Europe 2009 Photos

March 30 and 31: (USA -> London -> Swindon)

After flying out of Lincoln (Airport) , I met up with Lincoln (DeMaris) in Chicago. As I had lots of time to kill between my arrival at O’Hare and our departure for Heathrow, I spent a good two hours waiting for Lincoln to make his way from Seattle at the Goose Island airport brewpub. He eventually arrived and got down to business.

The first, but certainly not the last act of gluttony on this trip.

The flight across the Atlantic was uneventful. I have a hard time falling asleep on airplanes, and I watched bits and pieces of Cadillac Records as it looped 3+ times during the flight. We got into Heathrow around 9:30, and took a Heathrow Connect train into Paddington. Our train to Swindon wasn’t heading out until 3:30, so we ate lunch at a pub outside of Paddington, which I believe was the Sawyers Arms. After lunch, there was enough time for a pint at the Fullers pub inside Paddington before we caught our train to Swindon.

Why did we go to Swindon, you ask? Well…in the heady days before we planned out our exact itinerary (i.e., the weekend before we left), we thought that going to see some of the stone circles and other cool ancient stuff in the vicinity would be a nice, touristy thing to do. However, this would not be the case, as a) the sites of interest were 5-10 miles out of town, b) there was no transport available from Swindon there in the non-tourist season, and c) we didn’t find out until we were already in Swindon and were buying our tickets for the next day’s trip to Betws-y-Coed, Wales that the train would be leaving early the next morning. Oh well…

In any case, we walked from the train station to the Bell Hotel in the Old Town area (it had the advantage of being the cheapest place I could find after a 5-minute Web search). I called home via Skype, we had a couple pints in the hotel pub, and hit the town. After about 10 minutes of aimless wandering, we went to The Victoria pub, which had a cover band playing in the basement. They were pretty decent, with their Radiohead covers being particularly good. During the evening, we were asked two or thee times by the locals “Why are you in Swindon?” (Swindon itself is a most un-touristy town.)

Established in the reign of King Henry VIII A.D. 1515

Multiple levels of fun!

On the stumble back to the Bell Hotel, Lincoln got a döner kebab. It was amazing.

...and for less than £4!

With any luck, there will also be (near-)real-time photos, but that may have to wait until my return.

The point of all this? Well…um…uh…

This is another fine example of what’s on my mind when I’m walking to and from work.

On my daily walk to work, I get my fill of “nature” by walking past the INS USCIS building at 8th & S. Last fall and early this spring, I would see one adult cottontail nibbling on the grass along the east side of the building. A few weeks later, I would see two or three adult rabbits in this area. By early summer, the additional adult rabbits were gone and were replaced with baby kits. At first, I would only see one little rabbit cautiously venture out from the bushes; soon that became two, and then three. A month or so later, two more rabbits even smaller than the (by then) half-grown rabbits appeared, giving a total of at least five newborn rabbits for the summer.

Recently, I’ve only seen, at most, two rabbits in the vicinity; I’m guessing with summer drawing to a close, the near-adults have been driven off.

(Moral of the story: I need to see real nature more often.)

• 4 tablespoons of butter or margarine (margarine appears to be preferred)
• 5 tablespoons of Louisiana-style hot sauce (Frank’s RedHot appears to be preferred)
• 1 tablespoon of white wine vinegar

Melt the butter or margarine over medium heat in a heavy saucepan, add the hot sauce and the 1 tablespoon of vinegar. Stir well and remove from the flame immediately.

Play around with the ratios to suit your own taste. Recipe from Totally Hot! The Ultimate Hot Pepper Cookbook. My own commentary in parentheses.

Ron Pattinson writes one of the most content-rich blogs I’ve ever come across — Shut up about Barclay Perkins. (His “main” site is the European Beer Guide.) From browsing his blog (for 2008, he’s averaging more than one multi-paragraph post per day, so actually reading it will take quite some time), you quickly pick up the personality of the guy: as best I can tell, he’s opinionated to the point of being quite abrasive and is thoroughly obsessed with statistics, primary documents, and semantic accuracy. However, what shines though is his ruthless determination to document the history of Europe’s brewing industry and to dismantle what we “know” to be true about beer. It’s really quite a sight to behold.

(No, seriously, go check out his blog. If the technical content is too much for you, scroll until you find a travel/miscellaneous post.)

To celebrate my triumphant return, I’m subjecting you to an analysis of what lands in my spam folder. Enjoy!

Between April 1 and April 15, I received 367 spam items in my Google Mail account. They break down as follows:

So, in summary, the Internet thinks I’m a straight male (check), I’m middle-aged (nope), and I don’t have insurance (nada). Keep trying guys; you’ll get it right eventually.

Today’s example: Before noon, I was away from my phone for a total of 12 minutes.  Both incoming calls I received this morning occurred within those 12 minutes.