Travelogue Part One

Cuzzin Ricky and I went to the Rumble Series midget races Saturday night. Always a good night of racing if you can stand the exhaust fumes. It wasn't too bad this year, probably because the weather was warm outside so they opened the doors up more than they normally do. We were in the first row - not the best place to take photos of the cars going past but the best place if you want one to land in your lap! That's going to be it for my traveling for awhile. Now would be a good time to head south, however. As I write this it's zero outside, the ground is snow covered and the weatherman is talking more on the way.

If I was going to fly south, I'd definitely use these again. While I don't do a lot of traveling by airplane, whenever I do I'm always bothered by the cabin pressure screwing up my ears. When I came home from Italy a couple years ago my ears actually hurt for a couple of days and it took a couple days more for everything to get back to normal. This time I bought some EarPlanes. Stick them in your ears just like regular earplugs before take-off and remove them once you reach cruising altitude. Likewise, stick them in an hour before landing and remove them when they open the cabin door. They worked like a charm - no ear problems what so ever. 

Now if I could figure out how to be comfortable in the cheap section of the plane on a 8 or 9 hour flight, life would be good. They pack you in like sardines back there. The seats keep getting smaller and the people keep getting bigger. Maybe take out one seat so there are nine across instead of 10 and then throw in just a little bit of leg room as well. It wouldn't necessarily make flying fun but it would make it more comfortable.

Here's another bit of travel advice - take heed of the warnings painted on the roads prior to stepping off the curb when in London. You'll notice in the photo the streets aren't laid out in a rectangular grid but rather, kind of every which way. And since you're in London, people drive on the opposite side of the road which means when you attempt to step off the traffic island and look left as you would normally do, you'll get whacked by that scooter that's just coming into the picture. They must have run over a lot of tourists if they figured it was worth the trouble to paint the street at every cross walk. I'm glad they did.

Here's where we ate dinner the two nights we were in London. The William Morris Free House. The food was good (even though they ran out of fish and chips both nights prior to our arrival) and the beer was even better. The decor was as you would expect for a place named after William Morris, probably the man most famously associated with the English Arts and Crafts movement. Morris was most well known for his textile designs but he also designed stained glass windows, formed the Kelmscott Press, was an active socialist, and was an inspiration for Elbert Hubbard, of the Roycrofter Shops. If you wish to learn about the Arts and Crafts movement, and I hasten to add, you definitely should, Morris and Hubbard are the names to start with.

And if you want to go way back in English history, you could start with the Tower Castle. This is the one Richard the Lionheart called home. If I go back, I'm going to take the tour. As it was, just too much to see in such a short time. We did do a tour of the city and we rode on a double decker bus and we saw all the highlights - Hyde Park, the Parliament, Big Ben, boat ride on the Thames. So no complaints, just a desire to see more.

The tour actually started after we left England and crossed the English Channel. These are the White Cliffs of Dover as seen from the bus window. We crossed on the ferry as foot passengers and then met up with our tour director and the bus in France.