I recently visited Jason down in Leicestershire. When I arrived he was busy shredding some garden clippings and adding them to his compost pile. His compost pile was fantastic. Rotting down nicely producing a rich earthy home made compost supplemented by liquid from his wormery. Him and Su really are the modern day Tom and Barbara. I got jealous.
When I got home I asked my neighbours if I could borrow their shredder to see how it would cope with the garden waste that I usually just set fire to.
My neighbours, being the lovely people that they are, naturally agreed. I’d borrowed this shredder in the past but me being me had forgotten just how big it is. Jason’s shredder is a little mains powered shredder. This one is a petrol engined four stroke beast of a shredder.
This thing mulched its way through hawthorn branches, ivy, brambles – absolutely everything that I threw at it. Produced a beautiful pile of mulch that I added to my compost heap which is now looking better. Absolutely nowhere near the standard of Tom and Barbara’s but I’m now thinking of a little mulcher for Xmas.
Pretty much every year for the past ummm I dunno, ten years maybe, the ex CCSS/Anglia Polytechnic/APU/Anglia Ruskin Software Engineering For Real Time Systems graduates get together. It’s mainly the people that were sponsored by Xerox and then we picked up a few great guys along the way.
Anyway, last year [ 2023 ] Aggy and I noticed that Voi had moved into Cambridge and we wanted to go for an e-scoot around town. The sign up process was pretty easy by just filling in a bit of a webform and uploading a photo of your driving license. Aggy had his with him. Annoyingly I didn’t. I got Oli or Emma to take a picture of my driving license and send it over to me but annoyingly Voi don’t let you upload an image of your license or allow you take a photo of a photo of your license. So in 2023 we were stymied.
As soon as I returned from Cambridge in 2023 I finished the registration when I had my license in my hand. Fast forward to 2024 and on a beautiful Saturday morning Aggy and I went speeding all over Cambridge. Absolutely excellent fun. Because of all the cycle lanes and public land and stuff it just made getting around to be so easy. Loved it
You may remember I built a workshop. Took me a while, I think it gave me a hernia, but I built it. When I finished I had some bricks left over which I fully intend to make use of in a future project, but haven’t done yet. Anyway, Paul and I took the bricks and stacked them into two piles at the edge of the garden near the workshop. The upshot of this is I couldn’t get my mower down the side. The brambles moved in, the hawthorn branches grew out, ground ivy started having a bit of a go at my beautiful workshop. It would all have to go.
This is another of those jobs that I procrastinated about for a while but one fine weather day I decided to crack on. In my tried and tested method of breaking a big job into small jobs and adding it to my todo list I ended up with a todo item that said:
move 50 bricks into workshop
So I did. Then added the same task again until I’d moved all of them. Armed with a pair of loppers, a pair of secateurs, a strimmer and a hedge cutter I went in for the kill. Took a surprisingly short amount of time to sort out, maybe an hour and a half. Finally a few runs down the side with Old Faithful [ yellow mower ] it was a thing of beauty.
So now whenever I mow the garden I can have a quick nip down the side of the workshop and keep all those weeds at bay. Fantastic
Nico was absolutely desperate to get some freshly made doughnuts from Blackpool so a trip to the Pleasure Beach was instigated.
It was glorious! The place was empty. It was the 4th September so all the schools were back [ apart from Oli ] – ok, so most of the schools were back. We barely queued up for any of the rides and because of that we’d pretty much done every big ride in the park by lunch.
Jason and I sat down and had a couple of beers whilst the boys went off and did the same rides again, and again. Jason vowed he was never going on the Big One again and I kinda agreed with him – I always come off that ride with a headache. However, given that the park was so empty we came up with the “cunning” plan of queuing for the front seat of the Big One.
It only took 5 or 10 minutes to get to the front seats and was an astonishing ride. Properly terrifying. Anyway, about half way through the ride I look at Jason and he’s got his head down scrabbling in the footwell. I was all confused and yelled “what are you doing?”. Jason didn’t hear me though – we were going very fast and it was very noisy. So when the ride came to an end a very ashen faced Jason looked at me and said “My phone flew out of my pocket”. Disaster. Proper disaster.
Jason reported it to the park authorities and they said they’d try and find it in the morning when they do the walk around the track. This was a bit rubbish though. I asked if Nico had a “Find My Phone” type thing setup so that he could see the locations of Jason’s phone. Turns out he did. Turns out the phone looked like it was outside the grounds of the Pleasure Beach and really close to the Big Blue Hotel. So off we went, to the Big Blue Hotel.
After wandering up and down the fence line going “we’re right on top of it” and “it must be here somewhere” we eventually caught a glimpse of the phone through the hole in the gate. Some cunning teamwork and a big stick meant that we were eventually able to retrieve Jason’s phone. It was an amazing bit of fortune. The people walking the track would never have found it as it wasn’t on the Pleasure Beach property. If the phone hadn’t landed next to the gate we would never have spotted it as we couldn’t see through the fence.
Jason was overjoyed
There were a few new scratches and dinks but it had survived a fall of about 20m at high speed.
When we arrived in the States and Jason picked us up he told us that he would soon be heading to the UK and would drop by to see us. So, that day eventually arrived and upon arrival they decided they wanted to go and see a football match [ well, they said “soccer match” but you know, Americans ]. I’m not a big football fan but they were guests so we sorted something out. Emma kindly drove me, Jason, Nico and Oli over to Burscough where Skelmersdale United were playing Euxton.
It was with a bit of a heavy heart that I approached the turnstile and paid our entrance fee. In my head drinking alcohol was banned in all football stadiums in the UK because of hooliganism and violence and stuff. So expecting a bit of a let down I tentatively asked if there was anywhere to get a drink in here. “Yep” came the reply, “up the stairs is the bar”. Well, this cheered me up no end. The boys sat in the stand at ground level and Jason and I headed up to the bar to check it out. It was fantastic. A full bar, a terrace overlooking the pitch, everything you could possibly want!
At half time the boys came up to the terrace to join us and Oli asked me if he could have a pint. How could I refuse? The result…
Not sure if the beer in front of him is his first one – but he had a few
I had a heavy bag of sand left over from some building work, I think it was probably for the brickwork for the workshop. Anyway, it had been sitting on my beautiful gravel driveway outside my garage for long enough and I decided to drag it down to behind my workshop. I dragged it, it didn’t move. I put my back into it – not an inch. I got the boy wonder out and the two of us managed to drag it over the gravel driveway with much effort. It was going to be tough to drag it all the way down the garden. Oli suggested the yellow tractor but I pooh-poohed it thinking the tractor didn’t have the pulling power. We gave it a go anyway.
We had to pump up the tyres on the tractor before we could accomplish the feat above.
That yellow tractor has never let me down – it nearly chopped my foot off but that was a long time ago and much water under the bridge since then.
After a pretty relaxing week up in Washington we took a flight down to Ontario, CA. We were going to fly into LAX but were advised a smaller more intimate airport would be better. It was. We got out of the airport quickly, picked up the hire car quickly and hit the freeways of LA to get to our apartment in downtown.
Turns out our downtown apartment really was very downtown! We went out for dinner at a Thai restaurant but managed to take a wrong turn on the way there and ended up on the road with all the stars in the pavement., Hollywood Boulevard.
We hung out in LA for a couple of days and did our best to avoid the major touristy stuff. Scouse offered us some tickets to go to Disney but it was just sooooooo hot that we didn’t fancy standing in a queue for 1hr for a 1 minute ride. We saw the Brae tar pits, Griffith Observatory, shopped for trainers in West Hollywood, ate at Chick Fil A amongst other places, took a long walk down Hollwood Boulevard looking at the stars in the pavement. It was a pretty cool place to be.
After a couple of days in our apartment in LA we decided to head out to the beach and so rented a hotel near Venice Beach. It only took about an hour to get there and was a pretty cool place. The big revelation was the constant smell of weed. I don’t mind a bit of weed, used to quite like the smell – but after days of being constantly bombarded by it – well, it got a little much really. Maybe the UK should decriminalise rather than legalise, but ho hum, I digress.
We rented a bike each from the beach and headed north towards Santa Monica Pier along the Venice Beach cycle path. We had an excellent time. Cruising along with other people on skateboards, e-bikes, scooters. Was truly epic. Then the day took a turn for the worse. After we handed the bikes back we were wandering in the general direction of our hotel looking for somewhere to eat lunch, and drink some beer, when out of nowhere appeared a muscle bound psychopath. Emma and Oli saw him stomping down the road with no shirt, fists clenched, a look of anger on his face yelling stuff and gave the dude a wide berth. Unfortunately I was in a bit of a world of my own and only saw him at the last second. I swerved to avoid him but he took a sidestep in my direction and full on shoulder checked me. He then spun around and started hurling racial abuse. “Show some fucking respect white boy. I’m gonna punch those curly blonde hairs out of your fucking head” – stuff along those lines. Was pretty scary really. I kept walking expecting a punch to the back of the head at some point but he moved on to harass somebody else, and we drank quite a few calming beers. On the bright side at least I now have a crazy story of some big black dude harassing me in LA.
The next morning we were heading to Monterey which despite looking like a teeny tiny distance on the map actually took us hours. Many fun bits to this road trip but one particularly memorable bit was the pit-stop in Paso Robles. Whilst we were in America it was hot. Seriously hot. Unseasonably hot. As we got out of the car in Paso Robles to visit Jack-in-the-box [ they actually give you the food in a box ] the temperature was 109F. It was unbearably hot and made my skin tingle just standing in it. Fortunately by the time we arrived in Monterey it was 20deg cooler.
Food – in a box!
Many fun bits in Monterrey. Me messing up the uber and getting us dropped off in the middle of nowhere and having to hike the rails to trails route into town. Oli getting asked for his number by some girl at the bowling alley. All of us being there at the same time as the Monterrey Car Festival with people slowly driving through The Cannery in old American cars with the suspension bouncing up and down. It was pretty epic…but a little too touristy for me.
Emma and Oli in Monterrey
After two nights in Monterrey we continued our journey north to meet up with Tommy and Pat in Russian River. Driving over the Golden Gate bridge was a little disappointing as the top was hidden by mist. Our planned stop at Muir Woods to see the Redwoods had to be abandoned since it seems it’s turned into a proper tourist attraction since Emma and I last visited twenty years ago and now you have to reserve a parking space! However, it was great to arrive in the middle of nowhere [ but surrounded by Redwoods which was cool ] at Tommy’s rented cabin in the woods. We kayaked on the river, we drank beer, we played darts and generally caught up with T and P whom we hadn’t seen for far too long.
Oli, me [ in my new t-shirt ], Tommy, Pat, EmI do own more than one t-shirt – honestly
After two nights of sleeping on Tommy’s mezzanine with the ceiling inches from my face causing me to bang my head every time I moved in the night, we headed off to Vallejo to borrow Pat’s house for a bit. Before setting off though we went for a walk in Armstrong Woods near Russian River. Just as beautiful as Muir but without all the tourists.
The deal was we look after Pat’s house, cats and plants and in return we have a place to stay rent free. Which was a bargain. When we arrived we could only find one of the cats which was OK as Pat had said the other was very skittish. However as we were exploring the gardens Emma made the rather grizzly discovery of a dead cat that had been partly eaten by something – we think Raccoons. After a bit of a delicate conversation with Pat we were advised to check the dead cats chin since there is a cat similar to Pats that lives in the area but apparently has a hairier chin. So Oliver and I were out in the baking California sunshine using a stick to lift the decaying dead cats head up so we could see its chin. At this point I compared the markings on the dead cat with the markings on a picture of the cat that P had sent me. They were two very different cats.
So we dug a hole, stuck the dead cat in it and filled it over again. Welcome to Vallejo!
From Vallejo the best way to get to San Francisco is to take the ferry from Vallejo Harbour straight into the Port of San Francisco. So we did. We rode the trolley cars, we jumped on buses, we climbed Coit Tower…all 13 floors since the elevator was broken, we walked down Lombard Street and we ate some food in China Town. The thing we didn’t do however, which was a big thing on my bucket list for this trip, was ride in a self driving Waymo taxi. I had the app, I’d been invited to use the taxi system but when I came to put in my credit card details it demanded a zip code with numbers in it. 90210 – that sort of thing. No matter what I tried I couldn’t authenticate my card for the app. So it was with a heavy heart [ after some racial abuse from a homeless black guy! ] that we boarded the ferry and left SF.
I however was not to be deterred. I messaged Jason and asked him to send me his credit card details so that I could book a Waymo. He didn’t believe me at first. Thought I was having a bit of a laugh. But eventually he relented and sent me the details over. I popped them into the Waymo app and with great delight saw the message “Where do you want to go”.
So the next day we caught the ferry back into San Francisco. We hopped on to the cable car from the ferry port that took us, well, frankly we didn’t care where it took us since we planned to get a Waymo at the end, and made sure we sat/stood on the outside of the cable car
Hanging off the side of the cable car taking a photo was a bit dicey
We jumped off the cable car at the last stop. Got shouted at by some crazy white guy wandering the streets of SF, ate some Vietnamese food, and summoned a Waymo.
It was absolutely fantastic. No driver, just a steering wheel moving around with signs all over saying “Don’t touch the wheel”. It drove us for about 25 minutes up to Haight-Ashbury and we wandered around the hippy district looking at cool clothes and shoes. But I don’t think anybody bought anything.
Back to Pats. Ate food, drank wine, slept and then surprisingly Tommy popped in as we were leaving for Oakland Airport to head back to Seattle/Tacoma.
We had a week back in the UK after our trip and then we [ minus Amelia who stayed home to have some alone time, and look after the dog ] headed for the West Coast of the US of A.
We flew via Dublin and thought it would be wiser to have a pint of Guinness rather than crossing into US territory immediately. This was a huge mistake! After our pint of Guinness we headed for US security to see an enormous queue, followed by a second huge queue followed up by a third ridiculously long queue. We had to do a VISA check, followed by security and then passport control. By the time we got through all three phases of checks our flight was showing as being closed. Absolutely convinced we’d missed our flight we ran through the terminal to the very final gate and found people still queuing to get on. We’d made it. Just.
We flew into SeaTac and Jason came to pick us up.
We went out on Kerry’s boat on the Puget Sound. Emma and Nicole had a drink ir two in the sunshine,
Jason and Kerry’s boat…with a can of Stella
The gang with Kerry
A few days after the outing on Kerry’s boat we found ourselves on Clear Lake, WA at the Stoner’s lakeside cabin. We’re beginning to think all American’s have a boat, except Jason – but that’s a whole different tale. This is where Oli learned to wakeboard and wakesurf or something. Jason and I learned how to drink beers and wave a flag when somebody is in the water. Emma and Nicole learned how to sit on a paddleboard with a glass of wine. It’s safe to say we all learned a lot.
In the background is Mount Raneer. A really rather large mountain!
We did lots, lots more whilst we were in the PNW but after a week of hanging out with the Coope’s it was time for us to go walkabout to California.
The entire Corralejo trip was fantastic and there are many more highlights that I haven’t written about [ e-scooters and e-foil spring immediately to mind ] but we wrapped up the trip with a swanky meal at a harbour side fish restaurant where I paid Oli £10 to eat some barbecued squid. It was actually pretty good.
My major takeaway from the whole trip is that despite a nine year combined Spanish learning time of Mum, Amelia and Oli – they can’t speak Spanish for shit.
Another of the things that Oli and I wanted to do whilst in Fuerteventura was take an ATV up into the hills. Whilst on this very dusty ride we stopped and got the picture below which is one of my favourite ever photos.
If I ever do this again I’m wearing a pair of swimming goggles. Sooooo much sand/dust
I spend my entire life fixing stuff. I’m absolutely convinced that when I leave the house my family just wander around with a hammer smashing stuff. This time they didn’t even wait for me to leave the house. I was in bed when I heard a huge crash. Sounded like a light aircraft had crashed into the side of the house. Turns out it was just the shower screen and “nobody” was in the bathroom. It was either Emma crashing the door into the screen or the resident ghost Maude
Anyway, this was the result:
After really rather a lot of tidying up we ended up with a shower that was vaguely usable but fortunately we also had a proper backup electric shower downstairs. Anyway – the upstairs clean up looked like this:
After far too long waiting for a delivery of a new piece of glass and a rather talented plumber/bathroom fitter coming to sort it out we are now able to wash our stinky Steele bodies upstairs again.
Oli and I took the two mowers out for a bit of a spin and I thought it would be a great chance to test out my phone holding tripod grippy leg thing with bluetooth remote. Worked a treat
Oli’s mower may look a bit battered but it’s definitely faster than the red one. Must be the weight reduction exercise I went through when I crashed it into a tree whilst drunk and the front fell off.
We eventually made it back to our home harbour without any further incident. Queued up for the fuel for what felt like hours but then had the final photo.
From top left : Ongy, Goochy, Michal, Me, Amber, Maria, Matteusz
Had the final meal, drank the final beers and then partied with some crazy Hungarians until the harbour police turned up and threatened to call the cops.
Spent a final few hours in Dubrovnik Old Town killing time until my flight and eventually made it home. Took quite a few days to recover.
We set off from ACI Slaton heading for Sipanska Luka. Everything was beautiful. Three of us started the day with a swim in the sea and then we headed for the pool in the marina which had a pool bar.
Captain Michal pretending to wait for a beer
Unfortunately the weather wasn’t hot enough for us to sit at the pool bar and have a beer…but we still had a morning beer.
We set sail for Sipanska and I took the boat off the mooring with some great coaching from Michal. I took us out into the main body of water heading for Sipanska and we decided to raise the genoa. We sailed along like this for a while and turned off the engines. We were making about 5kts and the winds were good so we decided to raise the main sail. We didn’t want the Genoa bumping about as we put the main sail up so we furled it away…a bit. In hindsight we should have furled it away entirely but hindsight is a bugger. It took us a while to get the mainsail up due to various problems and all this time the Genoa was flapping about. This flapping managed to loosen the shackle that attached the Genoa to the sheet until the shackle undid completely and shot the length of the boat like a bullet narrowly missing taking out Goochy. So now we had a mainsail half up and a severely flapping Genoa that we now had no control over. We managed to furl the Genoa some more to get rid of that problem for now, and then we carried on with the mainsail. It was at this point we put the first reef sheet into the electric winch to put some tension in it. Sadly we came straight out of the jammer and onto the electric winch at a bad angle. So when we started the electric winch it ripped the sheet out of the jammer and we broke it. So now we had a broken Genoa and a broken jammer, but we had a mainsail up.
Unfortunately on a Catamaran you can’t really sail on just a main as the boat becomes unbalanced and keeps heading into wind. So we dropped the mainsail again and started heading to a protected bay to make repairs.
We found a decent enough spot to park and anchored. We found a spare shackle and put the sheet back onto the Genoa and then tried to furl it away completely only to discover we’d over rotated the self furling jib mechanism thing and couldn’t put it away. So we made some more repairs, fixed that problem and then had a beer and did a little swimming.
Finally the time came to head to Sipanska so we decided to weigh anchor and get ready to go. We had some issues with the anchor earlier on the trip where the anchor chain would sometimes bundle up near the winch instead of dropping neatly into the anchor chain locker. This time it bundled up before we could stop it and knocked the anchor chain off the winch. This meant the anchor chain was attached to nothing and instead of raising the anchor chain we deposited 100m of chain onto the seabed. Fortunately the end of the chain is attached to the boat by a line so we were able to drag a few metres of chain back into the boat by hand, attach it the winch and started lifting the anchor again. This time I occupied the locker next to the anchor chain and kept jamming to end of the boat hook into the pile of chain to make sure there was room for the anchor chain to drop neatly.
We eventually made it to Sipanska for some much needed food and wine.
End result – we snapped some plastic off the jammer.
Kamil [ the skipper of the other yacht in our “flotilla” ] brought along his e-foil. It’s like a powered surfboard with a foil underneath that lifts the whole thing out of the water when you get going. Pretty bloody hard to do but I managed to almost get the hang of it before becoming exhausted and cold.
