Day 1: Les Grandes Vacances en Angleterre et en France

Alright, here goes my first blog post on Charles' blog!

I had a fairly uneventful flight from Raleigh to Newark and onto London Heathrow.  

Laura dropping me at RDU - she's now in Ethiopia

However I made a note to never fly a Continental 757 overseas again.  Single aisle flights over 3.5 hours are miserable in my book.

Neat office building by Alfred Waterhouse

Upon my arrival in Heathrow I had what looked to be a 1-2 hour wait for immigration.  I bought an hour's worth of WiFi so I could tell Charles to go have a beer.  Luckily there was a pub in the airport with a window to view people coming out of immigration.  He was taking his last sip as I walked out the door, he found me quickly and surprised me with half of a strawberry pastry he'd picked up earlier in the day.  Tasty - especially after airline food.

We had plans to explore Greenwich and made it about 1/2 way there before deciding we'd been on the tube far too long, with far to go.  I was hungry. I wanted to see the sun and blue sky.  So we hopped off and started walking.

He was kind enough to carry my ~40 lb backpack...which definitely helped.

We made it to our first stop for a much needed bite to eat....and drink!  Newly opened "The Craft Beer Co."

On our way we walked through a fabulous market and I made note of a few stands to come back by for food.  I wrongly assumed the pub we were visiting didn't serve food.  They did!  Pies!  And no - those aren't sweet pies.  Handmade Pork Pies.  I tried my first that included a band of Black Pudding (A sausage made by cooking blood with a fillter until it is thick enough to congeal when cooled).  I know sounds crazy.  But it was really tasty!

The taps were beautiful.  There are rarely any chairs at the bar, as it is always available for people to come and order.  No waitstaff.

I was shocked to see one of my favorite beers of all time in the US.  Southern Tier (New York) Choklat.  Yes - it tastes like chocolate.  However my real favorite is Creme Brulee.  I resisted Choklat in favor of more local brews.

We left the pub in favor of a walk to Regent's Park, one of the Royal Parks of London.  

On the way we passed by this food shop which reminded me of my birthplace.  Unintended on their part.

As well as this beautiful old church.

We made it to Regent's Park and enjoyed a rest in the sun.  

It's obvious how much they care about their gardens.  Quite beautiful! 

Our next stop was  . . . surprise surprise . . . Euston Tap.  

From prior posts on here, you may notice it's a frequent watering hole for Charles.  Coincidentally it is located at the Euston rail station which services Milton Keynes (near where Charles is living).  Quite convenient.

Grew a bit tired on the 8 pm 45 minute train ride back to Charles' and a quick bus ride.  We picked up some goat cheese at the Marks & Spencer's.  Once home, my vacation continued...Charles made an excellent dinner for us.  Bread, sliced meats, goat cheese, salad with homemade dressing too!!

Tomorrow we're off to Bordeaux France!!

Heat Wave!

The temperature got up to 81 yesterday, making for quite a miserable night.  I decided it was too hot to cook, so went and picked up two pizzas.  The restaurant has a deal on takeout pizza where their regular pizzas are 6 GBP, or 2 for 11.50.  Regularly they are 7-9, so a decent deal if you choose correctly.  I got a Giardino Vegetable and then a goats cheese and sundried tomato.  Both very good and plenty of leftovers for the next few days.  Next time I might ask for mine "well done" though, as the crust wasn't as crispy as I would've liked.  

I have been making good progress on my thesis, though I found out yesterday that 6 simulations and data sets I took wouldn't work and that I needed to make a modification to the model.  But at least that's much better than where I have been!  I also went down to the off-road lab to take some measurements on a stock Range Rover in order to compare my new design too.  So all in all a very good day.  Even though the bus was an hour late to get home!  

The weather is supposed to stay warm for a few more days I think, hopefully it doesn't get much warmer than it has been though.  Nighttime is annoying b/c I have to leave my windows open, but then with lights on, bugs fly in.  

This afternoon a number of us are going over to actually test the F1 simulator that I've been working on here and there.  I've been in it, but that was before it was fully complete with the airbags that simulate G-forces while you drive.  Should be fun!  Then Will is coming over on Friday and we are going to The Great British Beer Festival in London.  So hard work is a bit easier to get motivated for when you have something like that coming up soon!

Review #2

This morning is my second thesis review.  Which is why you haven't heard anything from me recently.  I've been working hard to get some things done for the review today, and to catch up from not having the CAD models when I wanted to.  I was really kind of stressing out about where I was a few days ago, but have made some good progress.  It also helped yesterday that I went and sat through a couple of other students presentations, and realized that I was probably never as far behind as I thought I was.  The weather has been pretty good recently, between 55 and 65 for the most part, occasional rain, and I'm definitely not missing the heat wave and 100 degrees from back home!

Same Old...Kind of...

Yet again, I'm still just working away.  Makes it harder to write these blogs, as it's kind of hard to share exactly what I'm doing, and a little too detailed as well.  Think I see the light at the end of the tunnel for this part of my project, but we will see!  The weather has been colder the last couple days, and it rained pretty good last night too.  It's sunny today, but still colder (says 55 F).  There is a music and art festival going on in the gardens here in Newport.  I went out for some live music last night, and will go check it out again for a while this afternoon and maybe this evening, depending on how motivated and productive I feel.  Looks like it should at least stay sunny which will make that fun.

Yesterday I decided I was tired of sandwiches for lunch and went to The Bull down the street for a classic ham egg and chips lunch.  It hit the spot and it was nice to sit outside - the rain came at night.  I did buy some minted lamb and a venison burger this week.  I cooked the lamb last night and it was really tasty, I managed to cook it just about right I think, maybe could've gone a little more rare.  I think I'll do the venison burger tonight for dinner, should be fun!  Tomorrow I'm going to finally give into my craving for Indian food, still debating exactly which place I'm going though.  Probably the one that is BYO alcohol, and a 5 course meal for 8.99 I think.  It's that or there are three buffet options for about the same price.  The 5 course is just as much food as I'd eat on the buffet, it's just a matter of choices.

At least there is F1 to watch this weekend, and the ALMS race is live on MotorsTV at 745 tonight, and of course enough day baseball on the weekend to keep me happy too!  It really helps having things in the background when I'm working on my project - a lot of the commands take a while to execute.

Being Productive

Finally I feel like I'm getting somewhere on this project, almost have the initial assembly built so I can start doing some analysis.  Hopefully that should start tomorrow, maybe tonight if I make good progress today.  Other than that I don't have much to add really.  I've been working more from home recently, and just going to campus in the afternoon for a few hours if I have to.  Yesterday I did take the bus to Olney to work from a cafe for a couple hours, and had some tea and cheesecake.  I felt way too British with the afternoon "tea and cake"!

Trying to Make Progress

I think I've finally made a small breakthrough on my project, getting some CAD files to actually work now.  Though a few are still being uncooperative.  Hopefully this means I can really start being productive today and all this week, we will see.

Yesterday morning and early afternoon was really miserable here, pretty constant and relatively hard rain.  So I stayed in and spent too much time trying to make my files work and watching golf - which they were playing in absolutely miserable weather.  The weather did clear up later in the afternoon, so I went into Milton Keynes to return some camping stuff we had bought for last weekend. I also picked up a few things to fix some issues I'd had with my shower.  When we were in Bordeaux, we tried Benedicte and Claude's favorite Normandy Camembert.  They explained that among other things, the difference in the good stuff was that it was unpasteurized.  Sainsbury's did have an unpasteurized Normandy Camembert, so I picked it up to try.  It's definitely nowhere near as flavorful as what we had in France though...

This morning I'm catching up on the last 2 episodes of Top Gear and doing more CAD work.  It's slightly rainy, not sure what the forecast is for the rest of the day.  I'll try to get a workout in after lunch I think.  I suppose I should be interested enough to watch the Women's World Cup Final tonight too.

Whew, Those 2 Weeks Went Fast

I really can't believe how quick Jess' trip over here felt.  At least it was all very fun. Had a good afternoon in London after she finally got through the long line at Customs.  Maybe it was due to the strike the day before, but Jeremy had the same issue in the same terminal (4) when he came over.  We had planned to check out the Greenwich area, but diverted after we'd been on the Tube for about an hour, and realized it would probably be another hour before arriving.  So we stopped off near Covent Garden for some lunch - a pork and black pudding pie, a few drinks, and then walked about 2 miles to Regents Park, which was very nice and relaxing.  A couple beer stops finished off our night before the train back to Milton Keynes.

Saturday we let Jess catch up on sleep as much as possible before repacking a bag to head to Bordeaux.  The trip to Luton was a bit stressful, due to, yes you guessed it - the bus.  It was 40 minutes late showing up in Milton Keynes, and we were right on the edge of taking a 40 GBP taxi instead.  Then we were slightly worried about being late for check-in, but in the end it all worked out, security and bag check went super quick and we were on the plane.  Not as easy as security and baggage at Bordeaux though, we were out of there meeting Benedicte and Claude in no time flat!  I think we'll get another post up about France specifically, maybe with Jess as a guest blogger!

We returned to the island on Tuesday afternoon, on a slight delay, but the bus was on time and we made it back to Newport Pagnell easily enough.  Wednesday we spent recovering from the food and wine coma from Bordeaux and a quick trip to campus in the afternoon for a briefing about the British Grand Prix.  We also walked around and explored my town a little more.

Thursday we picked up the rental car in the morning, and started the journey to Silverstone with a few stops along the way.  We parked in Buckingham and walked around a bit.  Lunch was a little picnic that we had packed, along with some cherries that we'd bought from a stand on the side of the road that were really good.  The trip to Silverstone was for our official briefing, and to pick up the ticket for Jess.  The briefing took too long, as it was scheduled when everyone else was in a different meeting.  So we spent a ton of time just hanging out waiting for the people in charge to come back to finish our instructions.  Finally we got out though.  After Clive scared us enough about the traffic issues on Saturday and Sunday we did decide to camp at the track though, so we had to stop by a store in Milton Keynes on the way back to buy a tent and a sleeping bag for Jess (I'll return them both, and we wound up not needing the tent anyway).  Our first meal out, not counting London (we'd done a good job using the food I had around to save money) was at 8 in Emberton, at the Bell and Bear.  We really enjoyed everything, smoked pigeon and goat cheese pannacotta apps, pan fried haddock and lamb for entrees, and a cherry clafoutis for dessert.

The weekend turned out to be really fun, yes it was long, early and sometimes tiring work driving the golf carts around, but it was really a unique way to be part of a Grand Prix.  It also allowed us access to a part of the track without the general public, which made it much easier to watch the cars when we had time off.  I will say that hearing and seeing the F1 cars run for the first time was absolutely stunning.  I'd almost expected to be disappointed by them, but that was not the case.  You can visually tell they are so much faster than anything I'd ever seen before.  And the noise is just something that you have to hear to explain.  TV doesn't even come close to reproducing the sounds of the weekend.  The atmosphere was really good too, tons of fans everywhere, way too many McLaren fans, and the weather was really only a minor annoyance, even though it was pretty bad on Friday and Saturday.  It was really annoying on Friday, our first session off was for Free Practice 2, which was seriously wet, and no one really ran until I think 45 minutes into the session!

On Monday we had to return the car - so back to the good old bus for Chuck - and headed down to the Chiswick area in London.  We walked along the Thames, down to Kew Gardens and Kew Green.  It was good weather, and a nice relaxing walk.  The permanent looking house boats along the river were quite interesting.  Dinner was a meat platter with fabulous chorizo, chicken, steak, pate, and salami, served with gherkins and some fresh bread.  A final stop for even better dessert put a great ending on the night.  I got a sort of chocolate Lava cake, but served with salt caramel, tonkabean ice cream and an amazing sesame cracker.  Jess had a praline nougat, with brandy soaked chocolate cookies and a chocolate whipped cream kind of thing too.  We definitely kind of lucked into finding the place, which made it even better!

Tuesday morning we skipped the continental breakfast for French toast and eggs florentine at a spot close to the hotel before heading to Heathrow.  The tube was delayed just a little, but we were still there in plenty of time, even with our tearful, never-ending goodbyes.