Oregon so far

We've now spent our 2nd weekend in Grants Pass and the weather has been lovely - not too hot for too long each day. In midsummer it's very hot all day long but now in Fall, it can be cool overnight and first thing in the morning with the peak temperature arriving mid-afternoon before cooling down again.

First light is about 6:30 am and sundown roughly 7:30 pm. I'm writing this on Monday morning just before noon and the temperature is currently 77 F (25 C), rising to 89 F (32 C) at 4 pm. When Barry and Helen arrive here tomorrow it's going to be 94 F (35 C) but it drops by about 20 F on Wednesday befor rising again.

Enough of the weather report - what have we been up to? Not a lot for the first few days - our first activity beyond Delsie Drive was a trail walk last Wednesday at nearby Cathedral Hills - one that we plan to repeat with Barry and Helen this week. Then, on Thursday we took the long-ish drive (c. 3.5 hours) up to Salem to see Cade, Audrey and little Kendall. We stayed overnight - Scott and Lucy in their new, smaller trailer and Jo and I at the Holiday Inn. Here's the trailer parked on the driveway of Cade & Audrey's home:

The one on the left is where they're staying

Kendall loves her remote controlled car:

On Friday morning we all went to breakfast at the French Press (https://frenchpressroasters.com/) then back to their house where Cade got ready for his 12.5 hour shift at the hospital. Jo was in her natural habitat:

as was Lucy:

Kendall had her morning nap after which we went shopping to a couple of different malls. We grabbed a fairly quick bite at Chipotle (https://www.chipotle.com/). Back at the house, forward planning for Christmas was in place as both Scott and Lucy modelled their Xmas jammies - to preserve their modesty, no photos were taken. We then hit the road south again to Grants Pass.

On Saturday, I took Scott's bike out for a short ride, crossing the river over the bridge in the park:

Hallowe'en is a big thing over here - many of the houses are decorated already. Here's one I passed on my ride:

I walked round the Saturday market and the downtown shops then headed back to Delsie Drive. It was Scott's nephew's 15th birthday and Laramie and Rick had arranged to go to the motor racing in Medford that evening - but first, dinner at Kaleidoscope (https://kaleidoscopepizza.com/) for 9 of us - the boys (Lincoln and Davis) plus Scott's Dad, Bill.

On Sunday, we walked round to the Toasted Barrel (https://www.thetoastedbarreloregon.com/) for lunch then Scott and I headed to Dutcher Creek (https://dutchercreekgolfcourse.com/) for a few holes of golf. Scott did pretty well but I had a wretched time - another bad day at the office.

2024 USA Holiday so far

We're now having some down time at Lucy's in Grants Pass after our fairly hectic road trip - Chicago - Detroit - Cleveland - Niagara - Toronto. Five US states and 2 countries in 12 days.

The music part involved visits to the historic Chess Studios and to Buddy Guy's Legends club in Chicago; Motown in Detroit and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland - all excellent. We stayed in 4 lovely hotels and a nice apartment (Niagara) - the best of them was the first one, the Blackstone in Chicago.

We were impressed with the US cities - Chicago and Cleveland both looking very smart and tidy, and even Detroit was looking good on the waterfront. Less favourable was Toronto which was full of high rise buildings, having apparently demolished many of their classic old buildings. Niagara-on-the-Lake was very pretty and the Falls themselves are special but the surroundings make Blackpool look classy. Tacky is not a strong enough word.

We almost crossed with Barry and Helen who were in Toronto and Niagara just a few days beforehand. We'll catch up with them again next week when they arrive in Oregon. We also weren't all that far from Dawn and Meghan and family when we passed through New York state - they were on vacation north of the Big Apple.

Apart from one fairly cool day in Detroit, the weather has been great - warm and sunny but not too hot.

Now, some photographs from our trip so far - hopefully mostly ones that haven't been posted on Facebook or WhatsApp:

The Blackstone - our historic hotel in Chicago

Lunch at a pizza restaurant on the Chicago river

Selfie on our boat trip on Lake Michigan

A classic US city scene - overhead rail and external fire escape in Chicago

Inside the legendary Studio A at Motown where all the magic happened

Rehydrating at Southern Tier brewpub after our visit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland

Looking over at America from the Skylon Tower, Niagara

One of the boats approcahing the Horseshoe falls

Another silly Niagara photo

Selfie above the Horseshoe falls

Our rental car and the house we stayed in at Niagara - our appartment was accessed through the car port

That's about all for now - Toronto was so uninteresting that I don't have any more photos that haven't already been published - I didn't even take any from our bus sightseeing tour, but we did enjoy the wonderful St. Lawrence market so I've pinched this external view from the web:

 

9 days to go

A week on Tuesday is when we leave for USA - first stop Chicago and our hotel there is on South Michigan Avenue:

The Blackstone, Autograph Collection:

The suitcases are out and we'll be starting to pack now.

I was right - our neighbour's back and she's immediately on the warpath - one irate tirade on the phone followed by a 2+ page letter. She's away now for a couple of weeks but I've responded to her letter - just to point out that we've actually done the 4 things she previously demanded we do. I've told her we're away from 3rd September. I hope we don't see her until we come back.

Mary, Julie and Leo's brief trip to Banchory went well. I managed to take Leo out for a short ride out to Milton to meet Jo, Mary & Julie for coffee:

Me on my e-bike, of course, and Leo my (analogue) hybrid.

Our dividing wall at the front (with friendly neighbour Paul), which has been there since we bought the house in 1983, is now down:

New foundations now in and they start building the new wall tomorrow.

Our 3 nights in Edinburgh went well, if a little tiring. We stayed at Ross' on Friday night and went out for dinner with him. On Saturday morning, after coffee with Ross across the road at his work at Costa Coffee, we drove in to the city centre, parked our car, went to our first show and then checked in to our apartment just off St Andrew's Square for the next 2 nights.

Barry, Helen and Dawn joined us for our 6th and final show on Sunday evening and then we all went for dinner at Gordon Ramsay's Bread St. Kitchen, courtesy of Helen:

Barry and Helen celebrated Barry's actual big birthday on Thursday in Oban, where their caravan is for the summer:

I had my RSV (respiratory synctial virus) vaccination on Thursday. It's being offered to all those in Scotland between the ages of 75 - 79.

And - surprise, surprise, Johanne insisted that we have our monthly meal at the Derbar in the restaurant. We had thought that she wouldn't be able to make it there any more but Colin, at Johanne's insistence,  somehow managed to prop her up and walk her along the road and down the steps to the restaurant.

Jobs done!

Our flower bed at the rear is back in good shape now:

Then, just a couple of days later, the fencers arrived and erected this:

Both of these contractors got very lucky - as did we. Our neighbour was away on holiday the whole time this was going on. What she'll say about it, we know not. The old fence is still there - on the other side of the new one. Note also that the fencers were good enough to turn round our shed so that it now faces the house and is a little further away from our neighbour's garden.

The downside of all this is that, instead of us sharing a simple fence replacement cost, we now have to face four times the original figure we were going to pay as we asked the fencers to do additional cementing and putting up sleepers to attempt to stop the continual criticism from next door. We do hope it's been worth it but we're both fearful that her next door will continue to find fault. For almost 2 years we tried really hard to get her to agree something but it wasn't happening.

Next contractors on site are Gray & Gray again - pulling down the wall between us and number 5 (who doesn't mind what we do) and erecting a new one, starting Tuesday 20th August after we return from the Fringe next weekend. Before that, we have Mary, Julie and Leo staying with us next Thursday. Meal planned at Derbar that evening with Gary and Luca joining us.

Talking about the Derbar, our monthly visit there with the Kilgours and Masons is going to have to stop. Poor Johanne is now home after almost 2 weeks in hospital following a fall, but is unable to make it to the restaurant any more so we're planning to take the curries to hers on Wednesday 21st August.

Busy August

Just over 4 weeks to go until we fly to USA but there's a lot happening here just now:

    1) We had a small issue with one of our newly installed radiators which didn't appear to be responding when we tested our new heat pump. The installers were responsible of course but they didn't have sufficient manpower available this month to travel up from Glasgow to fix it, and as we would almost certainly need the heating on when we returned from USA late October, it was important that we somehow get it fixed before we went away so we got a local plumber to come out yesterday and he sorted it. Whew.

    2) No progress with our neighbour regarding the joint fence, so we decided to ask Christie Fencing to see if they would be able and willing to install a new fence - at our cost - inside the line of what remains of the old fence. They agreed and the fence will be installed next Thursday (8th August). What our neighbour will think of this we have no idea.

    3) One condition of the new fence was that we had to get the wall of one of our flower beds sorted. It was starting to lean dangerously:

So yesterday Neil Gray and his partner came out and took it down:

Jo and I had taken maybe half the earth out before they arrived but the builders did the rest and spent the rest of the day rebuilding the wall and they'll be putting the coping stones back on Monday.

    4) When the builders come back on Monday they are going to start work on taking down the wall at the side of our driveway at the front and putting a new one in. We had no problem with our neighbour on that side of our house - he was more than happy to let us go ahead - no questions asked.

    5) We had a meeting last week with an insulations company and they are going to install insulation in the gap between our garage ceiling and our living room floor. Again, we're hoping this can be done this month, before we go away.

A busy time all round.

I finally bit the bullet last week regarding my knee replacement operation. I had the pre-op assessment some weeks ago and was hoping that I would get lucky and get the operation done fairly soon after that - but it was not to be. Given that long haul flights are not recommended until at least 6-8 weeks after the operation, I had no option but to postpone everything. I advised the hospital and - wouldn't you believe it - the following day, I got the letter from the hospital that I had been anxiously waiting for.

I don't know what this postponement means - do I go back to the bottom of the waiting list? I know I will have to go through another pre-op assessment as the results of the first one are only valid for a couple of months. Even when we come back from America, I only have a window of 10-11 weeks before we're off to Australia in January and that's insufficient time to get everything done, so it'll be spring next year before I can even start the process again.

The real frustration was when I was told earlier this year that it would not, after all, be possible for me to have the operation in Clydebank (where Jo had her cataract surgery) as they had originally suggested. Funding for this had been withdrawn.

On an entirely separate matter, last Sunday Jo went to visit her pal Anne at work so I took the opportunity on a glorious afternoon to check out a couple of pubs for CAMRA's database. First stop was the beautiful Kildrummy Inn:

From there, I drove back to Bridge of Alford to check out the Forbes Arms. Both visits were fruitless but they had to be checked.

I was at the dentist last week and I have to go back and have a filling. They sent me the estimate - £125!

On happier matters, the weather over the last week or so has seen a huge improvement - long may it continue - hopefully including tomorrow (Sunday) when I'm playing in a Texas Scramble at Aboyne. Talking of golf, we recently had our worst ever outing. Somebody (Gary Grant) came up with the suggestion of trying out the 9 hole course at Dalmunzie (https://www.dalmunzieestate.com/golf). It took us an hour and three-quarters to drive there - an hour to Braemar then up past Spittal of Glenshee and in to the Dalmunzie estate then a long drive up to the hotel, an old baronial house.

The worst was yet to come - the state of the course was awful. The greens were crudely cut - a putter was no use - you had to chip to get to the hole. And the rough - our group of 8 lost a total of 34 balls. I didn't have the foresight to stock up with "tattie" balls and lost 6 expensive new logo'd Pro V1's. Never again.

Mid-end July

Nothing much has changed here, although I had my pre-op assessment almost 4 weeks ago now so they should be calling me in for the op soon as these assessments are only valid for a few weeks. The dilemma I have is that it's just over 6 weeks until we fly to USA. If the op was this week, I would go for it but it's more likely going to be later than this and that's probably too near our long range flights for me to do it safely, minimising the risk of DVT. Talking about DVT, I'm currently wearing a compression stocking - my right calf (the leg that has a metal knee) is swollen and hard. I think I got a bite or a sting when I was out walking on Friday - it's pretty itchy too. My calf has been a bit swollen for over a year now, ever since I pulled the muscle. It's never gone back down to the same size as the other leg. Jo has speculated that I have an infected vein - thrombophlebitis.

Enough of that - changing subject:

Poor Luca was whacked by a drunk a couple of weeks ago. He was knocked to the ground and fell heavily on one knee which necessitated him going to the hospital and getting some stitches:

We saw Luca - and Gary - when we had a curry at the Echt Tandoori recently in a slightly belated celebration of Gary's 49th birthday. We had another curry last week - our regular monthly one with Anne, Leslie, Colin and Johanne - except Colin and Johanne didn't make it as Johanne had had a couple of falls last Monday and broke some ribs. She's still in hospital - she's so frail and going downhill with her Parkinson's which she's now had for more than half her life.

Midsummer update

Midsummer and the temperature is rising - we're in the 20's (70's) at long last and it's predicted that the next week will be pretty hot. Fingers crossed.

MAINTENANCE

A few small jobs completed recently - re-varnished the bench in the back garden, put back the half tiles at the front of our porch, put covers on the exposed radiator pipes and repaired, repainted and varnished the (very) old bench at the front. It's been on its last legs for a while but I'm hoping we can get a few more years out of it yet. The iron framework is sound but the wood has suffered badly from the weather and woodworm. Here it is from above:

The saga of the fence at the rear continues. As predicted, our neighbour cut the cord that I had put on to stop the fence from falling against our shed. I have now propped it up with a pole. Our neighbour (Irene) has been away for the last couple of weeks so hasn't yet seen this. Sod's law, she'll probably arrive back tomorrow as we have a man coming back to re-felt our small bit of flat roof. She's also missed her neighbours at no.2 having solar panels fitted to their roof - there's still scaffolding there.

This morning we had a meeting with Neil Gray to look at what we might do with the crumbling wall between us and Paul at no.5. He's going to give us quotes for a couple of options.

GOLF

I managed to play 2 days in a row last week, albeit the 2nd day (at Edzell) was in a buggy. Because I can't play as much as I used to (and would still like to), the standard of my golf continues to deteriorate. My golf handicap has soared and is now 18.7 but still doesn't fully reflect how bad I am. The heady days of when I was in single figures (8.6 the best) are but a distant memory. I think the only reason I still try to play is because of the social side - I'm particularly looking forward to our annual trip to Balmoral this coming Monday.

CYCLING

This remains the only activity I can now do that doesn't cause me pain. I'm only cycling once a week usually but perhaps I need to increase this?

WALKING

The time has come for our walking group's annual weekend away - we head off to Northumberland next Thursday for 4 days. How much I'll be able to do, I don't know but our organiser (Ken Black) is good at arranging a variety of options. For our first walk next Thursday we are going to circumvent Lindisfarne - the tides are in our favour. 

BARRY, HELEN & DAWN

In a repeat of last year's trip, they all arrived together last Friday. After lunch, Barry and I went for a cycle, including a quick ride on one of the new Banchory trails. We then cycled out to Drum, via the castle and met up with the girls for coffees and cakes. We went to the Derbar for curries etc in the evening, arriving home afterwards to briefly watch our national football team getting humiliated by our German hosts in the first match in the 4-yearly Euros tournament.

On Saturday morning, Jo went to church - one of her friend's husbands had just died. Dawn, Helen, Barry and I went a walk round the local trails and met up with Jo again at Mamma Mia for coffee where I took the only team photo of the weekend:

On Saturday afternoon we took a drive out for Dawn and Helen to see the winner of the North East heat of Scotland's Home of the Year which has featured here previously. Helen, Barry and me then took a walk up Scolty:

It was strangely flat calm and warm at the top. Dinner was at the Tor-na-Coille and it was excellent - nice environment in the recently redesigned dining room.

Sunday morning was a washout so our planned cycle was cancelled, but Gary and Luca arrived for lunch and Father's Day, after which everyone returned home.

LUCA

For those who haven't yet managed to trawl Luca's Instagram account, here's a few more of the photos he posted from his school prom:

ROSS

I forgot to post this one, taken at the Italian restaurant where we had dinner recently:

HOSPITAL

My pre-op assessment has been brought forward by a month and I go to see the surgeon and the anaesthetic nurse on Tuesday (25th). This is exactly 10 weeks before our flights to USA, so I would need to have the operation before about 23rd July to leave a clear 6 weeks before our long haul flights - possible but highly unlikely given the NHS Grampian waiting lists. Dilemma.

Barry & Helen's 30th Anniversary

Happy 30th anniversary to Barry and Helen today. They seem to be celebrating with lunch in Oban but what were we all eating 30 years ago?:

Our trip to Edinburgh went well - lunch at Miller and Carter in Frederick St with a couple of old school friends and their wives, followed by drinks and supper with Ross at Mia Italian near Haymarket. The rain that day was truly torrential - Jo and I took the tram for just 2 stops to avoid the biblical downpour for a bit but we were still soaking when we got to our hotel - and we hadn't brought changes of trousers. Still, that was a small problem when compared with Ross'  - the ceiling/roof of his flat has still not been fully repaired and water is pouring in to his living room and kitchen. It must have been especially bad that day.

As if that weren't enough, there's a problem at his work too, with sewage overflowing from the flats above, down in to the small office next to the coffee shop.

Better news is that the weather has finally improved - not before time too - it is officially summer now and only 3 weeks until the longest day. Everything is growing rapidly and very colourful, including our small (former) rockery at the front:

Not so pretty, however, is the state of the small wall on the other side of our driveway, which has been crumbling away for the last few years:

It is over 40 years old now so it's hardly surprising really. I've contacted Neil Gray at G & G Gardening Services and he'll have some ideas of what we can do. I know we can sort this but I'm far from confident that the back garden fence can be resolved. 2 of the 3 remaining panels have now fallen so far that it's only our shed that is holding them up:

The disagreement with our neighbour does not look like coming to any kind of conclusion any time soon. I have today tied the fence to the lone pole on the right to prop it up and stop it falling further in to our garden. I suspect this tie may not survive long.

We've now got a new weather vane on our shed:

I've been repainting the bench in our back garden but the remedial work following the installation of our air source heat pump (which included replacing the piping throughout our house) is still ongoing. We'll need a painter/decorator soon.

We also recently had some work done to the flat roof above one of our rear bedrooms and they're coming back in a few weeks to replace the felt.

I had 2 pieces of bad news recently on my partial left knee replacement operation. I had earlier been asked whether, as the waiting list in Grampian is so long, I would be prepared to travel to the Golden Jubilee Hospital in Clydebank to have it done (robotically)? Naturally, I said yes and furthermore, I would take a short notice cancellation. That made me feel there would be a reasonable chance I would get it done this summer.

However, I was told this week that NHS funding has been withdrawn for the Golden Jubilee so I have only one option now and that is the long Grampian list. I was offered an appointment for a pre-op assessment but this is not until 23rd July and only if the surgeon doesn't go on holiday then. The letter says that I have to keep 12 weeks clear after that assessment but there's only 6 weeks until we fly to USA - a holiday that includes a road trip from Chicago to Detroit, Cleveland and Toronto before flying over to Oregon to see Lucy and family - and meet our great grand-daughter for the first time. It's all booked and paid for. Additionally, I am advised not to fly long haul until at least 6 weeks after the operation.

Even when we return from USA late October, it's only just over 11 weeks until we fly to Australia to see Kelly and family - again all booked and paid for. I can't cancel these 2 big holidays so it means the earliest I can have the operation done will be summer next year.

Sorry to finish on such a downer. 

Last night

We made it over to Inverurie yesterday evening in time to pick Luca up from his work and take him home. Gary arrived back from work a little later and we all then headed off to Rajpoot, one of the local Indian restaurants for an excellent meal.

Back at Gary's house he posed with the Partick Thistle hat I bought him - with Luca at his side:

On the way home, I took a slight detour to show Jo the recent winner of the North East of Scotland's Home of Year, which I'd cycled past on Tuesday. It's outside of Banchory on a back road heading east:

It's a little underwhelming externally but you have to remember the BBC show is called Scotland's Home of the Year (#SHOTY) - not house. It's really about the internal layout. The owner has done as much as she can in such a small space but, frankly, we were astonished that all 3 judges gave it maximum scores of 10 when it was shown on TV a couple of weeks ago. It's not the prettiest spot that it sits in, with pylons and a work site nearby - and the garden wasn't the tidiest either.

I forgot to mention that we've now booked our flights to Australia next year. We've reverted to flying with Emirates again from Glasgow, which means one less flight and one less airport, security etc to deal with. Strangely, they fly the big Airbus 380 on the shorter of the 2 legs, from Glasgow to Dubai (7 hours +). We then revert to Boeing for the second leg from Dubai to Adelaide (12 hours +).

Today I'm playing my second golf game of the week - the first time I've done this this year. I hope my knee doesn't bother me too much. Next week, we're going to the Tivoli theatre to see the Searchers on Tuesday, then, on Thursday we head off to Edinburgh for a lunch with a couple of my old school pals and their wives, followed by dinner with Ross, then back home on Friday morning.

Summer is here

No question mark after my heading - it really does finally feel like summer is here. The weather has been superb this week - long may it continue. A few dry days - at last - at the start of this month allowed us to complete the replacement of the roof felt on our shed which now looks like this:

Last week was chaos in our house as we had the place ripped apart - floor coverings and floorboards up, drills and saws hammering away - what a noise as our central heating piping was upgraded and our air source heat pump was installed:

We'll be on our way over to Inverurie in the next hour, meeting Luca and Gary for a meal to celebrate Luca having finished his exams - and school forever.

Post Marbella

It's 2 weeks tomorrow that we returned from Marbella/Malaga. We managed to empty our fridge before leaving and, as we were leaving at silly-o'clock to catch our Ryanair flight on Saturday morning, we decided to have a mid-afternoon late lunch/early dinner on Friday at the on-site restaurant El Med, washed down by a nice white wine:

We'll be back there - probably next year. The resort is immaculate and mature. We were reminiscing about our first holiday there after we bought our time share. It was 1999 and Ross and Jo's Mum were with us:

At that time, only one "leg" - on the west of the resort - was complete:

From this October, 1998 archive photo I found on the web, you can see that construction had started on the next leg in the middle of the resort but I don't recall us being much troubled by any building work when we were there in 1999. This year, we tried to identify the unit we stayed in 25 years ago but were unable to agree which one it was. I guess some changes have been made over the years.

It has obviously been a wet winter in the UK (and it hasn't been much better since we've been back). The roof linings on our shed had started to break up and the shed roof was damp in places when we returned from Australia - it was definitely time for some remedial work. I started to remove the tacks holding the roof felt in place and we then lost one of the 3 strips of felt (on the apex) in the wind, so I had to borrow a temporary plastic cover for the time we were in Spain:

I've since returned this cover and have replaced it for the time being with our car cover until we can get a run of dry, warmer days to allow me to re-felt the roof:

I've got all the materials now so I'm hoping I can maybe start on it later next week. As you can see from the first of the 2 photos above, the issue with the fence has still not been resolved with our neighbour, so it will be tricky trying to work on that side of the roof. Incidentally, we think she may now be planning to do something independently. We await developments.

Next week our new Air Source Heat Pump arrives and the following week is when the installation takes place - we're replacing the existing narrow bore pipes and virtually all the radiators. It's going to be a week of chaos.

We've had our annual blood/cardio checks and, by and large, we're OK. Jo's doing some more blood pressure checks at home and the results seem reasonably good so far.

I've played 2 games of golf since we got back - I had to come off after 16 holes the first time and was in agony when I got home again, but I managed 18 holes this week - painful but manageable - just. In between those 2 rounds, I walked up Scolty last Friday. Going up was OK but coming down I was in terrible pain and only just made it back home. My left knee is beginning to feel increasinly like my right knee did before I got it replaced.

I'm now officially on the NHS waiting list for a (partial) knee replacement. It could be a long haul but I've indicated I would accept a cancellation and also that I'm willing to travel to get it done. Clydebank is one option, the other is Inverness. If it gets done in Aberdeen or Clydebank, the operation is done robotically, but Inverness is still old school. It's affecting my lifestyle and limiting the amount of activity I would like to take but I'm not ready yet to go private - that would cost £14K. I just hope I get the call from the NHS before the pain gets too much.

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