Blue skies

For months in Scotland, the sky is covered in a grey fog, or on a clear day, plastered with a sudden black.

And then the summer arrives.

Now the sun may not shine so much, and a sunburn is a badge of pride, not any sort of misery. The sun just simply doesn't hurt so far above the warm waves of the equator.

But after the dark, the long, long dark when the days just begin at 9am and retire at 3pm, the summer months begin.

And they may not be the warmest, but they are blue. All night long, the skies are blue. The sun never truly leaves, perhaps guilty for the previous indiscretions of December. And so they are blue, all night every night. The star hovers, sharing just a bit of light all through the night. The stars regress for a few months, and this northern island turns a shade.

Family vacation

You know the saying that you can never go home again? Well, I'd like to add to that a little, you can never go home and you can never vacation with your parents again.

Of course people go home all the time, have a nice meal and do their best to leave before anything provokes the inevitable argument.

And people do travel with their parents well past the acceptable parent/child vacation age.

For some reason, you think, well, the last time we had a family trip was 10 years ago and it wasn't that bad....really. Then you think, I'm a grown up, I'm officially out of my 20's so this should be just swell.

The problem is that your parents seem to still believe you are, most of the time, an irate teenager, which is exactly who you seem to revert to after approximately 12 hours in constant company with Mom and Dad. So you pout, they scold. Everyone puts aside the attitude to see the Eifel tower lit up on the Senne, or shuffle through Notre Dame, or stroll the gardens at Versailes. You even manage to have a wonderful time on the bike tour through Munich and really, really enjoy your beer at the Haufbrough house.

But innevitably, arguments pop up at meals, no-one gets much sleep, and someone (not me) looses their passport at the airport.

So yes you can vacation again with your parents, just make sure to plan ahead of time a couple of afternoons where everyone does their own thing. Bring earplugs in case your ipod dies, remember to walk really, really slowly so as not to loose a parent, look both ways before they cross the road and cherish the beer garden.

Saddle sore

The first bike ride of the spring season went down pretty well considering. Considering I borrowed my bike from my roommate who has at least 6 inches on me, and her road bike is actually a guys bike.

So it was heavy and I had to hop a lot to get from the ground to a perched position on the seat and that stupid bar in the middle tried to maim me in delicate places a couple of times. I don't really understand why boy's bikes have that bar across the middle, shouldn't they be more worried about possible bike-bar related injury than a girl?

We took a train up to Montrose then road up the coast, some on road, some off to Stonehaven about 30 miles away. The bikes were a little bit of a pain on the train, and the conductor was almost a jerk about them even though there was plenty of bike storage space. But otherwise the ride was smooth, the train ride that is.

From Montrose we curved off toward the coast and onto a path by the beach. Absolutely beautiful, though a little tough going for a heavy road bike. Still, the view made up for any hardships. Large black rocks dotted the white sand and cloud mottled sunlight turned the sea various shades of dark to turquoise blue. We hiked up the end trail to the top of the cliffs overlooking the sea and the wildflowers and headed back inland.

Our next off road started with a steep and winding road down through a coastal village. The views weren't as pleasant. No beach just rocks to the seaside and pastureland to the inland side. Along with a dodgy looking caravan park. No matter, we persevered on back up to the road.

Finally, after many, many hills up and down, mostly up, and many, many muttered swear words directed mostly at the heavy bike and soreness, we reached Dunnottar castle. A 13th century fortress on a cliff overlooking two small, clear bays. The ruins were tipped in green algae and held a ragged, haunted court with the oncoming gray clouds.

I'm definitely going back there for a longer and less sore investigation. We ended in Stonehaven only a few miles later and feasted on hot fish and chips before dozing on the train back to Dundee.

I am out to buy my own, used mountain bike soon. There's so much more of Scotland to see on the saddle.

Stupid spending and gambling isn't very smart

I read this article yesterday: http://www.helenair.com/articles/2009/02/23/top/75na_090222_fasttrain.txt

And while I typically keep politics to another site, I couldn't help but want to rant a little bit here.

Obama wants to build a train from Los Angeles to Vegas.

Why? How is that a good investment? I agree that the west could use some rail lines. But lets be practical here. If you are going to build a fast rail, why on earth would you connect the two most useless cities in the union? What about rail lines from Seattle down the coast hitting Portland, then into Berkley, Oakland, San Fran and Sacramento then down to Los Angeles? Or connect Chicago to Denver and Salt Lake City or whatever.

It's just that if massive ammounts of money are going to be poured into a project don't be so completely transparent. It's obvious someone just wanted to take the train to gamble instead of having to fly.

I choked on a candy heart

Ah Valentine's Day. A day of love and, as my Mom says, it's about celebrating love and not just the romantic kind and I shouldn't become a cynic.

This week started out great, I ran around a squash court with a friend and then went to play another game managing to hit myself in the face with a basketball (also made two baskets in 15 minutes). My work was going well, the experiments looking up and a paper in the works.

Tuesday started out with a little sore throat, no big deal. I ignored it and threw myself into the day. I was looking forward to a party on Thursday night, an old movie night on Friday and another big party on Saturday, which would easily make me forget any lingering sullen thoughts of Valentines.

Then, sitting in front of an experiment I started to realize my face felt very much as it did when I'd been drinking red wine. All flushed and hot. Hmmmmm. Around 5 it turned into a headache plus fever and by 6pm my skin hurt from the fever and I knew I had to get home now. So I sluggishly dragged myself to my apartment arriving exhausted even though the way home is mostly downhill.

The next three days I spent in bed. I tried to get up for work on Thurs, but after it took me an hour to get to the shower and another to feebly wash and stumble back to bed I had to give up.

On the bright side I'm much better today. I have to rest after every flight of stairs and I'm wearing three layers of pants, shirts, socks seeing as my fever thinks it's funny to actually make my skin feel hot while the inside of me is freezing! But I'm at work, so good I'll get something useful done.

But there's no way I'll make the party tonight, so yet another Valentines day will go by in a fairly pathetic manner. On the bright side I'll probably be in bed by 9 at the latest and I didn't struggle out of bed till 2, so there you go, a nice short (very non-cynical) day.

See it's non-cynical cos I said on the bright side. Clever of me, I know.

Recovery

I'm only just recovering from my Christmas holiday.

While it was really great to be in Montana and to see my family and friends, that just made it harder to leave.

I cried when I got off the plane, cried at least twice at my birthday, and for almost the entire way to Salt Lake on the way back.

Of course, one can't cry for a full 14 hours of flying, 8 hours of layover, and 2 hours of train rides. So my eyes had dried up and I was looking forward to getting back to see my friends.

One phone-call later and I was all a mess again.

Somewhere over the Atlantic, my Grandpa was rushed to the hospital and the surgeon couldn't save him. I keep thinking if it'd happened just a few hours earlier I could've flown from Salt Lake out to my family. Or, a little earlier than that and I would've gone with my parents from Montana. But I didn't find out until I made my way to Dundee.

I guess if either of the first options had happened, I may have just not bothered coming back here at all. On the one hand the living overseas thing is a great experience. I've met a lot of people and learned a lot. The science is good too.

But it's terribly difficult to be so far from home. As I flew out over those Rocky mountains I couldn't help but think I was leaving one of the most beautiful places on earth. And I was lucky enough to grow up there. And I've been lucky enough to globe trot for the past 9 years. But I've missed out on two funerals now. I've missed some births too.

It's getting harder each time to leave, and harder to stay so far away.

sledding at Glen Shee