Abode of Clarus

So, it's been a long time since my last update. It really is on my to-do because a Lot has happened. I won't try and sum it up yet, because I have very little time. I'm actually in the UK right now doing some crazy OT for my new job. I managed to get a few pictures uploaded to my picassa account.

I'll try and type something up tonight and batch load it up. I don't have internets in the hotel and that's the only time I have a few free minutes before I pass out.

It's rather hard to begin. This whole week has been rather blurred. The problem with business trips is that everything seems to go rather fast, but also rather slow. It's hard to balance time changes with 12 hour days of work while still
trying to be a 'good tourist.'

So the time finally came, and I landed in Heathrow. The first thing I noticed as we were coming in was the fact that the villages were so close together and not connected at all. It turns out there's a lot of zoning laws that keep the towns very dense.

I admit, one of the greatest things about traveling is being able to "check a box" on something that maybe you always wanted to do, but never could, or never would while back home. One of the first I got to do in the UK was to shift with my left hand. It may not seem like much, but it's a rare thing, being able to drive down the road and grab a gear while still keeping your right hand on the steering wheel. I'll admit it felt more natural steering with my right hand. This was how I always used to drive my old Jeep Wrangler with my left hand dangling out the open door frame or holding onto the front windshield. However, it was nothing compared to a box that I certainly didn't expect to be able to check while in England.

Well I'm off on my second trip. I arrived at about 11:00am Zulu time today. My flight wasn't exactly delayed due to the weather at Philly last night, but it certainly ruined the speed of the trip. We had to wait a good hour+ for the de-ice and it made traveling on the tarmac rather tedious as well. My 9:50 takeoff ended up being around 11:45. I say "around" because after a few beers, a hearty meal, and some "take-off" champagne I was out like a light before we even took off. So I'm back settled into the Portsmouth Marriot. I am currently scheduled to be here until April 1st. I got some strange looks from the customs officials at Heathrow because I am dangerously approaching the point where I need a work permit and can no longer file this under a 'visit.'

I was driving home from Heathrow yesterday and it was such wonderful weather I decided to hit "Points of Interest" in the GPS. It took me to this town and for the life of me I can't remember what it was called. It was fairly large with a University in the center (centre?) of town. I caught this picture as I was driving around some back roads around the church.

Side note, that silver Vauxhaul on the left is my car (at least for the next 6 weeks). It's a Vectra, pretty nice actually.

Not only do those brits call their gas something funny (Petrol) they also charge an arm and a leg for it! We filled up the gas tank on our little toyota (something like 14 gallons) and this was the bill for it. Just FYI, the pound is worth about two dollars.

Thats $90 to fill up your gas tank!~!

That being said, they have a lot of great diesel cars over here that get around 40 mpg.

So the funny story of the day. One of the people who is on site is from St. Louis. She's a model blond American driver. Needless to say, she got in an accident within 24 hours of driving in the country. So I'll spare you all the details, but as she was talking to the police officer and he was making sure she was ok before he sent her off, he asked "So you are sure you're all right miss?"

She responded, "A little shaken up, but I'll be fine."

His response... "Well go get a pint, that'll calm you down."

... This lady just got into a car accident and your bright idea is to have her drink a pint before she gets back into the car?!?! ... awesome.

Back when I worked at Moto Photo, I remember listening to people complain about how hard it is to come up with a name these days. Most everything exists somewhere and is always protected by copyright and trademark law. We lucked out when we started building "Portrait Avenue" because there were only a few people that we had to buy out. One of the solutions we were thinking about for future builds was to just make up a nonsensical phrase. Rizrar was actually brought up at a company meeting. I of course was quick to also mention Piczorz! Anyway, I guess this picture is more for my father than anyone else, but there do exist stranger named photography stores, especially in England.

If you are having trouble reading that, it's Snappy Snaps!

So I had a night with a little free time. It was extremely rare, so I decided that rather than enjoy it with some much needed sleep I would try ddrUK.com and find a local machine. That's right, in a foreign country, with a free few hours, the first thing I thought of was, "let's check out the local dance scene."

So Portsmouth (where I've been living) is right on the southern coast of England. It makes its own peninsula of sorts. It’s a rather brackish coast, more similar to perhaps the Ocean City bay rather than its ocean. One thing that is amazing though is how tidal the water actually is.

So a few days ago I got to drive to Yeovilton. It's a big RAF base just south west of London right by Stonehenge. The drive was a combination of some awesome weather and some beautiful green countryside.

I had my first weekend off since being in country so I figured to take a nice relaxing walk around London. I ended up driving into this little town called Morford (pronounced mowrfudh), picked up the outer leg of the tube and headed into Piccadilly Circus. I walked around for about 9 hours just enjoying the sights and sounds and checking out everything I could find. I will admit before I left I checked ddruk.com to find the Trocadaro!

So as luck would have it, the day I decide to go London, so do thousands of peace loving hippies! There was a giant march protesting everything from Bush and Blair to fossil fuels and nukes.

I just took some more pictures of London that I thought I would share. This is the view coming out of the Tube. I don't remember where it is. It's a stop down from Piccadilly Circus.

On Sat. I spent the day in the town of Arundel (pronounced air-un-deull). It was a beautiful little town, and there was a nice network of sheep trails around the area that we decided to walk since it was a beautiful day.

So, I guess this is more of an inside joke, it's for Dave specifically, but there's humor in everything.

A long time ago DK and I were having a conversation regarding lingerie. I think it might have been as long ago as 6-7 years. I won’t bore you with the details, but in my youth I was excited for something someone had shown me from Fredrick’s of Hollywood at the time, and was commenting to DK regarding that. He mentioned a store he had found online that if he had the money he would spend a fortune. If my memory serves me correctly, that store was called Agent Provocateur. So imagine my surprise when I rounded the corner in SoHo and…

From my infinite historical history knowledge, derived mostly from Bond films and the Police Academy movies, I knew that if there ever were dragons, the must have existed in England. Why, because everyone who fought dragons had cross bows, chain mail, and swords, and all of those items came from English peoples. I had my knowledge further proved last weekend when I was in Winchester Cathedral again. I found a small impression of a man, obviously English, with a trophy of his latest dragon slaying!

:: note :: This blog, it’s writers, and it’s affiliates in no way endorse dragon abuse, dragon slayings, the French, or any use of dragons other than for good luck, riding around Fantasia, or chasing bullies into a dumpster.

On my journey weekend before last, I noticed this field off on the right hand side of this little road we were on. It was pretty enough that I had to pull over and stop to walk around it. I still don't really know what type of flowers they were (it was more of a pollen looking stalk than a flower per se), but they stretched on as far as you could see and were the most vibrant of yellow.

I don't know... I just thought the sheep looked cool. Of course, when you look at them up close, they're hardly fluffy and white. They sort of are caked in mud and dirt, but from afar they look nice.

This was one of my attempts at an artistic picture. This was a few hours before I got on my plane for the US. The underground (much like DC's Metro) ends up being a very pretty above ground rail train when it leaves the city. This was at a little stop called Northfields.

You know, each time I go to Heathrow I see something new. This one caught me completely off guard. I mean, it makes sense, bringing a dead, de-feathered, partially slaughtered bird though customs could provide some sort of problem to the public health. Thanks to Her Majesties Revenue and Customs you now can see that it is bad.

It's just neat to pick up on the little differences in culture. Here's one that I particulalry enjoy. You know those little carnival rides where they strap you into a 3 axis box with a tv in front of you and send you reeling around? Well they had one of those set up in Portsmouth a few weekends ago. The topic? a Yamaha 750cc Superbike ride over 150 mph!

I'll admit I was very close to shelling out the £2.50 for it, but I didn't want to be the only person over the age of 15 riding it. If only Vadim was there.

Visitors to the Isle of Wight. Warning: You may encounter the Red Squirrels!
Honestly, what the heck does this mean? I have no clue. It was enough to warrent pulling off the road to grab this shot though.

Ok I'll admit it, I'm actually starting to like Cricket.

There is a beautiful little town just east of my apartment called Lee-on-the-Solent. It's a strange name, and the town itself isn't too amazing, but it has a beautiful beach setting.

Well it's time for another instalment of "Why Ben hates driving in the UK." They have a different approach to driving. I see it as a "lets see how we can screw you up THIS time" approach. They like to throw you curve ball signs like this sometime.

Come one come all, why don't you take a few looks at my new flat...

(Isn't my key awesome?)

Goodwood. I don't really know what to say. I have over 150 pictures that I took there. It was a mind blowing event of motor-sports extravaganza. Like Otakon I could post an entire section on what went on. I think I'll be content with providing a few pictures when I can't think of anything else to post.

The british actually pronounce it rather strange, it's "sa-lee-ka" rather than "sell-eh-ka" But rather than L-dawg's old POS, this is a race bred Celica GT-Four which, athough rare did exist in the US. Of course, I would assume not in the same trim as this.

You know I had walked down this street many times before, but this was the first time that I noticed this block.

I kid you not, this is a two-way road with horses. Not one of those 'backwoods' roads, but actually one of the most efficient ways between two cities.

Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to go to another World Superbike race. One thing that a bunch of motorcycle race fans know how to do is aggressively queue.

Yet another photo from the WorldSBK race at Brands Hatch.

Now this is one heck of a parking lot. I couldn't even attempt to fit all of the motorcycles into view, but the lot was about the size of a football field filled completely handlebar to handlebar.

The sign says "This is not a brothel, there are no prostitutes at this address."

And now it's time for another great instalment of "That crazy sign from the UK"

So I actually don't get credit for this, Jenn noticed it long before I did, but while driving around in Bristol we actually found a Banksy painting.

We spotted this one while staggering up an un-godly high hill [put Lehigh to SHAME] attempting to get to a less busy taxi stand. Also there was intoxication involved.

Like something out of "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" or something? Well minus Kevin Costner. Which is a good thing. For scale, in the bottom right you can see a fence made of 2x4s.

I had picked up a brochure of the Needles Old Battery, while waiting for the ferry to go over to the Isle of Wight. It had a picture of a lighthouse on it, so I figured it would be worth a try to get over to see it. Man, what a view.

Ahh the bluffs of the Old Needles Battery. Rather beaufiul still. I guess my UK pictures have turned into nothing but a photo share. You're not complaining though...

So as if by fate or just plain bad luck as I sat down to do my 'last load of UK Laundry ever' I was playing Nintendo DS while I heard this 'click' 'click' sound eminaiting from my washing machine. I approached my machine and low and behold the 'click' 'click' was some sort of error alarm when your washer is kaput. So with my bag mostly packed I was left with a suddsy pile of dripping wet, soapy laundry and a machine unable to help me. I did what any respectable engineer would do, I found another way!

I got to go to my second football match in the UK this weekend.

"We show all World SBK and MotoGP races" the web page stated. It was the recommendations page of places to hang out in London from the motorcycles.co.uk type page.

What a perfect idea, I thought to myself. I really wanted to watch the race live this weekend [an experience extremely rare on US broadcasted television] and having a few fans around to talk to and cheer with is always appreciated.

The pub itself, more of a sports bar in the morning, dance club at night was right in the heard of London's Piccadilly circus, an area I know rather well by now. What could be better.