Worst post ever …

To be honest, I’m struggling to think of something to write for this update; so much time has passed since the last post, however, that I have to write something!

So … what bloggable events have happened since the last update? Quite a lot has been going on, including a trip down through Kentucky and into Tennessee for Easter weekend. That’s two more States that I can check off the map now! Both places were probably some of the most beautiful and interesting landscapes that I’ve seen whilst in America, but I’m starting to realise that I say that after every trip.

Kentucky was full of grassy fields, white fences, barns, and fried chicken. Well, perhaps not full of it but I did stop by and visit the place of the first ever Kentucky Fried Chicken opened by Mr Sanders himself. There was a small museum inside with some pieces of memorabilia, but it wasn’t too much to write about. Driving through the state was very similar to the last time I ventured south of Indiana; country music and bible discussion dominating the radio. Still a welcome change from Justin Bieber though. I’m looking to head back to Kentucky during the summer to do the bourbon trail which is a defined route visiting all the distilleries within the region … that’ll need a weekend

Tennessee was a beautiful place with such a broad range of scenery; rivers, lakes, and mountains. I was only there for a day as I was down visiting friends for Easter (I had  a great time and ate far too much), but I definitely want to head back and maybe visit Nashville or Memphis. Graceland, anybody? Driving through the many mountain ranges I seemed to encounter, the roads were probably some of the nest I’ve driven on in the country. Smooth and absent of any potholes (unlike Indiana), but I guess this can be linked to the very different climates/winters the two states experience. I also noticed that every vehicle I passed seemed to be a truck or an SUV; luckily ‘gas’ is cheaper here than Indiana, let alone the UK. Here’s a photo of that I took from a scenic overlook from a place I’m struggling to remember the name of at the moment …

The last few weeks have also seen a pretty pathetic attempt from me in terms of training for the Indianapolis half marathon that is taking place this weekend. With only 4 days to race day, I have ran nowhere near the 13.1 miles required so now my training is purely mental. And eating pizza. It’s carb loading …

Swinging back on track to familiar topics, the weather has been rather British of late and we’ve had torrential rains and some great thunderstorms that have lasted hours on end. The only thing we’re missing is the supposed drought and hosepipe ban.

I also remember reading on the BBC website that there were episodes of panic petrol buying, with pumps running dry and huge queues forming because of reports of fuel shortages. No such problems here, although people had been moaning about ‘gas’ prices hitting a nose bleed inducing 68p a litre (at current exchange rates). OUCH.

I’m pretty sure this has been the most boring blog I’ve written, but I’ve got plenty of things coming up that I think will be more interesting topics; probably starting with a review of my half marathon performance …

I promise that I’ll be back next week at the latest!

Viva Las Vegas …

Now, as you can tell by the rather cryptic title, this blog is going to be about a recent weekend trip to … Las Vegas!

The trip was actually touch and go as to whether it would happen or not due to there being tornado warnings in place for the Hamilton County area on that Friday afternoon. The weather had been pretty odd all day but at around 2pm the sky was so dark it was almost as though it was night time and somebody had turned the moon up to 11 on the brightness scale. Rightly or wrongly, we still got in the car and headed off to the airport for our flight and although the roads were very wet with some strong winds, all the bad weather cleared up as we were about 20 minutes away from the airport. Lucky for us, but unfortunately (as we’d find out the next morning) many parts of the Midwest and indeed Southern Indiana had not been so lucky with tornadoes killing many people and causing a lot of damage.

As always seems to be the case, the visit to Indianapolis airport couldn’t have gone any smoother. Straight to the front of every queue and at the gate with loads of time to spare. We’d even successfully beaten the rest of our party that had left work a bit earlier! The flight out was great, and I continued my new found habit of developing narcolepsy whenever I step on a plane and take my seat. This sounds great as travelling goes really quickly … what’s not so great though is that when sleeping like this I CONTINUOUSLY jump myself awake throughout the flight and scare the shit out of everyone around me. I think this trip set a new record for me as both my row and the row in front turned round to look at my confused looking face.

At Las Vegas airport there are signs everywhere playing on the city’s tagline … “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”. It’s quite funny, as this is communicated through large posters on walls with examples of people posting stuff on Facebook or Twitter that they will later regret. I think we all followed that fairly sound advice … and this blog probably will too, to some extent. HA

We did the transfer to the hotel in style by taking a black, stretch Chrysler 300C to the hotel. Between the 6 of us it also didn’t work out that much more expensive than getting the shared shuttle ride and was probably a lot quicker.

Although arriving late Friday evening, we still made the most of the night and went out for food and a walk around some of the casinos and bars. The first few things that stood out for me was just the mixture of people and the atmosphere; I hate the term, but the place was buzzing. I liked the fact that everybody was there having a good time and whether it was in a restaurant or around the roulette wheel there were women dressed in evening dresses next to guys that looked like they’d just rolled in from the beach!

I was also fascinated by the buildings and the attractions around them, and the way that every casino seemed to be linked to one another so that you would wander from building to building with as little effort as possible. I loved the escalators and moving walkways taking you up and over the roads, and we all got pissed off if they were out of order. We must have walked through every hotel and casino from the North to the South end of the strip, each one with a different theme or decor.

The drinking laws are also more relaxed in Vegas and so you’re able to walk around with an alcoholic drink in your hand on the streets, and there were even stands selling huuuuge novelty shaped containers of alcohol. Interestingly I didn’t once see any trouble that you might associate with all the alcohol around, and the closest we got to it was probably when a group of youngish Brits went past cheering … c’est la vie. Drinks in the clubs (when not free in the casino) were also a lot more expensive than in Indiana, as we found out with a round of shots …

The funniest moment is when we noticed that, in an effort to stand out, some of the homeless people had sourced Disney character costumes. Now, this may sound all well and good BUT how about this for ruining your childhood memories?! There was also a Kermit the Frog passed out along the way, and I don’t think it was from having relations with Miss Piggy although, in this place, it wouldn’t have surprised me. But there you have it: Winnie the Pooh knocking back Fosters at 11 am in the morning and just down the road from him a very depressed looking Garfield with a half finished bottle of Tequila. Cartoons don’t pay, kids!!

This actually leads me onto something I found really odd about the whole place, and that was that we actually saw some families around the place. I don’t mean mum, dad, and grown up kids but there were actually little kids walking around holding their parent’s hands! Vegas is not somewhere I’d want to take a child; I think they’d be exposed to more here than if you left them at home with Gary Glitter for the weekend. Walking around the place, whether it’s inside casinos/hotels or out on the streets, everywhere is sexualised. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, but you can’t avoid it: boobs as far as the eyes can see. Walking down the street there are small armies of people handing out business cards trying to get you to their strip clubs, some of which even serve you food topless (apparently) and by that I mean the waitresses not yourself! “Free entrance and cover for guys, girls welcome too”, “You can touch our girls” or, my personal favourite, “How does a steak served by a topless waitress sound to you, sir?”. Great; but is she going to do the dishes!? SORRY. The rest of the street army is trying to fill your hands with cards offering the services of “ladies of the night”; they stand there with 5 or 6 cards in their hand at a time flicking them and handing them to anybody walking past. Everyone in our group was collecting them and filling my back pocket with them; it should make for an interesting game of Top Trumps at some point. “What have you got?” “I’ve got Miley, she’s a $45 special and can be there in 20 mins. How about you?” “Julie, $99 happy hour special”. Might need to work on that one.

For an evening show some of us went to watch Penn & Teller at the Rio, whilst some went to watch Cirque du Soleil ‘O’ at the Bellagio. Penn & Teller was a great show and with seats 9 rows from the front we had a great view of all the tricks including the famous Magic Bullet. Google it if you’ve never heard of it.

After all the excess of this man made metropolis in the middle of a desert, we also did a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon. This was an absolutely amazing trip and not only because I didn’t get sick in the helicopter (bad experience at the 2009 Goodwood Festival of Speed), it was incredible to see Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam from the air. When  we finally got to and descended into the Canyon we followed the Colorado River for a way and then touched down for a provided lunch. This is something that I’d recommend anybody to do on any trip the Sin City.

Now of course no blog of mine would be complete without some run down of the food that was consumed, so here goes my chubby inner self. We had some great meals in restaurants for both dinners and breakfasts. The buffet at the Bellagio was a favourite of mine because my plates could literally just consist of meats and desserts. Not on the same plate though; I’m not a total pig. Whilst in town we visited downtown Las Vegas on Fremont Street which was very cool. I had a lot more old school feel than the strip, and was also home to awesomely titled Heart Attack Grill. Have a look on the internets and you’ll find some interesting news stuff about the place, not to mention the calories in the burgers. I didn’t go for the Quadruple Bypass burger, but I did go for a full butter fat milkshake that even came with a knob of butter on top. Eurggh. The burger was tasty though, and the restaurant had a nice atmosphere to it. It’s all based around a hospital and so you have to get gowned up before you can go into eat. Given the calorie content of the burgers though I think this is probably written into the insurance somewhere.

Tuesday, the last day, was supposed to be about a trip to the Neon Light Museum and Graveyard (stop laughing; it sounds interesting to me OK!) however this was cancelled due to the high winds and storm that were battering Vegas. When we arrived at the airport there were flights being cancelled everywhere and I was very thankful that ours wasn’t one of them as I was ready to leave … a little poorer, a little fatter, very tired and in need of sleep. And finally I could end my Rain Man impression.

More photos will follow on Flickr later this week …

Coloraaaaaado

After reading about the big freeze that was taking a firm grip on Europe and the UK, it was finally my turn to get some snow and cold weather action. Unlike last year, the winter here in Indiana has been very mild with probably only a couple of days of snow (this still causes me to get excited like a little kid). To get my fix of the weather I headed to Winter Park, Colorado with some friends. Not a bad destination for your first skiing trip …

As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, I’d already got all of my skiing gear together and, although I looked like a low budget ninja, was all set for the go. After work was finished for the weekend on the Friday morning, and loading all the bags into the now legendary Impala, we headed for the airport. Indianapolis airport is a strange affair, as the the economy parking lot is always mentally packed with cars yet I’ve never seen anything approaching a queue of people inside of the airport (yes I know they’re probably in the air).

Getting to Colorado involved a couple of flights: firstly into Kansas and then following the yellow brick road to Denver. Once landed in Denver we had to pick up the rental car (no Mustang planned this time) and then complete a 2 hour drive; luckily we gained 2 hours in our day due to the shift in time zones …

The flights were both very smooth and in all I had a great experience with Southwest (they’re the US equivalent of EasyJet or Ryanair). I was able to sleep on the flights; something that is becoming scarily easy for me whenever I’m doing any travelling. It must be the age creeping up on me … soon I’ll be nodding off on escalators. My childlike reaction to seeing a tornado shelter at Kansas airport belied my 26 years however.

So, we finally arrived at Denver airport where it was COLD. So much for global warming. Luggage was collected and the car picked up from the rental office: a Lincoln Town Car. Anybody that has ever been to the US will know that these things are everywhere (especially around airports). They have two types of typical occupants: limo/cab drivers and old people. The front seats were huge leather beasts and nicely heated so I was able to distract my arse from the impending cold that it would inevitably be feeling when I hit the ski slopes over the next few days. As we arrived closer to Winter Park and made our way through the winding mountains, the temperature was dropping as our elevation was rising which in turn made my ears pop. At one point I saw on the thermometer that it was minus 17degC, and the road surfaces would not have been ideal for our rear wheel drive Lincoln! However, Chris did a great job of getting us there through the inclement weather. On arriving at the condo, I unpacked and then fell asleep on the couch only to wake up midway through the night and notice that everyone had gone to bed. D’oh.

On our first full day, I cooked some pancakes for breakfast and then we all made sandwiches to take with us. All I needed was a Capri Sun and maybe cut my crusts off the bread and it would have been like going back to school – especially with gloves fastened to my coat to make sure they didn’t run away. We then headed off to cross country skiing at a nearby resort. Firstly let me say that before the trip I was really excited about skiing. I’d never been before and, as I had no intention of taking lessons, decided to just jump into it. Cross Country skiing is not the thing to do. Ignoring the fact that it took us 20 mins to get the skis on (some longer than others, naming no names), once you are actually up and on the snow it’s just a really inefficient way of walking on snow! I know that I clearly wasn’t doing it right and had all the grace of a blindfolded giraffe on ice, but still. The scenery around the area was beautiful though and, with the ease and frequency that I kept falling over onto my back, I’m able to confirm that the sky was very blue.

We ate lunch at the chalet of the cross country ski area, and I had the awesome bread bowl chilli that was perfect in taking my mind off a disastrous preceding couple of hours. The chef/cook there was also keen for us to have his bread pudding. When I say keen, I mean proper keen. I was convinced that it was a euphemism, especially when his offer of bread pudding was continuously expressed with a wink and cheesy grin and he was obsessed talking about it. However, the bread pudding was just bread pudding (and it was very good) and everyone was able to get on with their day. All of the food was awesome there and at a good price (I’m not being paid for that advert). After lunch we continued to (try to) ski, which ultimately ended up with me going the wrong way down what should have been a small incline and then faceplanting into 24 inches of fresh powder snow. Refreshing. Even Bambi would have been pissing himself watching me as I struggled to get up. After a couple of falls from the rest of the group our time was conveniently up and we headed back to the resort.

That night I got my first taste of ski lifts and down hill skiing as we stopped somewhere that offered night time skiing. This was fun and I much preferred the feel of this ski equipment to the cross country stuff; probably because I didn’t feel like I was going to break an ankle with every fall. Nope, the only thing I managed to break over the whole weekend on downhill skiing was my dignity, but we’ll come to that later. One thing I did notice with the night skiing was just how clear the sky was and how visible the stars were: it reminded me of being back in Utah and driving between Moab and Salt Lake City, only this time it was a bazillion times colder.

Day two started with an early(ish) snowmobiling session which was incredible. We had fairly low power machines but I was still able to get up to 50mph on some stretches and the scenery was just amazing. I’d never seen so much snow!! Our tour guide actually told us that this year they have 70% of their average snow fall and only have ONE THIRD of what fell last year. The best view from the whole excursion was when we reached our furthermost point: on the left we had a great view of the Rocky mountains and to the right we had the Continental Divide (the point at which natural water either drains to the Atlantic on the East Coast or the Pacific on the West Coast).

In the afternoon we thought we’d try out a natural hot springs. This place was weird as not only was I outside in the freezing cold, semi naked, basically sharing a hot bath with strangers, I also paid to do it. Here are some of the standout points for me;

• it cost me $2 to rent what was effectively a hand towel.
• there were 10 people/strangers crammed into something the size of a bath tub and there was always some know all commenting on the health benefits or just some guy grunting in the corner.
• the lockers were the same size as the ones you’d have from school swimming lessons, except obviously now all my clothes and shoes are a lot bigger.
• much like school swimming lessons, there was an old naked guy walking around the changing rooms (JOKES)
• my swim shorts now stink of egg/sulphur.

After making an escape from the hot-spring-spa-but-may-also-be-a-swingers-club we showered back at the condo then went for dinner at a local pizza place that was covered in decorated/graffiti dollar bills. Our table even had a Union Jack on it! I’ve been told that on the last estimate there was $30,000 worth of money on the walls and tables where the bills are used like a wallpaper. The pizza was also very good here, although I didn’t get to sample dessert.

The final day in Colorado was spent actually in Winter Park resort and on the downhill slopes. I was looking forward to it although also a little nervous about it. This feeling wasn’t exactly helped by the amount of people we saw coming down the slopes on Mountain Rescue sleds … Still, I signed the waiver to say that I was ultimately responsible for my impending injury/death, paid my money and was kitted out.  We also rented a GoPro camera, so I actually have some footage of myself skiing and inevitably falling over.

After a few goes of practicing what can loosely be described as a snow plough, we headed up the slopes. The view from the ski lift was amazing with the snow below looking like whipped cream or a meringue topping as it lay beneath the towering trees. When we reached the summit there was a wicked wind that was blowing snow directly into us; it was funny to see some smaller kids enable to over come the force of it and were just trickling down the hill. I saw it as a kind of payback for the way they show you up. There’s nothing more degrading than falling over when just trying to slow yourself down, and then a little 3 feet high speed demon comes zooming by without even using poles! What I didn’t know was how much energy you consume just trying to lift yourself off the ground when you’ve gone down; it’s exhausting! That assumes that you can do it still with the skis on … if you have to take them off then I ended up chasing them across the slopes. One video that I’ve edited down and posted below shows me failing miserably in trying to slow down. Once I’m down amid a cloud of snow, two people come to help and pick up my equipment. One is a full grown man and the other, embarrassingly, is one of the 3 feet high speed demons as he kindly/smugly asks “Are you ok?!”.

Skiing fail …

Overall I think I did ok (for my first attempt). One thing for sure is that it was an awesome vacation holiday and Colorado is probably one of my favourite places I’ve been so far … I can only imagine how fun and beautiful it is in the summer months.

I have plenty more video and photos that I will upload in due course … so pop back later!

Howdy

So as we now enter the 2nd week of February, it still doesn’t feel as though we’ve properly kicked off winter here in Indiana. We’ve had a few dustings of snow, but compared to what has been going on back home in old Blighty; nothing! That’s not to say it hasn’t been cold; yesterday it felt as though my ears were literally going to crack away from the side of my face.

This weekend I set off to Chicago to visit the Auto Show. I like going to the car shows back in the UK and, of course, the Goodwood Festival of Speed but this was my first experience of an international show. How was it? It was good, and interesting to see how the show differs from those in Europe. For starters there was no Alfa Romeo stand (I cried inside a little), although there was some European representation from the German brands, Fiat, and some fantastic Jaguar and Land Rover models. One of the stand out manufacturers displays for me was that of Kia … they really have their stuff together in the States and are making some great looking cars. I don’t think we get those in the UK. The show also featured loads of HUGE pick up trucks, mini vans, and, well, anything that is considered large. The most annoying thing about the show for me was the friction I was somehow generating and getting shocked by absolutely anything I touched. I couldn’t touch a door, boot lid, or door handle without hearing a loud crack and jumping about a foot in the air. I may have also let out a few inappropriate words once or twice, but the kids who could have been influenced by this were more often than not the ones squeezing past me and creating the shocks. Probably some orchestrated event among them all as word that I haven’t bought Girl Scout Cookies has spread.

Shocks aside, this coming weekend sees me headed off to Winter Park, Colorado, for my first ever attempt at skiing. I was sorting out my stuff this evening and have just realised that I’m going to look like some kind of Bond villain as all my clothing is completely black. All I need is a scar or an ugly cat and the look will be complete. That said, assuming my skiing ability is so far based on watching YouTube videos and the fact that I used to inline skate, I think I will be giving my own version of Bambi on Ice. If in doubt I’m just going to fall over … I think it’s the safest for all involved. Only there for a few days so I hope I pick it up quickly!

Also, I bought a Kit Kat from a petrol station yesterday. I don’t know if I’ve written this before or not, but it was a King Size one … it had EIGHT FINGERS. Oddly, my mum guessed this straight away when I told them on Skype earlier. This makes me think that I have told them, because she doesn’t remember anything unless it’s about food.

Haappy Valentines Day, ya’ll!

Some Superbowl Village Pics

Had a little wander downtown on Wednesday night to have a look around the Superbowl village. Was pretty cool – they’ve made a huge effort downtown on kitting the place out and tidying everything up. There were huge crowds out and people having a good time, and the normal alcohol consumption laws had been dropped allowing people to have an open container on the streets. There didn’t appear to be any trouble, but then I guess it takes a lot of Bud Light to get that stage.

It was also awesome for people watching: there were some proper units walking around. And mullets. Absolutely beautiful mullets.

Here is a link to a few photographs for your perusal (just click the big one beneath this text).