Weekend travels

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

To see what we were up to this weekend, probably best to check two of my other blogs first of all - http://banchoryheadbangers.blogspot.com/ and http://iansaleadventures.blogspot.com/.

Scott was off work today and so we took a short trip down to Ashland and visited the usual places, including a walk through Lithia park and a paddle in the creek there:

On the way home, we slowed down to let a group of bikers from Washington overtake us:

More Grants Pass musings

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Well, blow me - it's Friday night already and that's a week of our holiday gone. Scott, Lucy and the boys are at football training/conditioning every midweek night just now, so Jo and I are sitting here updating our respective blogs.

Tomorrow we head north to Eugene/Springfield for the Blues and Brews festival - http://www.wvbbf.org/ - we're staying overnight, so should be fun.

Lucy's been on holiday the last couple of days and from now until we travel back, but Scott still has to work - apart from this coming Monday, when we may golf again. He, Vic and I took part in a Scramble competition - just 9 holes - on Tuesday evening at Applegate. It was fun, but we were rubbish.

I tried Scott's bike the other day and, this morning, there were a few early morning clouds, so I thought I'd take the chance to head out again before the sun broke through properly and it got too hot. I rode downtown and went round a few book shops, then headed back through the parks, across the river:

While I was downtown, I came across this place:

Look closely!

There was also this:

Going back in time, yesterday was a lazy day at the Lesina ranch, which afforded me time to finish the latest John Grisham (The Confession) - it only took me just over 2 days. I've always liked his style, but, after a while, it becomes a little predictable. I hadn't read one of his books for a couple of years, so I thought I would try again, but perhaps it was a mistake. I'm now on to Gerald Seymour's The Dealer and the Dead.

Wednesday was, of course, Cade's 11th birthday proper and, with Jo and I in charge of proceedings, we headed south to the Family Fun Center in Medford. There were a few twists and turns but we got there in the end. Blink of an eye and $100 was gone - amazing! The go-karts were fun - Cade on his own, now that he's tall enough, and me with Braeden. I managed to lose my phone on the first ride - temporary panic, but soon resolved.

We all got thoroughly soaked on the Bumper Boats so I lay out on the grass and let the sun work its magic. We had arranged to meet Scott and Lucy in Applebee's for the birthday tea - and it was very nice. Good surroundings and we all sat at a high, circular table with footrests - lovely. As ever, the staff sang and clapped a birthday celebration as they presented Cade with cake:

So that's me up to date now. There have been a few minor changes at Delsie Drive since we were last here, not least of which is the lovely job Scott and his Dad and pal did on re-painting the entire outside of the house. One or two minor changes at the back as well - watch this video on the blog:

Grants Pass happenings

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

The day after the pre birthday party was fairly quiet. Jo and Lucy went to church early on Sunday morning and then we just hung around until late afternoon, when we headed down to Medford for a little bit of birthday shopping, followed by dinner at Kaleidoscope - our favourite pizza pub.

It was back to work this morning for Scott and Lucy, so we were on babysitting duties. We had a little bit of shopping to get as well, but the boys always complain when we have to drag them round in the car, so I said I would do the shopping - and soon - because I wanted to get a little bit of exercise and a quick cycle up to Albertston's before the heat of the day seemed like a good idea.

Scott's bike seemed ready, but when I made it to the shop, I realised it wasn't necessarily the best plan to leave the bike outside without a padlock. I darted round the store and was relieved to find the bike still there when I got out - both from the point of view of it not being nicked, but, more importantly to me at the time, the fact that I didn't have to walk all the way back with all the shopping on my back!

We had lunch and chilled out until the pool beckoned:

I finished my book - Keith Richards' Life - and will now leave it here for Kelly to read when she comes over to see Scott and Lucy next year.

This report comes to you courtesy of my new lightweight laptop and Lucy's new wireless signal, which has much better upload speeds than we get back in Banchory - are you listening, Ross?

Today is the day the painter arrives at Arbor Court - hope Ross helped him out OK - Davie is in his 70's now and it's a long haul down from Fraserburgh every day for him. Ross is also dog-sitting for the next 2 weeks, so he's going to be a full-time carer! (Hopefully some work too!)

USA travel

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Our journey to Oregon was pretty uneventful - although it took a little longer than usual as we had decided to overnight in LA, as the timing of the flights to Medford would have meant a pretty late arrival on Thursday.

The Hilton at LAX was nice and we had a short dip in the pool and some sun-bathing before dinner. We walked along to the adjacent Marriott as their dining room was a bit more attractive than the Hilton's. Jo and I shared a shrimp starter then had salads to follow. It was now 7pm - or 3am in our body clock times - and it was a struggle to stay awake. We had promised ourselves that we would try and adjust to USA time quickly, but failed. As a result, I was up at midnight, then 2am, 3am and finally got up at 4am.

Plenty of time therefore to go through the formalities at the airport and we were on our way to Medford, via Portland. We had lunch and beer in Gustav's  in the delightful surroundings of Portland airport, which is bright and open, unlike many airports.

Scott, Lucy and the boys all came down to meet us at Medford and we drove back to Grants Pass for supper. The boys had football conditioning which gave Jo and I time to unpack and organise ourselves in the trailer. Here's Braeden in his torn top:

On Saturday morning Scott had organised golf for himself, Cade and I at Applegate. Here's Cade on the range:

Note the new Nike golf set he got for his 11th birthday (which is next Wednesday). Cade was pretty good - he hit some nice shots.

In the afternoon, Scott's Mum and Dad, plus Karen's sister, and Scott's sister and her husband and kids all came over for a family party and BBQ - a lovely afternoon.

10th Anniversary!

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Yes - believe it or not, it's Scott and Lucy's 10th Anniversary today - here they were releasing the butterflies at Patrick Creek in 2001:

Have a good one - see you later in the week.

Loch Lomond etc - part II

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

and so to the second part of our weekend - and this time we were a bit more organised - we had a plan! We took the short drive north up the west side of Loch Lomond and parked at Tarbet, then waited for the 11:30 cruise across the loch to Inversnaid. This was a recommended route for walkers, called the West Highland Way Rambler II, which involved what they said was a 7.5 mile walk south to Rowardennan, where we would get picked up again and sail back to Tarbet. Here's Jo on arrival at Inversnaid:

Just a mile along the road we stopped at a little beach - Jo had to brush her hair - and we got invaded by midges!:

Further along, after a bit of a climb, there was a nice viewpoint:

We were a little surprised to come across these 3 wild mountain goats:

Time for lunch - and we found a lovely outlook, which even had a bench:

At the end of the walk, there's a strange modern sculpture:

Nice walk - and it stayed dry. All the stats etc on my hill-walking blog (http://bvhill-walkers.blogspot.com/).

On Monday, we took the short drive over to Helensburgh, where we thought we would use our National Trust passes and visit one of their properties - The Hill House - designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh - but it didn't open until 1:30 pm, so we just had a quick stroll round their gardens:

Apart from the big houses on the hill, Helensburgh didn't look all that impressive to us, for an area that is renowned as key commuter territory for the Glasgow professionals, so we left and drove up past Rhu and Faslane - and the peace camp there - up the eastern shore of Loch Long and back to Arrochar again. We had hoped to find a nice tearoom somewhere, but there was nothing to be seen. We stopped in Arrochar and probably should have gone back to the Village Inn, but we thought we should try somewhere else for tea and coffee, and we spotted Ben Arthur's Bothy, which had an outdoor, shoreside area for drinks etc. It was pretty grotty, but we sat there and admired the views of the Cobbler opposite:

Wrong angle to see it properly, I'm afraid.

Here's another panorama shot of the area:

Then it was back to Cameron House to have lunch with Barry and Helen, after which Jo and I used the superb spa once again:

So that was it.

Loch Lomond etc

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

I'm back in my office today, but, if we hadn't been going to USA next Thursday, we could easily have stayed at the Carrick Club a bit longer than the 3 nights we enjoyed this weekend. Thankfully, Barry and Helen have now taken up residence there so our week hasn't gone to waste - hope they're enjoying the spa and the scenery as much as we did. It's certainly one of the nicest resorts we've ever stayed at.

Gary and Luca made good use of it on Saturday night too - and Carole would have loved it - if only she'd known beforehand what was on offer!

Our weekend started off with a very nice lunch break at the Drovers Inn, Memus. It's a bit off the main road, just before you get to Forfar, but it's well worth the trip - especially if the weather's nice, as it was on Friday afternoon. They have a lovely big, grassy garden where the kids can run around to their hearts' content. Jo was reading her book when I got back from the loo:

As we were well inland at this point, sat nav directed us cross country through Blairgowrie etc to Perth. It's a lot slower, but it appears we missed a major log-jam on the Dundee - Perth road, so it probably eased our journey a bit.

Our apartment was in the Mansion House at the Carrick and it had a huge living area, and it overlooked the 16th (I think) green of the Carrick course, which is already looking a lot more mature than when I played there a few years ago, not long after it opened:

 On Saturday morning, we drove over to the east side of the loch, up the narrow loch-side road until it stops at Rowardennan, where we got out the car and noticed the start of one of the trails up Ben Lomond. We hadn't planned anything, so weren't organised - no drinks, no food - but decided to start walking up the hill anyway. We took some detours, and then I remembered to switch on my GPS tracker, after almost an hour of walking. Eventually we got to about 800 feet, where Jo said "no more!", so we headed back down for some lunch. It got a little damp on the way down and Jo's neatly coiffured look took a bit of a beating:

We drove back to Drymen and had lunch in the Clachan Inn - very nice. Our first visit to the spa at the Carrick was later that afternoon, just before Barry, Helen, Dawn and Jordan came to pick us up and take us up to Arrochar for dinner at the Village Inn.

Gary and Luca were in Glasgow watching Partick Thistle beat Celtic in a friendly match, and we'd pre-arranged that they would join us for dinner. The look on Luca's face when he walked in to the restaurant and saw us, was, as the Mastercard advert says, priceless. His Dad hadn't told him he was meeting us there.

After eating, Luca and I crossed the road and went down the steps to the beach, which was covered in mussel beds. Luca just wanted to throw them back in to the sea "to give them a little drink"!:

Luca and Gary stayed with us on Saturday night and drove home in the morning - and that was the end of the first part of our weekend adventure.

The graft results

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

OK - only 3 of you voted on my blog poll - but it was unanimous - you don't think I should go for the skin graft. I was thinking the same myself, but I'll wait for another week until I see the dental surgeon again before deciding for sure.

Our weekend at Slaley Hall was great (details on golf blog) and I'm looking forward to this weekend at the Carrick at Loch Lomond. Barry phoned last night and he's arranged for us all to go out for dinner on Saturday to  http://www.villageinnarrochar.co.uk/.


This week's Graze Box is:

Oh - and well done - there's well over 10,000 viewings of my blog now!


Not much else to say just now - too busy keeping my other blogs going!

Smile!

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

So yesterday afternoon I went along to the dental surgeon and he fitted my implant. I played golf last night, then went home, and this morning I've been chairing a few management meetings at work, but has anybody noticed or commented? - No! Here's the new smile:

As you can see, the amount of ironware you can now see depends on how much I smile. there is a gap above the tooth and below the new gum line. I go back to see him in 2 weeks and he tells me that, if I'm concerned at this, then he can arrange a skin graft from my palate to my gum to cover this up. At this stage, I'm not sure about whether I should do this or not. What do you think? Answer the poll on the blog please.

and the winner is ........

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

...... Kelly! What was the competition? World's shortest blogger, of course. Kelly's done exactly one blog per month since we came back from Australia - and they're not exactly tomes either!

This week's Graze Box is:

I didn't see Gary on his birthday, but Jo caught up with him in Inverurie after she returned Luca and Gary got back from his football - but I did get a piece of his very lemony birthday cake - it was scrumptious. I especially enjoyed the half of it I left over for this morning, as I didn't have any breakfast today due to the fact that it was my annual medical screening at Albyn. I'll get the full report in due course, but it seemed to go well - both the doctor and the nurses made encouraging noises.

We've almost hit magic number of 10,000 viewings of this blog - just 50 to go - keep it up!

Supposed to be golfing tonight, but, although it's OK just now, it's forecast to be raining this afternoon, so might have to carry over to tomorrow. More concerned about this weekend when it's our annual Summer Tour to Slaley Hall - hope it's dry then. I got in to trouble about this last night as I think I had forgotten to remind Jo I'm away - whoops - and sorry!

The following weekend we're at the Carrick at Loch Lomond, then we've got a weekend at home (which includes seeing Laura Marling (http://www.lauramarling.com/) at Woodend Barn), then it's off to USA the following week!

My work plans were disrupted today - I had planned to go to Fraserburgh as we had invited a couple of our bankers up to see round the place, but first thing this morning, Tesco showed up for one of their unannounced technical audits, so we had to cancel everything else.

Gary 36!

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

It's a very happy 36th birthday today to our Gary. this one of him was taken in our back garden in Broxbourne about 35 years ago:

Note the smile - we didn't get many of them from him in those days!

Not too much else to add, other than to say I've been enjoying the excellent weather and taking the opportunity to get out and golf in shorts again. Yesterday it was St. Andrews and it was glorious.

They say bad luck comes in threes. Well, you heard about my chair and how it's broken? That was the first. Yesterday, I broke my reading glasses - one of the lenses has snapped away from the frame. That was the second. Then I got home last night and was told that my Archos (my mini DVR) had "fried". That was number three. No more please.

Graze Box

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

This week's Graze Box contains:

The question now is, am I snacking on these instead of munching on crisps and biscuits, or as well as?

Weekend with Luca & Yoda

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

The gruesome twosome were delivered over to us as a package on Thursday as Gary and Carole headed off for a long weekend in London. Poor Yoda really is a feartie and regularly seemed to empty her bladder in different places at unpredictable times - no major disasters but you do have to watch her - she's so timid.

Luca, on the other hand, is, as Gary has said several times, much more confident and capable of manipulating any situation with anyone. Of course, he gets spoiled rotten when he comes over to ours - not of my doing, I hasten to add.

I didn't see Luca much on Friday as I was at work in the morning, golf at Ballater in the afternoon, and out at one of our thrice yearly "Headbangs" in the evening. I cancelled my golf on Saturday, however, and we took Luca and Yoda down to Milton of Crathes as we had heard that the Deeside Railway Preservation Society were running train rides along the first mile of track they are restoring.

We arrived early for the 12:30 ride, so we bought our tickets then wandered down a bit of the adjacent Deeside Way, allowing both Luca and Yoda the opportunity to let off some steam. It's an old diesel locomotive they run, pushing carriages that used to take the Royal Family out towards their summer holiday home at Balmoral. They do have a steam engine as well, but only crank that up on high days and holidays when they know that visitor numbers are likely to be greater.

Having started walking westwards towards Banchory, we spotted the train returning to the station:

Hey Luca - we need to run back to the station in case we miss our train! So, back we headed:

We made it in plenty of time:

Our traditional thick cardboard tickets showed we were entitled to a seat in "3rd Class", but, as the only passengers on the train, we sat where the h**l we liked - and that was the Royal compartment at the front of the 1st Class section:

Apparently, my seat (next to Jo's) was where the Queen Mother always used to sit. The "inspector" came round and punched holes in our tickets - very quaint. He opened the driver's compartment at the front of the train and offered to let Luca sit in there - but he refused. He preferred to stay a bit further back.

When the journey was over we were allowed to go up in to the real driver's cabin, which was at the back of the train. The main purpose being to lift Luca up so he could pull the cord and blow the train's whistle - we did it, but I'm not really sure Luca knew what was going on - he didn't seem to correlate his pulling the cord with the sound of the whistle.

Back home later on, some gardening had to be done - Luca was the snail-remover-in chief:

On Sunday afternoon, we went to Malcolm Lodge's surprise 60th birthday BBQ. Jo drove there and spent a bit of time at the start making sure Luca was settled OK:

I think we were last over there at Malcolm's 50th, not long after they bought the property, and it's come on a lot since then - they've worked hard at it - here's the longer shot of Jo and Luca in the lower part of their garden:

Gary picked up Luca on his return yesterday (Monday) but he'll be back with us again briefly this afternoon for his usual Tuesday afternoon/early evening.

I finish with a tale of woe - my favourite - and very expensive - chair, is broken. It felt a bit odd on Sunday and today it appears as if the main right hand supporting bolt has sheared:

It's been reported and we now await their inspector's visit - but I'll miss my chair for a while it seems.

Midsummer madness

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Yes, it may have been the Summer Solstice yesterday, but it was a wet one, and the rain carried on this morning, so they've decided to close the golf course, so no golf for me tonight - going to play squash instead. Of course, it's sod's law, it's stopped raining, but perhaps the course needs a bit of time to absorb the moisture anyway.

So, here I am, blogging again. I think we provoked Kelly in to action and her photo of the Koala bear in Adelaide city centre was interesting, but the narrative was - well, less than massive, let's say. Apparently the poor wee lamb has done something to her neck and she's getting a constant migraine now - hope you get it fixed soon, Kelly!

What else is new? Well, I've been preparing for our headbang on Friday night - there's going to be 9 of us there this time, squeezed in to Dave's front room.

I got my first ever (trial) box from Graze (http://www.graze.com/) today. Not bad, although whether I'll keep it up or not, we'll see. Must leave some for Jo to try when I get home - oh, and it's the Apprentice tonight - the UK version that is, with "SirAlan" Sugar - not the original American Trumpster, who was in Aberdeen again yesterday, touting the new course he's building and putting it forward for a future Ryder Cup and an Open.

We've got Luca for a few nights - and Yoda - as Gary and Carole go away for the weekend. We've all received our written instructions - seems like Ross has been singled out to handle Yoda. We'll take Luca with us to Malcolm Lodge's surprise 60th birthday party on Sunday.

So that's it for now.