Timeout for Snowboarding

While I was home for the holidays and since we were in West Virgina only a few minute drive from Winterplace Ski Resort, Garland and I decided we would have a guys night out and learn to snowboard.

We had an hour and a half intro lesson that taught us the basics of stopping, using the edges of the board to control your speed while you are moving in all directions and how to get on and off the lift without making a fool of yourself.

To make a long story short snowboarding is much tougher than it looks. We spent a lot of time on the snow and our ski gear was soaked when we left. If you are new to snowboarding expect to fall a lot and to be sore the next few days.

Garland took to it like a natural. By the end of the night he was doing tricks and going down the mountain in style. Check out this video of him snowboarding. We had a great relaxing night of fun.

Here are a few photos of us on the mountain.

I know it's not quite Switzerland but that trip is right around the corner. However, it will be on skis...

There's no place like home for the holidays....!

That song had a new meaning for us this year. There really is no place like home for the holidays! We had a great time in West Virginia and Lexington seeing our friends and family. It was a whirlwind trip going from one Christmas event to the next. And every moment was great!

We are back in London safe and sound already having unpacked and repacked for Edinburgh. The cats were glad to see us but are going to be upset again tomorrow.

We want to thank all of our friends and families that helped to accommodate our crazy schedule.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Absolut Ice Bar Review

On Tuesday night Zac, Tara, Steph and I decided it would be fun to visit the Absolut London Ice Bar so here is my take on the experience.

First a little background, the temperature inside the bar is kept at a constant 5 degrees and everything is made from water (ice) frozen from the Torne River in Jukkasjarvi, Sweden.

To get into the bar you book a 40 minute time slot that costs £12 during the week and £15 on the weekends to get in. Its a bit expensive but the entry fee does include a designer thermal cape to keep you warm, an ice glass and one cocktail.

Initially we were excited to get into the cold but after getting our drink and taking a look around we realized the bar itself wasn't all that impressive. Other than some music blaring there wasn't much to enhance the experience. The bar itself was a dark modern gray that was amplified by the ice. There was just something missing.

They had some ice seats covered in fake animal skin so you could sit down without sitting straight on the ice.

One cool thing however was the ice cup you were given for your drink. It was a neat to drink out of a hollowed block of ice.

In summary it is something I'm glad I could experience but probably won't do again.

Ice Bar Photos

Back From Venice

Sadly, the family reunion in London and Venice is over. Everybody is back in KY getting back to normal life preparing for Christmas. I'm sorry the post is a bit late but we had to recover from the hectic pace and put in a few extra hours to make up for the last few weeks (sleep and work!).

We started at the Tower of London, home to the royal crown jewels. They were a spectacular sight and included the world's largest cut diamond, the Star of Africa. Sorry Steph, that diamond wasn't for sale when I bought your ring, shame...

Another cool siting at the Tower of London were the ravens which have been on the grounds since 1865. It is said that if the ravens leave the tower the kingdom would fall. They are fairly spooky birds flying and hovering around. Especially since it was dark, rainy and foggy.

The following day it was cold, windy and rainy which turned out to be a theme for the week. Since it was typical British November weather we decided to visit Harrods, which was all geared up for Christmas. They ladies did plenty of shopping and us men found the pub in the basement.

Monday Steph and I went back to work for the week while everyone else did more touring in London. As we didn't go with them I will let them tell the stories but they visited the British Museum (finding Zac's portrait on the wall), the London eye, the south bank of Parliament, and toured the Chelsea Football Club grounds.

Their week in London was capped off with a Thanksgiving dinner at Hard Rock Cafe. Amazingly, dozens of places serve a traditional Thanksgiving dinner in London, however, Hard Rock's meal turned out to be not so traditional (in our opinion) so we all ate other things off the Americanized menu - yum! Our "Thanksgiving dinner", minus the turkey and trimmings, is captured in the group photo above.

More to come...

Happy Thanksgiving

Here's wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! Eat extra turkey and stuffing for us. Steph's craving some of Kathy's sweet potato souffle and oh how I would love a big helping of my Mum's pineapple casserole...

Unfortunately its not a holiday in the UK so Steph and I are at work counting the hours until we can get our fill of turkey tonight. Thankfully we have some family over to help us celebrate which is a great added bonus. I will hopefully blog more about our adventures this past week or so after we get back from Venice.

Tonight we have reservations at the original Hard Rock Cafe in London to have our Thanksgiving meal. Its not exactly home cooked but it should be entertaining. Plus it gave me a good excuse to use that image above.

In any event here's what the Hard Rock's website says about their menu tonight, "Join us this Thanksgiving for turkey with all the trimmings.... Turkey dinner, pumpkin pie and an infamous rock n roll atmosphere." Hopefully they will ROCK the turkey...

In honor of the day we want to say how thankful we are for those we have in our lives at the present and for the memories we have of those who are no longer with us.

Happy turkey day to all, gobble gobble gobble...

They made it

I just want to let everybody know that Kenny & Lois made it over without a hitch and have had a great start to the trip.

A Few Weekend Photos

After they landed on Friday we toured London seeing the main sights of Big Ben, Parliament, the London Eye, Trafalgar Square and Oxford Street which is already decorated for Christmas. We decided that Christmas here starts after Halloween without Thanksgiving to hold things up a bit. All of the Christmas decorations and commercial blitz have already started which is another reason to dig Thanksgiving, bring on the turkey and stuffing...

On Saturday we took the train back into London touring the Borough Market where we had some tasty treats and then watched the fireworks over the Thames for the Lord Mayor's celebrations. Finally, we hit a pub for fish and chips.

After sending them on the Eurostar to Paris yesterday I just spoke to them and they arrived in Paris as expected. Here's wishing them a Happy 30th Anniversary!

That's all from here until Zac and Tara arrive and when things really pick up. Any experienced travelers be sure to throw any pub suggestions my way.

See you soon bro, I can't wait...

We have exorciiiiiiised the (kitty) demons!

Mia has been plagued by a demon recently. She has been spending the majority of the day in the bedroom and most times being under the bed in the bedroom. She might start in a lovey mood in the bedroom and I would carry her in to the living room and sit on the couch....then she would look around in a panic, jump off my lap and run hunching low to the ground, back to the bedroom. What on earth is wrong with Mia?

We started thinking about it and Mia was definitely not happy in the living room. What's new in the living room? Nothing really. Then tonight we thought about the toy Josh bought them while I was in the US. He bought a kitty toy consisting of a foot-long piece of feather boa that was hanging from a string on a pole. So waving it around it kind of looked like a bird or squirrel (the boa makes it look like a squirrel). Simply enough, right? All cats love feathery, fuzzy things tied to a pole, right? We've had "birders" before - two long, stiff feathers tied to a string on a pole and they loved it.

Well, when I got home from the US Josh said, "Hey, look. I bought them this toy but Mia acts really weird with it." So, he pulled it out of the desk drawer (which is in the living room) and Mia freezes. She watches it fly around, then hisses! And when he put it on the ground for her to approach she would hiss more and make this awful low growl!! She acted as if she wanted to absolutely kill it - and not in a I'm-a-cat-and-I-love-to-play-hunt kind of way.....I'm talking a this-is-the-most-wretched-thing-I-have-ever-seen-and-I-want-to-annihilate-it!

So, Wednesday night I theorized that she is avoiding the living room because she knows this thing is in the desk drawer (she was eyeing it down still in a fit when Josh put it away that day). I suggested we bring it out in the hall, (grab her from under the bed first!), show it to her then throw it in the guest room. We always keep our guest room door closed - the kitties are not allowed in there (so guests can rest in a cat allergy free and hair free environment).

Well, we did. We let her growl over it, bite it and hiss at it for about 10 minutes in the hall and then I took and with her eyeing me down suspiciously, I opened the guest room door and threw it in. She jumped as if to chase after it but I closed the door and we all left the hall.

It being Saturday morning now, I am glad to saw we have, in fact, exorcised that demon. Mia has been in the living non-stop, hanging out with us again like normal. I think we need to write a letter to that toy manufacturer - that was a scary incident! haha!

Last Minute Arsenal Game

I received a great phone call from Steph Tuesday at work about a coworker that had an extra ticket to the nights Arsenal Champions League Game. Wow what a great surprise because I have been wanting to go to a game since we moved. Thanks Steph!

The game was at 7:45 so I left work a bit early, drove home, caught the train to London Bridge, and hopped on the tube getting off at the Arsenal stop. It was a journey but worth it.

My seat was in the upper deck of gate D behind Arsenal's second half attacking goal. They scored 4 second half goals right in front of us to win going away 7-0. Are you kidding me? 7 goals?! That just doesn't happen very often. Lucky me. It equaled the biggest Champions League win in history.

Since tickets are so hard to get a hold of I hope this isn't the last game I will have a chance to see but if it is I sure picked a good one.

Here are the photos I took from my seat including a nice one of a corner kick in the second half.

One final note because I don't want anybody to get confused where my loyalties lie. I am still true blue. Go Cats!

Steph's Back in the UK

Just a quick post to let everyone know Steph made it back safe. Her flight left half an hour late and arrived half an hour early thanks to a big tail wind.

Now the only thing left to do is unpack...

Kentucky Upsets #1 LSU

What a game! Down by 13 in the 3rd quarter the cats came back to win in 3 overtimes. The best thing about it is that I was able to watch it all live and in color thanks to my shiny new Slingbox.

I was practically there jumping and yelling at every big moment. That is if you make exceptions for the fact that I woke up my neighbors because its 1:30 AM, stepped on one of my cats who were scared out of their minds at my crazy behavior, and had the Rugby World Cup on the tele to see England advance to the finals. Ha!

The Slingbox purchase has officially been justified.

Lucky Steph sure picked a good football game to attend. Lets just hope she didn't get in trouble trying to tear down the goal posts...

Before I go I need to give a big shout out to my cool nephew Garland who's West Jessamine football team beat their cross town rivals, East, to make it to the playoffs. Good luck in the playoffs G!

Finally a big thanks to Jamo for turning on the Slingbox today so I could watch the game.

I am so wound up, luckily I don't have to work tomorrow. GO CATS!!!

Cats Win! Cats Win!

Sat Nav: friend or foe?

To make our adventures a little easier we decided to invest in a Satellite Navigation unit, a Sat Nav. After hours of research, I decided on the Garmin 350, and found a used one on Ebay. (Amazingly the Gamin's are cheaper here even with the conversion - much cheaper, same products!)

It arrived a couple of days before our Poole anniversary trip and Josh used it going to and from work to test it out - no problems.

Well, little did we know the system, which I'm sure was originally configured for US roads, has some quirks when applied to British roads.

To get to the Sandbanks Beach for our RIB ride, we needed to drive down to the tip of the harbour. Imagine the harbour is a clock face, Poole is 3 and Sandbanks Beach is 5. The opening of the harbour is 6 and the land resumes at 7 (small opening, big harbour!). Well, we jumped in the car, typed in the post code and Josh noted it would take 40 minutes. I had looked on a map to see it wasn't very far but I thought maybe the roads are strange.

We set off and we kept taking left turns (moving from 3 to 2 to 1, etc)...and I started to worry. I pulled out a real map and was frantically searching for the names of the towns/streets we were passing. To no avail, I grabbed the Sat Nav and zoomed out on the route to see it was taking us from 3 o'clock, counterclockwise to 7, directing us to get on a ferry and then get to our destination at 5!!! What?! We had it set on fastest route so we were perplexed how that was faster. I could see the one main road we SHOULD have taken to get easily to our destination and it should have only taken us 10 minutes (instead of 40).

In playing with the settings I realised it was set to avoid U-turns, seems normal, but after contemplating the error of its way...we figured it out! Garmin interprets the 3rd exit on a roundabout as a u-turn and thus would not tell us to go the shorter distance trip because we would have had to take a right turn...AKA a 3rd exit in a roundabout. This was confirmed in thinking back, remembering the Garmin had yet to ever tell us to take a 3rd exit AND it avoided the easier route from our apartment to the highway (which would have involved taking a 3rd exit).

In sum, I think the Garmin will be helpful in trekking the UK and Europe but ALWAYS preview the route to ensure it makes sense!

A 2nd Anniversary Adventure

Last year for our first anniversary we decided that we would rather travel than exchange presents for our anniversary. As another condition, we added that we would take turns planning the trip and it would be a surprise for the other person. Last year, Josh planned an exciting weekend. This year it was my turn.

The surprise destination was Poole, England, situated on the world's second largest natural harbour. A quaint town with a lot of pizazz, there was fun to be had. Our room overlooked the harbour and we were located on The Quay (pronounced: key) - the main road running along the harbour where all sorts of stores and restaurants were located. We yet again lucked out with amazing weather and decided to take part in some of the many water activities offered around Poole harbour. We hired a RIB (rigid inflatable boat) to take us on the tour of the harbour the proper way. It was a nice peaceful ride and then heading out to the Old Harry Rocks, the driver let loose and we held on for dear life as we bounced across the wake of a huge ferry! Awesome!

We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out on the Sandbanks Beach where there was a windsurfing completion going on. Unfortunately there wasn't any wind so instead we watched speed boats and some water skiing stunts. Who'd think we be chillin' (literally) on the beach in September in England?! It was nice, but a tad cold for our tastes (around 70 degrees F and windy on the beach) to be in swim kit.

Saturday night we got to enjoy a parade put on as part of the Inside Out Festival, an arts festival. It was essentially a night parade exhibiting an underwater fantasy world with some kickin' music. Pretty cool.

To cap off the weekend, I surprised....well, tried to surprise Josh (he opened the mail when I told him not to and found our tickets) with Zorbing. A sport invented in New Zealand, consisting of rolling down a hill in a big bubble!

Sideways Zorbing Video

Up to two people can ride in one Zorb and you can chose from being harnessed in the bubble or just sitting inside with a nice amount of water so you slosh all the way down! I chose the water! You can have take a running jump to jump through this narrow hole in the Zorb to get inside (Josh had to push me in...I didn't take a very good running jump)! Then sitting inside the guy sticks he head in and says ok, I'm gonna zip you up...stand up and start walking down the hill - what walking down the hill?! Yep, he said, you'll fall eventually, but you have to start walking to get going. Josh was rearing to go and we started walking...

I quickly hit the floor and then Josh joined me as we slide and tumbled over each other the entire way down! It was awesome!! Then to get out of the Zorb through that narrow hole the guy said its easier to come out head first so you reach out hands and head first to catch yourself on the ground! All in all, it was great and we'd do it again in a heartbeat! Here we are after changing into dry clothes.

All of the Poole photos

2 years down many more to come...

Kentucky Upsets No. 9 Louisville, 40-34

I just heard the good news! I starting jumping up and down in the flat so I can't even imagine the excitement from those who were there. Our first win over a top 10 team in 30 years, really, are you kidding me...

Wait a second. That's the same score of the upset over Alabama. Nice.

Anyway from what I can find on the web it was an exciting game but I need a full recap. So for all of who were in attendance and those who watched on TV send me an email or post comments with your thoughts on the game.

Go Cats!

Rocks in a field

Ok, so they were some rather large rocks. Rocks from Wales, moved by humans around 5000 years ago and somehow stacked in this field without the help of modern machinery. Also interesting, the alignment of the rocks has all to do with the sun and the passing of seasons. Even more interesting, there is a strong magnetic presence at one side of the stones...we eaves dropped on a tour guide taking a bus group through and watched her do a demonstration where these metal rods she was balancing on her fingers would come together or push away depending on how close she got to this one spot....hmmm....

Obviously, I am kidding at saying Stonehenge is just some rocks in a field...it is actually am amazing site, so connected to the movement of the planet and science, nearly impossible to fathom how it was built in its day and completely unknown what it was actually used for. Strangely, it really is just some rocks in a field when considering the surroundings...you are driving through English countryside then off in the distance in one of the many open fields you see some rocks and as you get closer you realise they are the infamous Stonehenge. Its right next to the road and in one of the pictures you can see the country highway through two of the upright stones. Very neat place and a lovely day. We ended our tour by taking a nap in the field at Stonehenge.

Just a few towns over is a place called Avebury. Its a small town that has similar stones standing upright around the town. Also a strange sight, many of these stones are in the middle of sheep or cow pastures and people can just go wondering around through all of this property. Along with the stones making a large (and I mean large) circle around the town, there is also what only can be described as a moat. Its a 20 feet deep ravine running around the town. The Avebury stones are also about 5000 year old and their original purpose unknown. But again, very interesting.

We found some good lighing late in the day and were able to pose with the stones. Can you tell who is who?