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While I'm not a huge fan of spiders (or of huge spiders, for that matter) but apparently this is good news, as spider numbers are an indicator of the health of the ecosystem. It's also good news for their predators (I'm not counting Kyle in that statement, in spite of the fact that she also hunts down and squishes any that she finds in her house - being more squeamish, I prefer to trap and release).
You can read more about the explosion in spider numbers here (warning: this article has pictures of spiders!). I know that a lot of people don't like spiders, but they do a lot of good controlling other insects - and after all the worries about bees and other wildlife species, it makes a nice change to hear something positive about the state of the environment literally in our own backyards. So viva la spider! (as long as it's not in my bed!)
While I was in New Jersey with Kyle I did some running around her neighbourhood, which was good exercise and also useful as a way of finding my way around the local area. Running outdoors is quite a different proposition to running on a treadmill, and it was interesting to compare the two this morning.
Probably the biggest difference for me was the lack of immediate feedback - the machines tell you your speed, distance, gradient, time and calories burned, whereas outside you have to rely on your subjective impressions, which I found out can actually be quite faulty. I think I run further and quicker outside (don't get excited though, it wasn't that far/fast, and I certainly won't be running any marathons in record time). And after a few runs I was starting to learn how to listen more closely to my body, to know when I needed to slow down or pick up my pace.
Aside from that, running outdoors is more varied and I suspect more stimulating mentally. It was also good to see a few other runners on the street and do the runner's equivalent of the Masonic handshake as we passed. So I missed that a bit this morning - maybe I'll start running around my own neighbourhood in the next few weeks.
Afterwards in the pool I was practising my front crawl exercises again, after a six week hiatus. It's coming together but I still have problems with breathing, especially on the right side. However I do have a lesson tomorrow which will hopefully put me back on track. I have some other vague swimming plans but I think they'll have to wait until things settle down a little, in the meantime I'll just keep on running.
We got a lot done while I was in the US though - as well as our vacation in Myrtle Beach, we did a lot of wedding planning. We looked at a number of different possible wedding venues trying to find somewhere that worked for us, and although at times it felt like a real struggle in the end I think we came up trumps. So our ceremony venue will be the Huisman gazebo in Belmar, which is right next to the beach, and the reception will be at the Waterview Pavilion about a mile away. The town is close to Kyle's parents and looks like a great place for my UK visitors (with a rail link to New York for those who prefer the big city).
We also did a lot of work on various ideas for invitations and other graphics, and came up with some cool stuff. In the process I've also learned a lot more about the image manipulation program Gimp, and a little about other software such as Scribus, which has been fun, and I also learned that Kyle is a real whizz at making rocking miniature laptops. (Kyle has been collecting all our wedding idea stuff together in a set on Flickr, if you want to take a look.)
We're tentatively setting the wedding date for mid-May, but we're going to wait until my visa application has come through before sending out invitations, and now I'm back in the UK I'm getting together the final documents to complete the application. The process seems long and involved but I know that the end result will be worth it - and I'm inspired by the fortune cookie message that I got at PF Changs last Friday:
Our Labor Day was spent getting reorganised after our holiday, but we also made a trip to the Menlo Park mall to pick up my wedding ring from the jewellers (so now we have both rings), followed by a visit to the big Barnes & Noble store next door. Kyle was looking for books on stretching and back pain while I was looking at magazines (and manfully resisting the urge to buy more books on software).
There were two cashiers at the checkout: an American woman giving Kyle the hard sell about how much money she would have saved on her purchases if she'd had a B&N membership, and a rather dapper and well-spoken middle-aged Englishman who rang up my mags. It still surprises me to hear another English accent here, and while I was paying I wondered whether I should acknowledge the fact that we were both Englishmen in a foreign country.
But all I could think of saying was something along the lines of, "So, you're English too?", and that seemed pretty lame, or "You're not from round here, are you?", which seemed even more lame. So I just let it pass (as did he), and afterwards I felt a little bemused - I'm sure there isn't any proper protocol for this kind of situation, but somehow I felt like there should be.
Anyway: since then we've been getting back on track with our wedding planning and are homing in on venues for the ceremony and reception. It's been intense but hopefully we'll be able to pull things together in the next week or so - stay posted (and in the meantime check out my slender selection of pictures from Myrtle Beach, and Kyle's more substantial collection).
I've been doing a particularly poor job of posting to this blog since I arrived in New Jersey, and tomorrow Kyle and I are flying out to Myrtle Beach so the situation is unlikely to improve over the next week.In my defence, it's been a busy couple of weeks. In fact, just like the very real hurricanes swirling out in the Atlantic this time of year, it feels like we've been caught in our own metaphorical New Jersey hurricane - in between visiting our lawyer, buying our rings and attending the very rocking bowling alley wedding of our friends Chris and Christine, we've also been designing our wedding stationary, and checking out possible venues. Kyle has been doing a great job keeping up with this whirlwind in her blog (start with her "Wedding logo draft posting" and work your way forward, if you want more details or check out our great designs!).
In the odd minutes left over from all that, I've been enjoying being back in New Jersey now that it's summer - it's warm enough to go out without a coat, and the air is filled with the loud high-frequency clicking sound of the cicadas. It's pretty neat. Meanwhile there's also a few changes on the Princeton campus, which seems to be undergoing maintenance before the fall semester: the "marching figures" have disappeared from the front of the Art Museum, Upstart 2 has lost its black paint job (now more in keeping with the artist's intentions), and until earlier this week my favourite fake Picasso sculpture had also been under wraps.
Also, random people seem to be more talkative now. They're often interested in where I'm from, and how the weather differs between the US and the UK (my take: generally the climate in NJ is quite similar to back home, although a bit more consistent than back home, and with greater extremes - the summer being much hotter, and the winter is much colder). They're also interested in knowing if I follow soccer, and seem disappointed when I say I don't (I might start trying to bluff my way through it in future).
Anyway, fun as it is all is, after running around for the last few of weeks it'll be fun to finally get away to South Carolina for a bit: sun, sea and sand, miniature golf and great food at the K&W. I'm sure Kyle will be blogging in real time while we're there, otherwise - see you when we get back. Aloha!
It seemed like quite an inauspicious day, overcast and with intermittent rain both on the train journey to Lancaster and on the number 80 bus to Ingleton itself, and the start of the waterfall trail was pretty dark and muddy beneath the overhanging trees. The first part of the trail follows the River Twiss and the second section returns along the River Doe, so the sound of the rushing water is almost constant, with even the largest waterfalls seemingly hidden from view until you get close up.
Probably the most spectacular of many spectacular waterfalls - presumably well-fed from the recent rains - was Thornton Force (incidentally my choice of pseudonymn when I start writing thrillers: "Another novel from the pen of Thornton Force"). Getting between the two rivers involved a walk across farmland which thankfully also featured an ice cream van.
After walking for 3 1/2 hours, I was feeling like a swim. The Ingleton pool was last on my small list of pools that I'd planned to visit over the summer, and while it's not so large, the place is big on character, with the nicest voluntary staff ever - when I arrived it was full of kids fooling around but the woman running the cafe very kindly let wait until the break at 4pm then I could have a little swim on my own before they came back at 4:30 (so as long as I promised "not to drown"). The sun came out and for twenty minutes I had the pool to myself - blue skies above, blue water below, nothing else like it. Bliss!
At 4:30 the pool filled up again with the kids and also people who like me had finished the Waterfalls Trail. It was a lot of fun and a complete constrast to the tranquility I'd been enjoying a few minutes earlier. A hot cup of tea from the cafe was the perfect way to relax afterwards, although I was denied fish and chips from the Inglenook cafe as it's closed all day Tuesday. I ended the day waiting at the bus stop (where a crowd of Hasidic Jews were also waiting for their own coach).
(My pictures of the waterfalls and other things around Ingleton can be found on Flickr.)
The rest of the week was spent preparing for my trip back to the US, which is where I am now. It's great to be back with Kyle again! And the weather in New Jersey is definitely much warmer compared with when I was last here in January. We have plenty to do over the next few weeks, including some wedding planning (see Kyle's recent blog postings for some of what we're up to), but I know it's going to be fun. Stay posted!
I had a couple of possible routes printed out: one from the Guardian (which I think is actually from a company called WalkingWorld; see a version here, without the map) and another from a great site called Walking Britain (in the event I didn't use this one but it had been useful to see it before setting off).
Getting to Hathersage was pretty straightforward but unfortunately there didn't seem to be a direct walking route to Hook Car (where my Stanage Edge route was supposed to begin) so it took me a while before I was even at "the start". Never mind - once I'd ascended the path up to the escarpment I felt like it had been worth the journey just to soak up the views over the Hope Valley. The sun had come out and the air was fresh as I set off north along the edge. Aaaah!
It turned out it was lucky that I'd borrowed those waterproofs, as about 40 minutes later the skies darkened and the views disappeared for a while as the downpour began. There was no shelter so I simply carried on and waited for the rain to blow over while I took a wrong turning (ending up below the escarpment again) and then wandered through an area littered with old millstones before managing to find a way back up again. Back at the top and with blue skies restored at least for the time being, I took a break for lunch. The views are fantastic and I was a little sorry that I was on my own.
Lunch over it was time to press on a bit further along the edge, below doubling back on a path that took me back to the littered millstones and through another heavy shower (both seemed familiar from earlier in the day), before turning off in the direction of Hathersage. I think that the views of Stanage Edge at this point from "ground level" were also well worth seeing - from below the cliff faces looked like they'd been constructed from huge cubes of stone.
Finally after a long walk across several fields full of grazing sheep I arrived back in Hathersage. I'd entertained vague hopes of fitting in a swim in the outdoor pool there, which I think would have been a great way to finish off the day, but unfortunately I'd arrived at the end of the public swimming session. So instead I got a cup of tea and a flapjack at the cafe and then headed back home on the train. It had still been a great day out, and I'm really glad that I went and got some more use out of my walking boots!
Big thanks to Mum and Dad if you're reading this, for helping me out. And you can see all my pictures on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/oblong_dog/sets/72157621749256541/ if you're interested in seeing what it looks like.
