by, a restaurant, a Parks Service Ranger to give talks about where we are and what we are looking at. There have been lots of Humpback Whales, but no Orcas as yet. Bald Eagles abound - particularly in Ketchikan where the fisheries make for lots of food. The scenery is also quite stunning - possibly the best part of the trip.

Tonight we set of for the lower 48 - we should be in Bellingham on Friday morning.

The Return Trip - Day 2

An early start from Beaver Creek this morning on the final leg to the ferry in Haines. Guess what - it was raining - no surprise there.

There are lots of road repairs on this section of the Highway, though, thankfully, the weather cleared up as I worked my way through each one. It could have been a bit slippy going through in the rain, but as it was, it was the other extreme - dusty. I guess it is either one or the other up here. Dusty is better though because on a bike they let you get to the front of the queue so that you only have to deal with the pilot car's dust as they lead you through the construction zones.

Coming over the Haines pass it was quite nasty - rain and a cold wind off the mountains and remnants of snow at road level! Not that I should have anything to complain about, there was a cyclist (of the non-motorized version) pushing his way up to the summit. Now that has to be hard. I have been amazed at these cyclists, there aren't many of them, but every now and then you spot one out in the middle of nowhere in the nastiest of conditions - I wonder where they plug in their electric vests?

I realize that I have been writing a lot about the rain - well there has been a lot of it and even the locals are complaining, but regardless, each day has been a wonderful day - rain or shine. No complaints really.

For the next three days it will be a leisurely cruise on the Alaska Marine Highway down the Inside Passage to Bellingham.

The Return Trip - Day 1

Regretfully, today (Sunday) I have to leave Anchorage to catch the ferry from Haines on Monday evening. Most of my fellow marathoners from Sacramento left today anyway, so other, than resting those tired legs, there was no real reason to stay.

As usual I started out in relatively good conditions - no rain at least. However, as I headed up into the mountains the weather turn damp again. So it was on with all the rain gear again and off into the clouds I went. Actually it wasn't too bad until the road from Tok Junction down to the Canadian Border, where it started to pour down. I'd had enough by the time I reached my destination of Beaver Creek, the first town inside the Canadian border.

Beaver Creek is small, really small - it is the most westernmost settlement in Canada. The usual gas station, hotel, restaurant combination. But in this small community there is a laundromat, where they have a computer on a little roll around cart and you can get Internet access. Isn't that amazing, in this far flung outpost of Yukon Territory you can do a load of laundry and post to your blog! On the other hand my hotel room here is so primitive it doesn't even have television.

Tomorrow, it's a run down the road back into the USA and on to Haines where I pick up the ferry.

And for all those who doubted my ability to mount my motorcycle after the marathon - it really wasn't a problem at all. It wasn't an elegant process but I could do it.

The Anchorage Marathon

Well, it is official, all those folks that said that running a marathon after riding a motorbike for a week was not the best of ideas (some said it was a stupid idea) - well they were in fact right. While I did finsih the marathon, it was kind of slow, and it entailed a lot of awkward and ungainly walking towards the end. All sorts of muscles tightened up and made it painful to run so it was more of a lurching shuffle interspersed with lots of walks.

It was still a great marathon though, one of my favorites. The weather was for the most part great running weather - a steady light rain, but no wind. It stayed that way until the last 3 miles when we ran around the lakes and when the wind got up making it pretty cold and miserable. The finish was most unwelcoming with rain and a stiff wind - it made everyone get out of there as soon as possible - no basking in the glory of the finish. That's a shame because that is always a nice period I think.

Everyone did very well, Julia H. turned in a great 4:10, Leslie L. a P.R. of 4:16 - but neither of them waited for me and my feeble 5:08 time. That's the first time I have gone over 5 hours, pretty impressive no? Insult was added to injury when on the last quarter mile, Bill F. a race walker from Sacramento overtook me and I just watched him edge away from me up the hill while I stumbled along.

I think people are taking bets on whether I will be able to mount my motorcycle tomorrow morning to head south. I am optimistic for getting on - its gettin off that will be the problem.

Alaska Road Trip - Day 7

A leisurely day today - 325 miles from Tok to Anchorage. The weather is good and this was the first day that I didn't have rain gear on. This part of the road is quite spectacular too - the Wrangell - St Elias Mountains to the south, the Matanuska Glacier in the bottom of the valley, and then a smooth run into the metropolis of Anchorage.

Although this is my destination, it feels like this should just be the start of everything. There are so many places to go from here. I have been running into riders all along the way that are going up to Prudhoe Bay, or up to Inuvik in Northern Yukon. There is an interesting road over from Tok to Dawson called the Top of the World Highway - that looks really interesting (I was tempted to forget all about the marathon and join some riders going over on that route instead). However, I guess I should leave something undone for the next trip?

Here in Anchorage it is warm and sunny, almost hot. Time for rest and recuperation before the marathon on Saturday. It has been a great trip - 3320 miles in 7 days - I could do with a day off tomorrow.

Alaska Road Trip - Day 6

For the first time this trip the day dawned sunny and warm. Actually I didn't see the dawn, as the sun rises at something like 3:00 am in Whitehorse, so I am just guessing it was sunny. When I poked my head out it was sunny anyway.

Of course things change and soon the clouds appeared and the rain was coming down. I have gotten used to riding in the rain so I don't mind now. Again for much of the day it was a case of alternating rain and sun.

For the most part the road conditions on the Alaska Highway have been excellent, it is a good road surface that will allow good progress at 70-90 mph. There is little law enforcement so you could probably maintain even higher speeds with impunity. Every now and again there are some rough bits where they are doing road construction - extensive road construction. Typically, they stop everyone and then lead you through in batches with a pilot car. That makes for either a wet muddy crawl if there is rain or a dusty crawl if it is dry (and you are not at the front of the pack) - neither one ideal, but it makes the road interesting.

At the border, the customs agents are their usual surly, unwelcoming selves. They must go to school to develop that attitude - no engaging anyone in pleasant chit-chat, no smiles, no welcome back to the USA. If they are like that to their customers, I wonder how they are during the rest of their day - are they all happy and joking when they are away from the counter? Not the best job in the world I think.

In the evening I reached a place called Tok Junction (the Junction of the Anchorage, Fairbanks and Whitehorse roads). It is quite the thriving intersection with hotels, gas stations and restaurants. Like all the other places it is scruffy and characterless. A place to eat, sleep, gas up and then move on.

A light day today, some 420 miles.

Alaska Road Trip - Day 5

The morning was wet, really wet. I thought of going back to the room and waiting it out, but then I realised I would be driven crazy by Michael Jackson verdict analyses on the television - I couldn't stand that (though I did like Letterman's quip about Saddam Hussein wanting his trial moved to Santa Maria, Ca).

Anyway, I braved the rain yet again. More shades of grey and green again, with the addition of an ice blue glacial lake near the top of the pass. It was a bit more mountainous out of Fort Nelson and there was patches of snow on the hills. There were animals today - several moose, some caribou, and a black bear ambling across the road in front of me. The moose seem skittish and not sensible about moving out of the way in the right direction - not the kind of thing you need to make contact with.

Passing back over the Continental Divide again, now back to the western side, the weather cleared a little and it wasn't so soggy and later in the afternoon the sun even started to shine. It made for a nice late afternoon run into Whitehorse in Yukon Territory. Whitehorse is quite the bustling tourist spot playing on its Yukon goldrush days, a railway to Skagway and lots of river sport type things (rafting, kayaking, etc).

Its 10:00 pm now and the sun is still way up in the sky - thank goodness for blackout curtains. Some 610 miles today - a good day.

Alaska Road Trip - Day 4

Another rainy day - this is not what I planned on. I left Prince George to cross the Continental Divide and then drop down to Dawson Creek, the start of the Alaska Highway. The weather was absolutely miserable. Pretty hard rain all the way over the top - and it was cold too. Thank goodness for the electric vest and the heated handgrips, they were on for most of the day today.

The rain stopped just before Dawson Creek and conditions turned a little better. But it has certainly been a time of greens and greys - a thosand different shades of green in the trees and a thousand different shades of grey in the sky.

Dawson Creek marks the start of the Alaska Highway - it is not much of a town, unlike other towns there is no major river (though presumably there is a creek somewhere), so it is even less interesting. Like all the other towns it is shabby, dirty and totaly uninteresting architecturally (except for the grain elevator of course).

The road north from Dawson is for the most part good - lots of RVs, lots of pick-ups (its a big oilfield area) but very few motorbikes (maybe they have more sense). The country is rolling forested hills as far as the eye can see. There are some amazing views where the road goes on and on and on to the horizon. There are not many people here. Though when I stop to take a photo I realize there must be billions of other residents - namely mosquitos. As soon as I stop I am surrounded by swarms of them - big ones too. Its beneficial to be wearing a full face helmet in such conditions.

I make it into Fort Nelson and decide to call it a day - 542 miles. The guy at the hotel says that the weather forecast for the next two days is - rain showers. Oh well.

Alaska Road Trip - Day 3

Another damp and cold morning. Today, I start off with the rain gear and the electric vest, no point in starting off on the wrong foot. The rain is intermittant as the road snakes along the Fraser River Valley and later up the Thompson River Valley. This is a spectacular piece of country - dramatic canyons, a huge river in the bottom, railroads on either side (why are there two I wonder?) and a road stuck to the side of the canyon.

After lunch in Cache Creek the road leaves the river and there are some nice dry spells - everything comes together with a nice dry stretch of gently twisting road, a little sun, some beautiful country and to top it off a couple of bald eagles circling above the road. It was worth it all just for that.

This is the land of lumber, everywhere there are logging trucks and every town has its saw mill or pulp mill or both. I guess you can say that there is some beautiful country in this part of British Columbia, but I am afraid the towns are not so nice. I don't think there has been one (except perhaps Hope) that made me think that I would want to return to stay longer.

That night I stay in Prince George - another ugly lumber town - after a 408 mile day.

Alaska Road Trip - Day 2

Saturday was a gloomy day, but I optimistically set off without the rain gear on. By Portland it was raining solidly again so it was back on with the waterproofs. By the time I reached Seattle, it was serious rain and it was a dicy skate through heavy traffic in the city center. By Bellingham it was clearer, but I was getting cold so the electric vest was plugged in for the first time - I actually didn't think I would need it - boy was I wrong.

I got into Canada around 5:00 in the afternoon, and after a missed turn before Vancouver, I finally got on the right road - Highway 1 to Hope. This part of the road is along the first part of the Fraser River Valley - a little wide and very agricultural (and smelly) at this part, but it narrows down and gets quite dramatic as you get closer to Hope.

I found a hotel in Hope that night. 498 miles on the second day - not bad considering the conditions. The bike is going very well - it cruises real effortlessly around 80 mph.

Alaska Road Trip - Day 1

I did get out of Sacramento on Friday, and I am really on my way to Alaska. All was smooth sailing up the valley until just north of Redding the skies opened and we had a torrential thunder storm. So that left me sitting under a freeway bridge watching the rain come down and wondering how on earth I was going to get out of State never mind up to Alaska.

After half an hour or so of futile waiting, I geared up with the waterproof clothing and set off. It actually wasn't that bad and the rain eased off some. For the rest of the day it was rain showers as I cruised past Mt Shasta (with its head in the clouds), Ashland, Grant's Pass, and on to Eugene. Actually I ended up in Albany as all the hotels in Ashland were sold out (University graduation!). A respectable 535 miles on the first day out.

The last training run

I didn’t mention about how I got injured in that little 5K race a couple of weeks ago. It wasn’t much just a calf muscle strain I thought. Well here we are almost 2 weeks later and I still can’t run. I went out this morning and was limping by a half mile and back home in 20 minutes. That doesn’t bode well for the marathon next week, does it? The dilemma is whether to rest the leg completely, and lose what little marathon conditioning I had, or to keep trying to get a decent run in before the run. I think I will take the complete rest path – it’s a whole lot easier

Alaska Bound....

Tomorrow I set off on my trip to Alaska - just over 3,000 miles by motorcycle. Never having been that far on a bike, I don’t quite know what to expect. I know the scenery will be spectacular, but even 3,000 miles of awesome scenery has to get old after a while. Then there is the affects it might have on the body – sitting on a vibrating piece of machinery for a week just has to be a little uncomfortable. It probably will not enhance my ability to run the marathon when I get there either.

Anyway, I am all packed up and ready to go and tomorrow afternoon I head out. Here’s hoping that the bike holds up, the body holds up, the moose stay off the road and the mosquitoes bother someone else.

Stay tuned for further information…..

The benefits of travel with an elderly passenger..

I just took Mum back to the UK at the end of her vacation in California. There are some distinct advantages of traveling with an elderly passenger:

• Police outside SFO let you park outside the terminal illegally while you schlep your bags and mum into the terminal
• First Class check in agent sees you and calls you over, bypassing the long regular line snaking around the terminal.
• Wheelchair person takes you through the preferential lines at customs and security, again bypassing long lines.
• You get to board before anyone else (in Heathrow, you even get a special lounge to wait in until the flight is ready to board).
• All the flight attendants make a fuss over you.

The English Breakfast or a Bag of Peanuts

In this day of minimalist air travel, it was encouraging to see British Airways still providing the full English Breakfast on their Aberdeen to London flight this last week. That’s bacon, sausage, eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms – just on an early morning breakfast flight. Better than a bag of peanuts or pretzels! Well done BA but how can you afford it?

Airport Security....

While going through security at SFO with my mother on her way back to the UK, they picked out her hand baggage for special treatment. After checking the contents they wiped it with a swab that ran the swab through their sophisticated test machinery. Surprisingly, the machine alarm sounded and the monitor indicated “Explosives Detected” in a nice flashing display. It said the type of explosive detected was TNT.

I thought that at this point we would be in for a spot of bother. Off to the special room for strip searches and intense questioning under bright lights. This was not to be the case. The Security man just said that often medications caused false positives, all well and good but there were no medications in the bag. I at least thought this would have caused them to inspect my bags a little more closely – perhaps some of my TNT had rubbed off on my mother’s bag during our packing of the explosives. But no, we were allowed to pass on without further inquiry. Comforting isn’t it. I would agree that my mother does not fit the bill of a terrorist, but what about me? Surely I don’t look that innocent.

Rhyming Slang...

It seems that Cockney Rhyming Slang is still going strong and new phrases being added all the time. Apparently celebrity rhymes are quite popular now, so you can now go down the pub for a couple of Brittany Spears (beers for my American friends) or if you want to borrow 10 quid you can ask someone for an Ayrton Senna. And wouldn't you know Brad Pitt's name has been adopted into the lexicon.

There is a web site now to translate your plain old English into Cockney Rhyming Slang. (How do people get the time to create such elaborate things?) The same site offers variants for Scouse, Brummie, Geordie and many more dialects - even an Ali G version.

The French Referendum...

We Californians think we have too much election material when we have to plow through our voting information booklets with all the propositions and candidates for this that and the other (and we do). However, the poor old French voters have each been sent a 191-page document on the EU constitution ahead of their upcoming referendum. It contains some 448 clauses, protocols and annexes. Apparently quite a large percentage of the population have read parts of it and something like 10% have read the whole darn thing.

They take their democracy seriously over there.

So proud to be English...

Lonely Planet have just published a new travel guide to England. Among other things it describes my fellow countrymen as being "uninhibited, tolerant, exhibitionist, passionate, aggressive, sentimental, hospitable and friendly".

Things have certainly changed, not only does England now have the best restaurant in the entire World - The Fat Duck in Bray (according to at least one survey), it also has people that can be described as uninhibited and passionate, once terms only used to describe those Mediterranean folk.

However, everything is not moving in a positive direction, Slashdot picked up on some potential candidates for the Darwin awards - Home Made Star Wars Movie Injury adding perhaps stupidity to our character traits.

Marathon Training....

It is now four weeks away from the Midnight Sun Marathon in Anchorage. (That is the other part of my plan for the summer – after riding the bike to Anchorage, I am supposed to run the Anchorage Marathon). The training is going about as well as it usually does – I run at the weekend, then do nothing all week until the next weekend. This weekend warrior stuff is not the best way of training and I know that, but I just don’t have much mid-week motivation these days. I did one 20 miler so far (2 weeks ago up in Eldorado Hills) and all I need to do now is get one more 20 + miles run this weekend and that will have to do. Anchorage here we come.

Mr Galloway goes to Washington

Wasn’t it great to see George Galloway in action in the US Senate this week? They are not used to such pugnacious and combative behavior in the Senate – it is by no means as rough and tumble as the House of Commons is. Poor old Senator Coleman didn’t bargain for the tongue lashing he got and it was nice to see him squirm.

"Now I know that standards have slipped over the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer, you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice."

"I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns."

"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong, and 100,000 have paid with their lives, 1,600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies."

It was quite a piece of showmanship - he even had the audacity to do some sanction busting and smoke a Cuban cigar outside the hearings.

I must admit I wasn’t aware of Mr. Galloway and his career in politics, but after checking I see he has quite a colourful past in recent years. A Scot, an ex boxer, a Labour MP expelled from the Labour Party in 2003 for encouraging soldiers not to fight in Iraq. He stood in the last election as member of a new party the Respect-Unity Coalition, winning his seat against an up and coming young Labour MP (Oona King).

A change of plan....

So tomorrow was the day that my niece, Helen, was supposed to arrive from the UK to stay for a couple of weeks and then accompany my mother back to the England at the end of her stay. That plan changed a little yesterday when Helen let us know that she wouldn’t be able to come over.

So that left me with a bit of a dilemma - how to get mum home? She is too frail to travel by herself, and the only option really is for me to travel back with her. I got a little bit of a shock when I first checked with British Airways for a flight - to travel back on her flight to London and then to return the next day would cost $2300. A bit excessive, I thought! The reason for the high price was falling foul of the Saturday night stay rule, which still seems to make a difference. If I stay a couple of more days and come back on a Sunday, then I get the ticket for less than half that price, at just over $1000 (it is the peak summer season after all).

The remarkable thing is that these tickets, even the $2,300 one, are non-changeable, non-refundable. If you want a changeable ticket you pay even more (double the price). Is that something new, I don't recall seeing totally unflexible tickets before. Such variances in ticket prices and such seemingly arbitrary rules are the things that make us love those airlines so much. So many of them are losing money in these high price fuel days, but I just can’t muster much sympathy. I wouldn’t mind paying more money provided their ticket pricing was a bit more fair and logical.

Anyway, I have my ticket now, and, all being well, I am off for a short 4 day trip to the UK in a couple of weeks.