around home, family, UK

Cambridge

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Getting up & watching Rugby World Cup matches in a cold lounge wasn’t the best step for my health – but thankfully it’s only a two or three day cold. So when I found Mum’s day-trip (put on for the Study Abroad students) to Cambridge was on Sunday, a plan to go up & see her & the town was hatched rather hastily. As it turned out, Trish was keen to go up as well so we ended up driving. Cambridge is another one of those places I’d been meaning to visit for a while & hadn’t quite had the opportunity or sufficient motivation to do so.

It’s a much more compact town than I remember Oxford being, mostly devoid of parking – so the Park & Ride just off the M11 was most handy. We met Mum just as she was finishing up her lunch & heading off on a walking tour. With a week of settling into uni & organising all sorts of things, she is doing well if a little tired – I imagine it will be nice to have had classes finally start today. Trish & I wandered around a bit down twisting cobbled streets & through courtyards – getting a good look at Christ’s College Chapel, crossing the Cam a few times & stopping to watch the novice punters doing their utmost not to fall in the river or knock themselves out on low bridges.

Meeting Mum again there was more wandering around spotting various famous colleges – a few I must admit I only had heard of from watching University Challenge a year or two back. There were people everywhere, being a weekend in very much a tourist town – I’m glad my university was overcome by sightseers, although Massey doesn’t exactly have much on Cambridge otherwise. It was pleasing to see bikes almost everywhere – although it did seem that their primary purpose was to clutter railings, we saw proportionally few being ridden.

Mum rejoined a very large group of foreign students to make sure they didn’t miss the coach back to Colchester & we continued back down the motorway to visit Trish’s (& Mum’s for that matter) cousin Carol & Barry for a huge roast meal, a catch-up & much family history. Another pleasant little outing, even if it wasn’t the best recuperation plan.

USA

SW States Time Lapse

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Twitter does have some uses – I followed a link the other day to the stunning time lapse video below. I quite liked it because it gives a much better appreciation of the vastness & spectacular scenery that Valerie & I saw on our trip this summer past than the photos I took with my compact. Plus, I recognised four places we visited & a few we didn’t quite make it to. Spare a few minutes & watch it in HD – or just ignore my nostalgic thoughts.

family, UK

Somerset & Bath

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It was great to pick Mum up from Heathrow much too early on a Saturday morning a week and a half ago. Even if that did mean driving through London well too early on a weekend – not that days of the week have too much meaning to me at the moment. We continued west towards Somerset, ducking off when the M4 was closed & wandering around a pleasant little Wiltshire village, lunching & then trying our luck again on the roads. The direct route west through Bath was too snarled up, so it was north back to the motorways. Eventually we were at Mum’s cousins’ (Gary & Joan) place, where I promptly left her to get over the jetlag (which apparently never eventuated) to go down & visit John & Anna (who I met years ago biking in Rotorua) & their young twin daughters. Esther & Lydia sure have grown since I was in Canada. My shoulder dictated that this was my first visit to Taunton without a bike; even so I enjoyed just hanging out as we watched the girls, shared travels stories and looked over my photos from North America.

Back up at Burnham-on-Sea Mum & I spent a relaxing few days trying to avoid getting painted when we walked through the hallway, moseying around various quaint villages (I didn’t get any cheese in Cheddar – “Not much call for it? It’s the single most popular cheese in the world!“, visiting various family & friends, frequenting charming centuries old pubs. I even managed an interview in Bristol on the Tuesday for a job I wasn’t particularly keen on – it was a mercifully short interview. I was delighted to have the new Jack Reacher novel arrive on my Kindle mid-week – a good look as to how Reacher came to be drifting around the States “solving” various problems with usually staggering amounts of violence.

Highlight of the week was getting to Bath finally – a place that I’ve skirted around on the motorway numerous times & never quite had the time to pop in & visit. Unfortunately it ended up being a rather rushed visit, but I got to see the main things I wanted to. That Wednesday was the start of a purple patch of weather – five sunny calm days in a row with the mercury getting up in the high-20s each day. A very pleasant surprise as the days get shorter heading in to October. Consequently, there were plenty of people out & about in Bath (I imagine there usually are – except on the bleakest of days) & we briefly wandered through town towards the Abbey & the Roman Baths.

The Celts first had a temple here around the geothermally heated spring & the Romans built up a temple & the baths here in the first century AD. Those first baths were eventually lost after the Romans left Britain, but much of their complex has been revealed & is part of the facility today. Most of the current buildings & statues date from the 1800s. The audio-tour is very informative & it’s always nice wandering around old architecture & engineering. The various artefact displays & reconstruction of some of the Roman temple were very well done too.

The main drain – nice algae too

There was just enough time to enjoy the late afternoon sun & walk up to see some of Bath’s famous Georgian architecture. The Royal Crescent is particularly impressive – as you would expect a Grade I listed building to be.  With a huge green lawn in front of the crescent, it’s a wonderful setting for the arc of facade that was finished in the 1770s.  I found it interesting that the architect (John Wood the Younger) designed & built the facade only.  This meant that people bought their own section of the front & then had their own architect design the house behind.  At the front this shows up with many different styles of windows & doors, while at the back there is a real hodge-podge of building styles & sizes.

The week rounded out with Mum & I driving down to Dorset to see another cousin (Pamela – Gary’s sister – who I’d last seen when I was four, apparently I’ve grown a bit). All the driving on A-roads was just tedious – so busy & small. After a week of driving through various parts of England on tiny roads in an under-powered rental, I was really missing driving my Outback around the big empty wide roads of North America. There was a much longer & better job interview on Friday near Southampton before we got back to London. The weekend of great weather was mostly spent with Mum organising herself for university, more meals with family & eventually taking Mum up to Colchester & moving all her belongings in to her flat on campus. It’s a little odd taking your mother to university.

around home, shoulder, UK

Now, where’s my pistol?

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More of the same – arm in sling, no riding, reasonable fall weather & trying to find a job. Tuesday was the day for my appointment at the Fracture clinic – I managed to show the registrar that I have reasonable movement in my arm. He then demonstrated that he could make it click & almost come out again quite easily. So I’ve got an MRI in a couple of weeks, followed by another appointment with the registrar. I suppose that, & the explanation he gave me of recurrent shoulder dislocations, means surgery may be a possibility. An idea I wasn’t particularly keen on, but if that would make my shoulder more stable I could be persuaded – especially as it hasn’t recovered so well this time. Today I was back at the hospital picking up another sling. This one is over the top compared to all I’ve had before (so it should be, retailing at £120) – with a strap around my belly it uses a metal plate to rotate my arm out. There’s a grip in the front of the sling to hold on to – with my arm straight out in front of me & my fingers wrapped around the grip I feel that I’m shooting from the hip, alas a six-shooter doesn’t come with the sling. It looks kind of goofy, but the shoulder joint is supposed to heal better rotated externally – or so some research says (of course, it’s easy enough to discover contradictory findings). It also proves difficult to take a webcam photo of oneself while wearing it.

Thankfully, I don’t have to wear it all the time as there’s a bit going on this week. Mum arrives early tomorrow morning – it’ll be great to see her – & we are heading west to stay with some cousins of hers (ours, I suppose) for a few days south of Bristol. I’m also looking forward to going down to see John, Anna & their young twins while Mum recovers from the flights – pity that there’ll be no big (or small) ride with John. It’s worked out well has I have two (possibly three) interviews in that part of the world next week. It was neat to catch up yesterday with Roger, a riding buddy from NZ is over this side of the world for a couple of months having ridden in the World Singlespeed Champs in Ireland a few weeks ago. I met him & Michelle at St Pancras a couple of hours before they were due to get the train to Paris – I was mildly jealous, it’s two year to the week since I made the same trip & loved every minute of it. After they left I enjoyed wandering in the sun down to Charing Cross checking out the British Library, the British Museum & stopping in nice sunny parks to read for a while.

Unexpected delight of the week was chewing through both series of Rizzoli & Isles (I have too much free time) – a TV show based on a series of books I read when I was back in NZ. While a gritty cop show, it’s pretty funny too & I was surprised to see how much one of the leads reminds me of a good friend back home. The subtle east-coast accent, intelligent professional, fashion enthusiast, loves to cook elaborate meals & a home stylishly decorated with everything just-so. Mind you, pathology & academia are quite different careers.

Biking to go places, going places to bike.