New benches and old drawers

I bought a bench. It's been my biggest non-travel purchase in a while and makes a world of difference when I'm working with my now-working planes. My evenings are now comfortably filled with shavings and bits of random projects...

Homebound adventures (with old tools)

Once the wave of realization that I was grounded and isolated for the forseeable future receded, I realized that my life really wasn't going to change much. I work from home 3 weeks out of 4 (more or less), and my community/family is, for the most part, elsewhere. Sure, I really miss working from coffee shops or pubs for the enjoyment of a different venue. Writing greeting cards from a park is hardly the same! But for the past year, my main means of leaving the house has been on foot, and neighborhood walks are as enjoyable as ever. Figuring out how to replace the exploration stimulus was my bigger worry. Fortunatly, I have a garage of old tools that I'd been planning on working on since... well, I bought the jack plane for $7 at Shipwreck Day in high school. It's been collecting dust and rust since then! 

History Nerds blitz Philadelphia

From what I write here, you would think that work only sends me to interesting places, and that my adventures when not travelling for work are frequently nearly as interesting. It's a classic case of selection bias; if I don't think it was interesting, I don't write about it. When I am given an opportunity to explore someplace interesting... well, it ends up here. In January, I was sent to the center of old town Philadelphia. It was too much history and cool stuff to explore on my own, so Dad flew out half way through the week, and joined me!

End-of-year hikes, et cetera

Even after the jaunt up to Cascade Falls (near Blacksburg, VA), I was still on the hunt for through the end of 2020. Most of these I found closer to home, a sort of scouting mission to map out what is fun and accessible in the immediate area. One of the surprises I found was a state park near Camas, where water drops from Lacamas lake over a series of falls into the Washougal watershed. The popular trail was moderately busy, although I think that forecasted cloud-bursts kept many people at home. I finally invested in the last piece of waterproof gear I needed (socks!) and was packing heavy, but the sun came out between light showers, and I stayed dry!

End of 2019 travel...

I may have had a bit of a travel hangover after Scotland (not a real hangover, we did more sampling than drinking), but that didn't mean that I didn't travel a bunch. Here's an overview of where I went in the last 3 months of last year...

Sunset at home, looking at Mt Hood

Scotland VI: Glasgow, and Goodbye

I’ve been putting off writing about Glasgow, tried writing about it twice, but it's been hard to get my thoughts on (digital) paper. Glasgow was different from Edinburgh, different from the Heilan' towns we visited, and different from the German cities and towns I know so well. Aside from the lilt of Scottish accents, it had more the spirit of Berlin than its neighborly brother, Edinburgh.

Glaswegian humor: the government tried to make the Duke of Wellington less accessible
by putting him on a plinth. The cone re-appeared on his head the next day.

Scotland V: the Road to Invararay

We had to return the Vauxhall on Thursday afternoon, but were in no particular rush to get back to Glasgow. Instead, we plotted a winding route through Argyle, looping down to the Campbell clan seat at Inveraray before returning to Loch Lomond and truly starting the march back to Stuttgart. Once again, I found myself both enjoying the challenge of driving on the left (my lane placement had much improved) and frequently wishing we had set up A as a second driver. It's hard to gaze up the craggy shoulders of a Ben while keeping your eyes on the road! With a frequency and style particular to Scotland, the landscape tripped us into gasps, oohs, and ahhs at regular intervals. You never knew when a castle would appear between the trees just as a patch of sunlight skidded off a hill to illuminate it! 

Kilchurn Castle in a splash of sunlight

Inveraray Castle is a famous stop-off on Highland tours, and although the structure one sees is largely 17th-19th century, its roots are medieval. The part that we (and a tour bus of Swiss tourists) were allowed to tour through included Rob Roy's sporran, displays of weapons that were probably used during Jacobite uprisings, and a supposedly haunted bedroom... next to a room full of family memorabilia. Elephant polo trophy, anyone? The house is still the residence of the current Duke of Argyll and his family.

Some of the bayonetts have notches in them...

Nearly as impressive as the house were the grounds, including a large formal garden and both wild and of woods. The clouds had broken as we walked the crushed gravel paths and wove around dripping foliage. Bits of elegant stone architecture lured us deeper into the grounds and away from the tour busses. We didn't have time to take the full Woodland Walk, but we crossed one of the Stone Bridges and followed the road towards a white tower. It was just another of those moments where we thought we had stumbled into a fantasy story, or at least into a Jane Austen novel!

A pausing for an Austen moment

 

Our Inverary wanderings were fueled by Roxy's Cafe in Oban. When I woke up that morning, I realized it would be the last "real" morning in Scotland. The focus on the next day would be getting to Edinburgh, then getting to the airport, then getting to Stuttgart. One of the joys of travelling with a coffee- and book-loving friend is the shared joy of finding a cozy space, enjoying a drink, and opening individual books to read or write. So it was that I had my last stomach-bursting dollop of clotted cream, sandwiched between Buckley-sized meringues. It was a lovely farewell to the Highlands, as we returned to Glasgow and tried not to think about the fact that we had less than 24 hours left in Scotland...

Buffalo-sized meringue, or meringue-sized buffalo?