Bring Me a Shrubbery!

Another sweet day. Arguably the best so far of the trip. After a 2 1/2 hour drive to Edinburgh, we toured the MASSIVE Edinburgh Castle--home to a rich history of historificalicious Scottish characters including Robert Earl of Bruce (of Braveheart fame) and Mary Queen of Scots. From a size/scale perspective, this is right up there with the Tower of London as one fo the coolest, awe-inspiring places I've visited in Europe.

It sits on a HUGE outcropping of eons-old volcanic rock, as shown below:



Looking up at this thing, I could imagine how wet-your-pants intimidating it must have looked to the invading English.



The view from the castle over the city and North Sea was equally cool:




the castle itself was incredibly interesting. Similar to the Tower of London, it did a fantastic job of trying to portray what life was like in the castle during "ye olden times". I'm certain they couldn't actually replicate the smell of the period, but the displays and 'living dioramas' in the prison area, regiment garrison, great halls, cathedral, chapels were all superbly put together.

In walking through their displays and dedicatory shrines to soldiers past, I really enjoyed reading of the history of our Revolutionary War from their perspective. Found out that quite a few American "POW's" from the revolutionary war were housed there alongside their compatriots of the period from Holland, France, and Denmark.

And I even loved the name of the "pub" up in the castle:



"Red Coat" Cafe. Ha. Takes me back to my Johnny Tremain-reading days.


After finishing up in Edinburgh, we leadfooted it out of town to reach Doune Castle before it closed. Doune Castle, you say? Everyone who recalls Bring Me a Shrubbery! The Knights of Niiii, or tossing a cow over the wall knows the significance of this place--one fo the most recognized sets from The Classic..... Monty Python & the Holy Grail.



And I have to say--this visit kicked all sorts of arse! It really made my trip...

We got there just as they were about to shut the doors for the day. As we just made it in, we actually had the run of the castle to ourselves--three of us able to fully check this place out, sans crowds, screaming babies, or anything else. The castle is one of the coolest castles I've been through--it is kinda hard not to become 14 again when exploring the place, easily imagining how cool it would be to live in a place such as this. Unlike most other "guided" or restored castes I've been through, this one was virtually all open for exploration, with only a very small section roped off.

I could actually go all the way up to the roof, and from there, the views, late in the day at dusk, were pretty stunning. Don't tell the wife, but I actually took advantage of the solitude to skirt around the barriers and climb up to the highest points of the roof, where only knee to waist high ramparts separated me from the green grounds a couple hundred feet below. The views tell it all!









This coolest pic ended our 40 minutes there, and made the 3 hour drive back to Balazs's apartment in the dark (and snow) totally worth it....






Tomorrow its our wind-down-get-ready-to-go-home-day. We may spend our last bit of time this week back up in Aberdeen, hanging out with other friends from work who have just arrived for their HUET training course.

Aaron

Loch Ness....minus the Nessie...

Just got back from visiting the famed Loch Ness, up in northern Scotland along the coast near Inverness. Alas, no sign of Nessie the water beast in those calm deep waters. From the looks of the gift shops however, not being seen can still translate into a sizable amount of trinketry for sale.

The drive up was amazing. One thing I've really noticed about Scotland--IT'S FRIGGIN' EMPTY! Nothing but tiny roads winding through dark green countryside, populated only by hoards of sheep and the occasional cow. We literally took the main road from Ballater to Inverness, and it involved having to pull over to the side in order to let oncoming traffic pass us.

Inverness was only 72 miles away, but in order to get there we had to cross up and over the Scottish Highlands, and it took us almost three hours to do so. We saw three distinct weather systems in one day--it went from sunny in Ballater that morning, to a BLIZZARD in the highlands, to rainy cold along the coast at Inverness as we drove past to Loch Ness. At Loch Ness the cold rain & misty fog parted and after an hour of being there, the sun shone again. BEAUTIFUL, capital B.

Some pics:



Glenbuchat Castle--near Ballater



Countryside outside Ballater, driving toward Inverness



Scottish Highlands - only 25 miles from the previous picture, and a few hundred meters above sea level!




Castle Urquhart, along Loch Ness...



Me in front of one of the towers of Castle Urquhart...



Balazs at the Loch...




Castle & Loch Ness behind it...



Postcard-perfect Loch Ness....




Parting look at the Castle and its greenery--emphasis on GREEN...


Tomorrow we are headed to Edinburgh to see the most famous castle in Scotland--Edinburgh Castle. Dwarfs everything else.

As it is only 102 miles away, it should only take 4 hours to drive there--but should be the prettiest four-hour drive I've seen in my lifetime. We'll see how it compares to the previous winner--the four hour stretch of coastal highway between Split & Dubrovnik, Croatia....

Aaron

Love me some Scotland...

Greetings from sunnythenrainythenstormythenwindy then sunny again Scotland. I've just wrapped up my HUET training (Helicopter Underwater Evacuation Training) on Saturday. It was the most fun I've had in a while. Still can't believe sometimes I am getting paid for this.

A year ago I never thought I'd be spending a few days strapped in a helicopter fuselage mounted on a rotating gimble, getting dunked into water tanks and spun around, over and over again. We did it fully kitted out in the cold water gear we'd be wearing on a flight over the North Sea. The suits have these cool breathing apparatuses called "re-breathers" that work as little mini oxygen providers--basically you rip open the front pouch on your jacket, bite onto the dive tube, take a huge breath and blow into it, inflating a small chamber. That one breath then actually provides you enough oxygen to breathe fairly normally for about 30 seconds---enough time to hopefully exit the helicopter that has so helpfully crash landed into frigid water where, in normal clothing, you'd get hypothermia in about 3 minutes. Naturally in all flights over water, we'll be in cold water wetsuits that could provide about 8 hours of protection

Also loads of training on deploying inflatable life rafts, rescue boats, etc... THOSE were cool. Absolutely nothing like you'd find in your average sporting goods store. really cool equipment.

We ran the tests with the breathers, without them, upside down, rightside up, breaking out windows, no windows, all variations of the same thing--hauling arse out of a downed chopper in the water.

Loads of fun--there was also the mandatory first aid training and training on another apparatus called the "SkyScape", basically a 50 meter long tube of kevlar netting that can be rapidly deployed from the rig floor to the ocean--essentially the last ditch escape mechanism from a damaged/burning rig 150 feet above the ocean. AWESOME. Capital A.

Basically I am now certified to work in the North Sea for the next four years. Booyah.

As luck would have it, my brother in law Balazs lives about 40 minutes SW of Aberdeen, in a little village called Ballater. Its very near the Bamoral Castle (Royal Family summer home) and is also where the Scottish Highland Games finish up ever four years. A cool little area. I'm staying with him, along with two of my traveling classmates, for a few days, so we can take in as much of Scotland as we can.

Scotland is green. I mean freakishly greeny green. Hurt-your-eyes-in-the-summer green. Haven't seen this much green since Oregon, and--as I am told--this doesn't even currently compare to how green it is during the summer months. I guess I'll have to come back sometime in the summer with Agi to experience that.

As it is, I've seen all sorts of weather in the lat week. Clear skies one day, total storms the next, followed by mild rain and wind, then clear skies again.

We spent last night here in Ballater at Balazs's pad, and had dinner at the restaurant where he works.


Awesome little homey Italian restaurant "La Mangiatoia". Great food.


This morning we woke up briht and early and took a stroll around the outskirts of town--thankfully had some sunshine, whereas yesterday was pretty stormy.


Walking along a river footpath that runs along the town.



Yours truly posed artfully along the same river, definitely sullying the view with the haggard, bleary-eyed face that screams out "yes-I-just-woke-up-and-haven't-showered-for-two-days"...




AHA! I knew it! even the uppity Scots have trailer parks! I jest--this is less "trailer park" than "guest-housing-for-persons-visiting-the world-famous-golf-course-nearby". Still, I was pretty surprised to come around a bend of the river and see some trailers...




Also on my walkabout I stumbled onto the rarest of finds--something tourists in Europe have to search hi and lo for--an old church. If there is one thing Europe just doesn't seem to have enough of, it would be old, beautiful temples that date from the middle ages. Who knew?




Most of all, I'm just happy to be able to hang out with Balazs again for a few days--haven't seen him since February, when he came out here to work. Cool guy! I know Agi misses him terribly, so I'd like to just take this moment to say....NEENER NEENER NEENER! I'm hanging out with your bro! In Scotland! Kidding aside, its been a great trip so far, and I am looking forward to jetting around the countryside on Monday checking out Loch Ness, the castle at Inverness, and seeing a beautiful countryside dotted with lots of sheep.

Later!

I'm hating United Airlines right now...

Right now I am really ticked off at not being able to fly Delta to Aberdeen, instead of United. after 900,000+ miles with Delta, this is my first real trip with United, and I find myself right now stuck at the Heathrow for 5 more hours. Really got hosed from the get-go by United. This is after a four hour delay in CHicago that caused us to lose our Heathrow connection to Aberdeen.

At my connection in Chicago, just 50 minutes before boarding, our flight disappeared from the board. After 45 minutes in line to get some clarification, I get told that our flight was delayed due to weather issues, and that our flight was still circling and waiting to land, and wouldn't land for 3 more hours. Right. No transatlantic flight has enough fuel to circle an airport for three hours after an 8 hour flight. The fact that it was a cloudless sky did not help her case either. Obviously we were lied to because any major delay due to mechanical error would make the airline have to cough up food vouchers and other renumerations. Weather, however, gets them in the clear.

We actually got the full story inadvertently a couple hours later from a different crew, who told us that our fight was on-time, but United made the decision to give our plane to the Munich route because the Munich plane was having mechanical problems with their hydraulics. Guess who got the crap Munich plane 5 hours later? I don't so much mind that United made the decision to divert our plane to another route (probably had fewer missed connections for the Munich flight), I'm just ticked they looked in my face and told me it was "the weather".

Then after landing at Heathrow, the gate agent told us to head straight to Terminal 1 to the United desk, where our updated tickets to Aberdeen were waiting for us. We get there, and find out we should have been sent to Terminal 5, a good 45 minutes away. Another missed flight. Another 5 hour layover.

Instead of getting into Aberdeen at 10 AM with a full day to check things out, I'm lucky to get in by 8 tonight.

Joys of flying...

Octobah Happenings....

Holy procrastination Batman! Has it really been a month since I last looked at me blog? Yep. Apparently so! It dawned on me that I hadn't written in a while, when I got an email from a dear friend who said "hey, you haven't written in a while"...

My days had fallen into a pretty good semblance of normality recently--you know--spend all day at the office, then come home, ask the kids about their day, help with homework, put them to bed, then call Comcast and wait on hold for an hour to complain about the spotty internet service due to the faulty modem they installed last Friday. You know, normal stuff.

I kid. I have also been watching The Office, walking the dogs, finishing up the classroom portion of my job training, and getting around to baptizing Ashton. Yep. The last of the four. It was AWESOME.


Hw was baptized last Saturday, a delay of two weeks from his birthday thanks to conference. Little kids tend to hate conference anyway, so this year he was doubly irritated at having to sit on the living room floor on the 4th. Kind of unsettling to get glowering looks from an eight year old while conference is on, along with complaints like "I SHOULD BE GETTING BAPTIZED TODAY!!"

By last Saturday it was all good. A special day.



We suffered a mini-tragedy two days ago. By we I mean Ashton and by tragedy I mean awesome opportunity for dad to say "I told you so".

Ashton got a scooter for his birthday--
(oh yeah--another event we managed to skip on the blog) on Sep 29th, and I spent the first week of said scooter's life explaining to Ashton that if he kept leaving in the driveway, it was bound to be run over. And in Sienna v. RazorScooter, the good money is on the Sienna. LO and behold, CRUNCH. Yesterday Agi mangled it after a quick run to the store.

Softee that I am, after my obligatory "I told you so's" and "gee what a wonderful teaching lesson this is", I decided to try and fix his scooter. Thankfully, only the stem was mangled, so I thought I could pound it back into an upright position with a mallet. Nope. Made it worse. Then I managed to at least get it taken apart, followed by a trip to Wal-mart to find a cheapie 20 dollar scooter from which I could use the stem and handlebars to replace the mangled pieces.

And this is why I hate Walmart:

I get to the store, pick out my chosen scooter due for organ donation, get home, and open it up. I find that: a) this scooter has already been beatup and returned to walmart, with stem screws that are stripped off (making its reason for existing useless to me) and b) its friggin' PINK and packed into the wrong box. Thanks Walmart. I was tempted to take back BOTH mangled scooters, drop them on the counter, and nonchalantly ask for a refund. "Why yes ma'am--it appeared to have been run over by a car when I took it out of the box". Super. Now I have TWO useless scooters.

In lighter news--I am once again packing for an international trip. I am going to Aberdeen with 4 of my classmates on Monday for an extended course in offshore survival training. While you may think this means learning how to fend off the advances of love-starved roughnecks, it actually is way cooler than that :-). I get to, among other things, practice escaping from a downed helicopter on the North Sea and jumping from a 90 foot platform into the water. I've taken great delight in freaking out Agi with graphic descriptions of every offshore rig accident of the past 30 years.

In any case--I am looking forward to this trip. I am also going to be hanging out with my brotha-in-law who is chef at a restaurant 45 miles south of Aberdeen. Hope to see all the cool sights--castles, Loch Ness, haggis factories, etc... All the cool Scottish stuff.

Bittersweet as well. I recall that my last "foreign" excursion that was any fun was to Hvar, Croatia in March, setting up a training conference for distributors in SE Europe. That was such a fun, blissful weekend, spent on a gorgeous island with two of my kids.

Seems so long ago... Ironically, that conference is this weekend. Hope it all goes well for the participants.

So here I come, Scotland! I leave Monday, and will be back a couple weeks later. I'm sure I'll have PLENTY of cool pictures to post...

Until then, I am back to my midnight laundry duties and the even more fun task of forgetting this week's twin debacles: BYU's craptacular performance last night Vs. TCU, and the snoozer of a Presidential debate from Wednesday. How the country ended up with these idiots winning their respective party nominations is beyond me. One is the barely restrained socialist wunderkint with a background and experience as barren as Paris Hilton's SAT scores, and the other is a doddering, grimacing, smirk machine who can't seem make a cogent argument on TV to save his life, even though his opponent is as wide-open a target as possible. My dream scenario is for McCain to win and then retire in February. Better that than having the Obaminator win with plans to "spread the wealth around". Yecch. I just left European socialism, only to see it on my doorstep here. Uggh. I weep for the Republic.