London!!! Living in Style

Sorry it took me so long (2 months to the day), but I did take 1500 photos on that trip!


I LOVE the London Eye! To think they were going to tear it back down after the Millenium! It's quite funny, when I took it many years ago, which was a LOT of FUN, British Airways was running it and they actually called it a flight!


Here a couple of pictures of the Thames Festival parade! Their costumes were AMAZING and watching the fireworks over the Thames was really mesmerizing. They had some effects close to the water that I had never seen before, but which really worked well with the reflection in the river!

Ah the Victoria and Albert Museum! The have lots of pretty things in there, like this little toy castle, but they are most famous for their textiles! So look at all those beautiful tapestries!



Aren't they just stunning! Folks back then knew how to dress their living room walls!

Now that's what I'd call sleeping in style! I want that bed!

After admiring all those pretty things folks used to have in their living rooms and since Adrian would let me have a cat nap in that bed, I needed a pick me up, so we went to their cafeteria...

We had the most delicious pastries and a great cup of coffee in their period cafe house rooms that were decorated by single artists like William Morris for the very purpose of giving folks a stylish place to take their cuppa tea and repose before exploring more of the collected exotic wonders that Victorians had to go to the museum for, because they had never seen them. They didn't have a telly, innit!

Now after indulging the senses in all that medival or otherwise old splendor, it was quite a shock to encounter the new supermodern Dyson hand-dryer in the loo! I felt quite victorianized or provincial, but it was definitely a very pleasant shock. You slowly stick your 'ands in and pull 'em back out and the jet stream in the dohickey is so strong that is basically squeezes the water off your hands! Guess what the friendly and empathetic woman posing for me is! Yep an American tourist!

The V&A is really FUN, because it is set up for people to have fun with that stuff. So you get to touch and try stuff on and it isn't some replica either, it is the real thing! A real medival ruffled collar and a real ming vase and a real whatchamacallit that keeps those huge skirts looking stiff!

That's me leaning against a real Ming vase, when an earthquake hit us, just my luck!

Phiew, the tremor passed and the vase is still in good shape. They made those things to last for a few thousand years, a little tremor doesn't even crack the glazing!

He's nothing if not a good sport! Our Adrian :-)

Back on the streets of London, you can see, that security has been stepped up all over the place, so they have Storm Troupers guard the County Hall now!

Ah, here a few more photos from our little boat cruise on the Thames:

Tower Bridge

(Adrian told me, that a Texan was trying to buy it for good money, but got the name wrong in the negotiations, which he won and got the rather minimalist London Bridge instead (teehee))

And here the Tower of London itself: Being imprisoned in style!

But not everything in London is old! There are crass contrasts between the old and the ulta-modern coexisting in close proximity. I don't know about you, but I love it! Nothing worse than having a bla, non-committal, non-offensive piece of misguided architectural cowardise water down a citiscape of magnificence!



I dare you to say "weather whale, wheater whale, weather whale" really quickly!

The Houses of Parliamant!

Here the oldest part of the Houses of Parliament! The cradle of democracy! We had to squeeze within 8 inches of shiny black Uzzis to be let in. Sad really!

After all that a pint in a comfy London Pub was well deserved! Here's and cheers to Englands Public Houses!

The next day we popped round Downing Street 10 and 8 especially since I had just read that they have a new cat after Cherry got rid of the old one and then they got rid of Cherries husband. They are all called Howard and they are allowed to roam free, so I just wanted to have a look, if the kitty was around, but no luck. The guard did give me a very stern look because I was giving the backyards of the PM a very close look for any signs of Howard, which he obviously couldn't know.
Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves!

Adrian wanted some cheese for his crackers, so we went to do some grocery shopping in style. Lunds and Byerlys, Kowaskie's etc eat your heart out!

Shopping for luxuries in the Luxor Hall!

After a stroll in Hyde Park I really needed a pit stop and as I walked down the steps to the public convenience I was preparing myself for the worst because the smell did not bode well, not well at all! So I was not prepared for the best, which was this brightly lit, spick and span bathroom with tasteful mural tiles depicting scenes of the city and greating me with a smell of roses, yes I said roses and I meant it.

Hahaha, a traffic light for people on horses!!!
As it is getting evening we paid our respects to Queen Victoria who is sitting on her thrown with a... er...a...thingy of sorts...
The day is nearing it's end and so is my stay with Adrian in London. Good Bye Adrian and London until next time, hopefully soon! (sniffle)

Just when you thought it is over...

I just went to the rapidsriders website. (Rapidsriders is MNs white water community). Someone had found this kayak post on "Best of Craigslist", that made me roll on the floor laughing! I'll share it with you at the end of this post. It is particularly funny for those who have been trying to decipher my kayak jargon, seriously guys you need to read this!


Just when people start asking me, if the kayaking season is over and when I will be able to take the boat out again I surprise them with an "err, well actually...we go to the pool in the winter."

When I first heard that you can take whole boats into a pool and several of them I didn't really believe it, but I decided I had to see this! First of all I noticed, that those white water boats didn't really look like boats, they certainly didn't look like they would keep a person above water, let alone some of those buff 235 pound lads that were already there!



And here is what this looks like: My friend called it "chlorinated kayaking":







And because I hope to do quite a bit of chlorinated kayaking before the river season starts again with the snow melt I followed my friend's clarion call and joined not one, but two more kayaking clubs: ISK and SKOAC. He's a member of both and probably the best eskimo roller in the Upper Midwest and certainly one of the best instructors anyone could wish for! Now these are for the longer and properly boat-like looking sea-kayaks, but I figure, where there's room for 16+ footers, there's always room for a little 6-footer. They won't even notice I'm there..now wait, maybe I do want them to notice I am there... Anyway, Eskimo Roll, not if but when! I hope to have a very busy winter kayaking to make up for the time lost in summer due to work commitments!


It is really perfectly natural, that boats that don't really look like boats would have to have a description that doesn't really sound like a boat :-) Enjoy!



Best of Craigslist:
BUY MY STUPID COUSIN'S AWESOME KAYAK
My cousin is a grown up child man with all the best toys and here's your chance to own one of them!
Whilst between jobs - though both the one before and the one to come were both long out of sight - he needed a place to stay so he lived with me for a while. He paid rent for a while too, though one while was a lot shorter than the other while. He moved out to live with some buddies and left a bunch of his junk here. Sometimes he comes back to pick something up but somehow it always seems to coincide with needing to borrow money, though he doesn't seem to need to borrow it to pay me any rent.
One of the things he left - one of the largest things he left - is a kayak. A red kayak. It looks an awful lot like this, except it's red:






I asked him to tell me about it and this is what he typed:
KAYAK FOR SALE
PRIJON LUV 8'
Good Condition
River running playboat
excellent for surfing ocean waves
$300.00


Frankly, I was underwhelmed by his effort, but somehow, not terribly surprised. On top of that, the name sounds dangerously close to "prison love" but that's not really a selling point, so forget I said that.
I did my own research, being a citizen of the Information Age, and discovered that according to the World Wide Web, the specs are as follows:[abridged]
The most important part is this though:

Main use: playboat

Dude, how could you not buy your own watercraft whose main use is "playboat"? I don't have any idea what that means, but just reading it feels kinda bitchin! In point of fact, here's what the manufacturer would have you believe:

This Liquid-Utility-Vehicle is the ultimate in whitewater performance, maximum comfort and rad lines. This lightweight play hound has great stability on the flats and awesome control in the vertical world. Custom tailored features like the chine groove, planning hull width and bow & stern keels for play hogs like you. Engage the low volume ends for hesitation-free wheels and spark up the flat bottom for spin-mania. Bow and stern keel lines provide great tracking when moving from one play spot to the next. Superior comfort and an ergonomic fit for medium to large sized paddlers with large. It comes with super groovy, custom foam outfitting. Of course the LUV is made with HTP, which spins faster, rock wheels without grindage and reacts at your command. Stiff, durable, it rules.



Awesome control in the vertical world? Spin-mania? Rock wheels without grindage?? How can you pass this up???
I don't actually know if this one comes with the hesitation-free wheels because I don't see any wheels. Come to think of it, I've never seen a kayak with wheels, but if you get the right wheels for it, they will apparently be hesitation-free and how hard would that rock, dude?
I'm a little frightened to know what the "large sized paddlers with large" are going to do with this boat, so I'm not gonna ask. What happens in the Prijon stays in the Prijon, as far as I'm concerned.
Any which way, shoot the rapids, sit in it in the middle of your living room floor, or just drive around with it on the roof of your Volkswagen to make people think you're cool but get on over here and buy this dumb thing for three hundred bucks. It's totally awesome!



As soon as I get the chance and people talk about their SUVs I will mention my LUVs, yep, I have two, and when you visit me at home, you will see them "parked" along the way to the entrance door :-) That way you also know that you are on the right track, just like I find it really so much easier to find my car in a large parking lot, when I have a bright red boat strapped to my roof, sooo handy!!!

A Few Weeks Back in Golden October - How Beautiful is My Lake

After a twelve hour day on Monday I hit a natural break at 4pm on Tuesday and decided to treat myself and swap laboratory neon light for some golden afternoon (de)light at the lake!

At home I doned comfy shoes, grabbed my camera and skipped to Lake of the Isles which I surrounded at 100 pph (photos per hour). No seriously 150 pictures in 1 and a half hours! How can this be? Here's 19 of them for you.

I am going to pretty much let the pictures speak for themselves. Just one thing; I felt so happy to live here and the other day as I was killing time at a store while my car was being readied for the MN winter I saw this image wear sweat-shirt that said: "Property of Minnesota". Gosh I wished that had been my size!

End of October and the flowers are still beautiful!

The light changes with every minute with dramatic clouds veiling and unveilig the sun.

Clouds in water made me think of the beginning sequence of "Jazz on a Summer's Day" with reflections in Newport Harbour.

Kayakers who are hardier than I are still going it!

Gosh, that silver three-quarter moon and the pink clouds were just too beautiful. My pictures are just giving you an idea of it, the colors were much more amazing when you were there!

For my European friends: These are Canada Geese and yep, they are as close as they seem!

Downtown Minneapolis is turning the lights on. How cool is it to have all that in walking distance of a metropolitan downtown, huh?!?

That was just like having a two hour vacation that I could right walk to!

It's you, it's you must go and I must bide.

The first drops of Autumn have fallen.

Even though it is still 73 degrees out at half past ten at night, feeling much warmer with heavy humidity, a powerful change in the wind enveloped me as I was walking back from the lake that I had to visit so urgently. And urgency intermingles with regrets not to have braved the heavy humidity and taken the last meal of the summer outside in the enchanted garden of the restaurant rather than in the convenient moderation of the establishment's air conditioning.

The summer's gone and all the leaves are falling...as the first raindrops of Autumn are touching my face, gentle reminders of a new season starting... before I reach home, the welcome shelter from the weather to come.