Haley Arrives

Haley arrives Christmas Day! This was a little tricky. I was in touch with Haley as she made her way across the pond when she had wifi at her different lay overs. She landed at Heathrow and all seemed great. Then I get a text, there is no buses that run today. I texted her back yes there are, go to the bus station. Anyway we run through quite a few texts and I am checking web for bus schedules... And she says that the people at airport says no buses. She says I am going out of airport so I might loose wifi. And that is all I hear from her. 

She was thinking ok if this does not work I will just call mom and she will help me figure it out. Oops she ran out of power and has no converter. She is on her own! 

This is about 8:30. Ok, so I think, she should be on bus soon and there is wifi on the bus and I should hear from her. Wait, wait , wait, nothing. Ok, she has no power, she might not have enough money for ticket, no, she can not find bus station, there actually are no buses and I am looking at a $400 tax ride...... Could be a lot of things. Best I could do is walk over to bus station at Glouster Green and make sure buses are running. 

The dogs and I get over to Glouster Green and I figure out all I told her was get to Glouster Green and I will pick you up. She has no,idea where to go for there. I told her there was a cafe Neros we could meet at, but it was not open. Anyway the 10 o'clock bus comes in and no Haley. Talk to the driver and next bus is at 11:00. 

There is hope, still no text from Haley. Dogs and I talk a walk around the camera, down to Christ Church and on the way find a bakery that has a soy latte. Life is looking up. It is a beautiful day, blue sky and warm. Now only if I can find Haley.

You can not walk anywhere with out seeing these kind of buildings popping up everywhere. Radcliffe Camera, library, 

Return to the bus station thinking ok, i can maybe give the bus driver money to look for Haley at Heathrow, no that would not work. I could call her but if her cell is dead that will not work.  Ok just hope she is on the bus. But if she was on the bus they have wifi and I have had no text from her,  ok enough of the doomsday scenario's.

The bus pulls up to the stop and a bunch of Japanese get of, no Haley, then last one off, I see her at the door looking worried. She also had the thought, what do I do when I get there to find mom. Start walking circles yelling her name. I told her the flat was about 3 blocks from bus station. But then I whistled, and a big smile appeared on her face as she looked up and saw me across the boarding area waiting for her. Yes, a very Merry Christmas!

Now for Something Completely Different

Gale and Kirk go Choiring.  

After Friday nights Jazz concert we decided to tone things down a bit and head out to the local Steventon Christmas Chorale Concert. Steventon is a small village with 2 pubs, church, bakery, 2 sandwich shops, co-op, town hall, soccer pitch called the Green. This is where we live. One hour bus from Oxford, 15 minute bus to RAL. I got the better commute.

The town hall has many activities at it. One is the Christmas performance from the chorale. The chorale is made up of about 30 residents and performs at many functions. 

I arrived home from work and Kirk was home so off to the concert. I had my mink on but just jeans and a sweater. We walked into the hall and it was beautifly decorated with lights and All the Christmas trimmings. Everyone was really dressed up. Ok mink was not coming off. Everyone sat at tables angled around the center, there was wine and Oj to drink. The songs went on for about an hour we joined in on some, and then the choir got up and served us mince pies and wine. We got to talk to the people at our table and had quite an enjoyable evening. Then the choir went back up on stage and finished the performance. 

We walked back across the green to get home and all in all was a nice time, no ear plugs needed. 

Gale and Kirk Go Clubbing!

We are getting somewhat settled and decided to try a little social activity.  After all, the holidays are approaching and without a little music and such, it would just not be right.

So, Paul, one of the technicians in my group at RAL, said he is in a jazz band. I picked up on this and said "great, I would love to hear you play when are you performing". He thought maybe Friday night, although he would check. I said "brilliant". Now my idea of a jazz band is a bit like the Purdue Jazz band, or big band music... nothing too crazy.  Anyway, he came back and said "yes", he was playing Friday night at the O2, a club in Oxford, around 10:30pm.  That should of been my first red flag, but because I thought it would be nice to get out, I said "we're coming".  Kirk looked into getting around and home from the club Friday night. Not so easy, but then Paul (not to get confused with Paul, Paul or Paul that I work with, but the first Paul, the good news here being over 50 and the memory is shot, I have a better than 50/50 chance of getting someones name right by just saying Paul) said he could give us a ride home if we could go the distance.

Well, that would be a challenge as I just worked my first 8 hour day, 5 days a week and was extremely exhausted coming home Friday night. Paul dropped me home after work and I was able to get a nap. Kirk was all excited about going to the club. Calling it a club should of been my second red flag. But what could happen...nice night club, sit, have a few drinks and listen to jazz.

I caught the bus to town, found Kirk at the War Memorial (this seems to be our meeting point, hope it has no significance) and proceeded to get crazy lost looking for Mario's, the pizza place close to the O2. I was getting a bit put off...did not want to be late as usual. Come to find out it was a blessing. After walking circles we found Mario's, long line,(more put off), and finally we got in and had a delicious pizza. Yes, we ate it with our forks!

I was in touch with Paul, who goes by "Buzz" in the band, on my cell. (I knew I would run into another Buzz...I left one behind in LaLa (West Lafayette), my mechanic, to have him replaced by the bass player...perfect, have not asked him if his last name is "Lightyear" -To Infinity and Beyond!).

He mentioned they would not go on until 10:30, so all was well. Then I lost signal, this worried me a little because he was our ride home, and then I ran out of power. Oh Oh!

We arrived at O2 and it was a rocking, raucous night club (I guess would be the best way to describe it). We checked my mink and Kirk's backpack with a guy with tattoos, nose ring, and ear plugs, and headed up to the second floor. It was a big open hall with stage and lights at one end and bar at the other, no tables anywhere. We managed to get to the bar, cheek-to-cheek and belly-to-belly. I ordered ear plugs and a water, Kirk had his beer. I was so happy we were late, do not think I could of listened to more than one band!

The place was packed and sold out. We maneuvered to the side of the hall where we found a few tables next to carpeted bench seats. With any luck, we might be able to sit. The crowd was swaying and dancing, but the band had not started yet. And the noise was already incredibly loud. Thank god we did not get here any earlier. Earplugs were a blessing. We ended up with a table and could almost see the stage.

                                                 The Original Rabbit Foot Spasm Band


The band started and it was a combination of jazz, dixieland, swing, twang, english drawl music. There actually is an old english jazz sound from the 20's that these guys are reviving, The Spasm Band was great. They threw in a stripper, washboard, tuba, and big mama for spice and the evening was quite entertaining.

We were lucky and found our coats and Buzz around 12:30 without a cell phone connection. I guess this is how we use to do it...better lucky than smart!

So, we went clubbing...hard to believe, but it was fun!

Pubs and Pups

Now the english might be a bit put off by Americans but in the pubs they love their pups.

After struggling for months to figure out how to get the dogs to Oxford, locating a house to live in that allowed dogs, ( they wanted CV's, imagine that) , would accomodate a reasonable commute to Oxford and RAL ,had a yard,  did not cost an arm and leg, we  finally found a sleepy little village called Steventon that met all the criteria, but was a bit pricey. We let it a month early to make sure we had a place to stay when we got there. Yes, sight unseen, Ian checked it out and approved, but then he would approve of anything just to get us there.

First night in the terraced house, (connected like condos), we went to the Fox Inn Pub for dinner. Not only did they welcome the dogs they served them first, biscuits and bowl of water. Dogs were in pig heaven. Kirk had his pint and all was right with the world.

Now walking around the green the dogs are not babe magnets like they are in Santa Barbara or even in Purdue when we did the  scientific study and managed to get one guy a date while he walked the dogs around campus. Seems at Oxford no one even takes a second look, but in the pubs they are king.

In the middle of the village there is a raised cobbled four foot wide trail that is ancient. The rock cobbled path was the trail to London to take goods from time beyond time. It runs right through the middle of Steventon.  They say there are pubs along the way. Now that is a hike I can do.

                                                         Sunset on the trail 4:00pm

Most people in Steventon have cars since we are so far out in the country and think we are crazy not to. So far we are doing ok. The only challenge is on holidays when the buses do not run. So we will be staying in Oxford at a friend of Ian's. It is close to everything and will make it easy to pick up Haley when she comes in. My Christmas present, just wish Gus was coming to, but we will get him over here soon.

                                     We finally got around to decorating the Christmas tree!

                                                             MERRY CHRISTMAS!
                         Best I could do on such short notice, had no idea Christmas is this week!

Monty Python Life

Bus
The bus, just never know if you are running late , it is running late, or it just decides not to show up. Get to the bus stop at designated time, and no bus, wait 30 minutes and still no bus, ok check Oxon time and it shows nothing for this bus, check the other website and it shows that it has already left. Ok it was dark out maybe I missed it, maybe they missed me again. Go back to house and wa la, app says 3 minutes to bus. I think the GPS on the bus has dead spots. Jolly for me, run to the bus again. 

Get there and just make it, out of breath, hand full of money, bus is 
already running 45 minutes late. I jump on the bus and show the bus driver all my change, typical thing for a foreigner/ stupid American to do. He gives me that look like you really do not know do you. Then because as I move forward I trip a bit and my hand full of change spills into his change maker. He looks at me and says what did you drop, I say I have no idea I do not know the difference between 20 and 50pence coin. He proceeds to pick up each different coin and tell me what it is.  Then sits back and says 1.70pound. Could not believe he would not just pick coins from the remaining change in my hand and be on with it. So I say, could you review that one more time. Not very popular on that bus. I could not stop laughing. I now know 20 pence is an hexagon and smaller than  rather large round 50 pence piece which is larger than a round 10 pence piece which is about the same size as the hexagon 20 pence but round. Got it! 

Politeness taken a little to far
First week of work, mostly taken up with tours, introductions, inductions, and administrative computer work to make you dizzy. Coffee breaks, lunch and tea time to fill the time In between. And as polite as they are, you are always the first one through the opened door, and guessing which way is the next direction, 50 /50 change and I am batting zero. This campus is very confusing and I swear they go different directions each time to keep me guessing. Then one morning no one was around for coffee so I thought I would go on my own. Funniest thing everyone I asked just said go that way and ask someone else. Very confusing indeed. Did my obligatory number of circles and an hour later had coffee, well deserved. 

Still looking for cafe, ended up at Diamond.

Restaurant
Can always tell a polite American in the restaurant, or at least Kirk and I. We are sitting with a group of people for dinner, and you are very hungry, the dinner is pizza, but could also be burgers and fires. . Ready to dig in, catsup, fingers, and pig out. But before you eat you look around, casually, and you discover everyone is eating with a forks and knives. And God forbid no catsup! Life is just not fair. So Kirk pickes up his silver and digs in.

First night out on the town. Yes Kirk and I are going clubbing. And that is not beating each other up. I get home form work, walk the dogs, take a nap then catch late bus to Oxford. Kirk meets me at the bus and we head off ( in wrong direction) looking for Marios, great pizza place(above picture). Suppose to get to club O2 by 10. One of the Pauls plays the bass a Buzz for a Jazz band. Well we back track and find Marios, long line but get a pizza and looks like we will not make it to club until 10:30. Paul has said he would give us a ride since the buses do not run that late. So I an texting Paul and tell him we are coming. My phone runs out of towers and juice and I am just hoping we get home somehow. The good news we arrive at club late, it is loud enough rock your sox off. I do not know if I would of survived the pre band. Find out you can get ear plugs at the bar. The place is packed, cheek to cheek, we migrate to the bar and get water, beer and ear plugs. Then as luck would have it we snag  a table, that was just right place at right time, i call dumb luck. 6 tables in the place and over 100 people. The music was great, dixie land, blues jazz in english drawl. Even with out cell phone we connected with Paul/Buzz and get a ride home. Have not done this in years! What fun.

Rabbit Foot Spasm Band

Good News Bad News

Seems like the good news is that we are down to only one bad news item a day. Not overwhelmed with loads of challenges everyday, only one a day.

Sunday night we had an issue with the dogs, everyone was going to work Monday and we could not leave dogs at home. So I thought I could take dogs to Steventon, leave them their for the day and go to work.  So me and 2 dogs on bus, stop at house and get back on next bus and get to work by 8. ok, that is convoluted at best. Ok,  take taxi, come to find out it was hard to find cab that would take dogs and it would cost £50. NOT, so I made the boys stay home, Ian took a shift and so did Kirk and life was good.

Everybody loves my dogs, NOT!

Got to work had coffee, induction meeting, orientation, lunch, lab tour, holiday meeting, we seemed to go all over the campus to the same place but never went the same way. And gracious as they were, opening doors... I would always head the wrong direction. Yes doing circles as usual. Really nice group of guys. Thought a good name for our lab would be Inner Connect Unit, ICU, we are all over 50, except John.

Arriving at work around 8am

Being that it was my first day of work Kirk was assigned wife duties. This entailed taking care of dogs, moving stuff to Steventon and taking delivery of furniture. Well they delivered it at 8:30 and called him up when they arrived, Kirk was still in Oxford.  Now rescheduling maybe after Christmas. Good news Sue was with him and gave them a piece of her mind. Go Sue, this is Ian's administrative assistant, awesome, she got it delivered later that day. Sue has been so helpful, so glad she was there. We were not going to have to sleep on the floor.

Movers made it to the house and of course put the furniture in the most convenient placement so Kirk and I re-arranged it when I got home. It is nice. I asked him how his day went and what did he do. He kind of looked at me dazed and said walked the dogs. What happened to the rest of the day? I do not know. We made the bed and I went right to sleep.

The busses are something of a challenge also, some are late and some are broken down. Some do not stop for you and some just do not show up. And having 3 different bus companies who do not share tickets makes it almost impossible to get everywhere you want to go without having passes on at least 2 of the bus companies. It is confusing at best.  Went to the bus stop today and it did not come and did not come, waited, finally came home thinking I either missed it or it missed me. Looked at OXON Time and sure enough it was due in 3 minutes, ran back to the bus stop, made it in time by some miracle and then he did not see me and did not stop until about a block away.  Just one of those mornings. Going to have to figure a back up plan if I miss bus or bus misses me. It is pitch black dark out at 7:30.  Also when I come home at 5, not much sun here.

Ok all for now.

Made it to Oxford!

We managed to navigate CDG stairs, escalators, moving sidewalks, tram, lifts, endless....and got to the train station. Exchanged some cash, (euros) got a quick bite to eat and bought train tickets, slupping 6 suitcases, and 2 dogs in tow. Jelly was prancing like a real french poodle, he fit in perfectly! Kirk found a place to go outside and dogs were happy. The platform was announced and we manage to locate a lift and board on the correct car as not to be diverted to wrong place. Changed train in Lillie ( no simple task, lift up, figure out platform in French, not announced until 5 minutes before it leaves station, scramble for lift down...wrong platform east instead of west, S*#%t!  Finally arrived in Calais with taxi waiting. H2O(Gus's father in the book River Why, Henning Hale-Orviston) was the taxi driver, classic English competitive fisherman, very entertaining! 

Now for the tricky apart, stop at UK  pet check (holding breath) and only small problem, they could not read the date properly, seemed like rabis was done in the future 9/12/14, cleared that up and we were off to the Chunnel. Phew! Fell asleep the rest of the way to Oxford. My job was done. Woke up a few times, could tell we were in England, landscape very manicured.

We arrived at 5:00 pm at Ian and Daniela's home in Jericho and did our best to stay awake. Keys at neighbors, yea!  Beautiful 4 story home in close to everything. Found our way to a pub and then home to the tub, divine! 

Now the job turned into organizing life again. Spent the week taking forever just doing simple tasks. Transportation is very tricky, sort of Monty Pythonish. Many different bus services all in competition and not sharing each others tickets. Quit a nightmare to figure out. Took us one whole day to get keys to house and get to house. Next day bought bedding and bed and dropped it off at house.  Anyway you get the point, going to take awhile to get organized.

Ian cooked us some wonderful dinners. Spent Sunday doing the classic English day, started with an English breakfast, walk in Christ Church, tea in the afternoon, evening song at Christ Church and 4 course dinner followed by tea. And a dram of course to cap the day off. 

Getting ready for the big day, work tomorrow, up at 5, OMG what did I do!

All in the Planning

It is all in the planning. this stared 6 months ago but we will not go that far back, lots of mis- communication and misunderstanding. First make sure, check ups, shots and  paper work is in order, then the timing...   Who allows dogs and who does not from country, bus, plane , train and taxi. It was even mentioned a couple of times that we needed CV's for our dogs. Izzy was going to ask for a bonus! Jelly just wanted more treats. Gather what was necessary for each. Major time went into this and we all hoped and prayed to god of choice that we had things right.

We had a send off dinner and breakfast, Route 66, with the kids. And left on the limo Saturday morning on the to O'Hare. That is after a long walk with the dogs. As expected dogs did not like the cases and would only settle down until they were on our laps. Got to the airport in plenty of time, had an additional $600 of fees for luggage and dogs and we were good to go. Walk the dogs one last time and headed through security. Stripped down and carried dogs through, no problems.

Izzy, you are not taking my picture!

                                                                    Escape artist!

Flight was packed, we loaded up and put dogs under seats which they were not happy with, so we spent a lot of time feeding them treats.  Took off and if one dog was asleep the other was fussy. Was a very long night. So I decided to take Jelly off lease and put in my lap. Was a little too tried to try this and once he was off the lease he disappeared. Omg! I looked at the lady behind me who had screaming kids then at Kirk who immediately jumped out of his seat as I grabbed Izzy from him. I was just waiting for a scream, but there was Jelly standing in isle next to Kirk looking up in confusion. Phew, disaster avoided.

Arrived in Paris 8:35. Had my paper work in hand, dog visas.... And we walked through customs without so much a glance at the dogs, could not believe it. They did not even notice we had dogs. I do not know if I was disappointed or pleased after all the work I put into getting all the right documentation for the dogs. 

In the beginning...

No not the big bang, we have heard enough of that already,

This adventure started many month ago so it is hard to say when to start.  We have traveled all over, interviewed, at Stanford, PNNL Northwest Labs, and England and we finally landed on the
island in the Atlantic. Stress has probably been the operative word but everyone has assured me it is an adventure.

The decision was finally made, visas, pet passports and CV's were painfully achieved, travel, house, moving completed and it was time to go. Travel is synomonous with change or as I see it challenges.

So to start the trip we decided to go to Hawaii, a stress reliever.

Had a wonder time with Kevin and Laurie as we waited for our visas to come in. 

Did a little snorkleing 

and relaxed at Kauai for a couple of weeks. 

And what do you know,  the visas arrived. 

We packed up and headed back to the mainland to organize the exodus and say good bye to Purdue. 

Thanks to Purdue for the party.

 Got the dogs checked out with the vets, sent to Michigan for the final signature from USDA and booked our flights to Paris. And you thought we were going to Oxford. Nothing is easy when we do things yes we went to Paris.  Long story short much easier to get into the UK if you do not go through Heathrow. So off to Paris it was.