The Gordon has landed

Here is Gordon on the plane. He is wondering why I am taking his photo. Now he knows why. I am sporting my flannel shirt, now known as "layer #2" for the next 11 days.

Gordon on the plane

The journey to London was almost entirely painless. United Airlines (to London) serves tea with real milk (yes, real actual cow's milk). This was perhaps the highlight of the plane journey.

Gordon in Romford

And here is Gordon in my parents kitchen. England is treating Gordon well. The cup of tea was ceremoniously attached to his right hand as we passed through passport control at Heathrow. The new appendage will be well used in the next 11 days.

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The English Lake District

The Lake District National Park is a national park full of approximately 94 lakes , though in typical and peculiar English fashion only one of those lakes is actually called "lake", Thus the Lake District actually consists of a single lake (Bassenthwaite Lake) and dozens of meres, waters, and tarns. Go figure. This is Bowness on Windermere, an example of a lake that is specifically not called a lake. The Lake District requires a lot of input water (rain) to maintain itself, and today the weather obliged. Like the Yorkshire Dales, Lake District farmers have four staple things they grow: grass, sheep, cows, and stone walls. This is a stone wall. Stone walls are an unpredictable crop. They love to make roads look very not-wide and do not play well with cars. These are boats for hire in Bowness for rowing on Windermere. Although Gordon was slightly keen on rowing, there were several reasons to not hire these boats. These reasons included: it wa...

Dunkeld and Loch Tay

We had an exciting and long day. Numerous photos have made their way to the flickr page . First, I'd like to relay how the conversation about last night's dinner menu could have gone (i.e., the first two lines are correct). Gordon: What's a "smoked loin of cod"? Do cods really have loins? Waitress: No. It's a piece of cod. Gordon: You mean it's a codpiece ? Waitress: Great, another joker using 15th century clothing for humor. Our first destination today was going to be Dunkeld . But we got side-tracked by the first (rail; left) and second (road; right) bridges across the Firth of Forth. The third bridge will be built in the next few years, making three bridges with different styles ( cantilever , suspension , and cable-stayed ) from three different centuries (1890, 1964, and ~2016) all going across the Forth of Firth (sorry, Firth of Forth). And then sometime in the 22nd century, we might end up with a Four...

Traipsing around Edinburgh

More photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/middles . We're a little late on the blog due to partaking in the local music scene into the wee hours of the morning (fine, it wasn't even midnight, but it felt like the wee hours). The day started at Edinburgh Castle. The castle has a strangely large car park (parking lot) for a castle with no public parking. The castle, apparently, has only ever been taken by stealth and starvation-besiegement. Which is only surprising since the car park seems to have plenty of flat ground for siege equipment and a healthy road (Royal Mile) leading up to it. This is the queue to buy tickets to get into the castle. Historically-failed castle besiegements have been quicker than the time it took to buy tickets. In fact, they have removed security at almost all of the nine gates and instead keep out pillagers and plunderers using the more-effective buy-a-ticket system. This method is particularly effective for keeping out the...

Gordon's Big Trip

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