A few photos from last year

Last summer Dana and I went on an 11-night cruise, and it was oh so nice! We met in London and spent a day, then went to a small port northeast of city and boarded our Celebrity cruise ship. We've been on two cruises now with Celebrity, and it would take some serious selling to get us to try another line.

With an upcoming trip this year, it occurred to me that I never posted any images from last year, and there are some very nice ones. So please indulge me as I take you on a whirlwind look, with two images from each port of call.

In London we went to Greenwich - you know, where the time starts - and saw the Royal Observatory built by Sir Isaac Newton, among other notable scientific figures. But for me the highlight was visiting the Cutty Sark, for a time the fastest clipper ship in the world. Sadly, she came along right before the advent of steam ships. If you like ships, this is a stunning display!

Masts of the tall ship Cutty Sark in Greenwich, England

Cutty Sark bow and keel

Our first port of call was north of the UK, at the Faroe Islands. We arrived on a cool, cloudy day which was lovely. No trees to speak of on this island, but lush and green were pleasant to see.

The bridge across the Atlantic Ocean (joins two islands!)

Village and church on the coast

Next we were off to Reykjavik, Iceland, where we overnighted in port. The first day was cool, wet, and cloudy all day - but we had fun touring in a monster truck going through rivers and lava fields!  Day two was as bright and brilliant as the first day was wet. We went on a bus tour back to some of the same places, but got an entirely different view with clear skies!

Tiny flowers growing from an 8000 year old lava field.

A lake near the coast under brilliant sky!

Our third stop was the Shetland Islands, the northernmost part of Scotland. It was lovely - we enjoyed a mild day, beautiful mountains, a perfect light lunch in a quilting shop/cafe/ham radio museum!

Wildflowers over the bay.

 

The Laird's manor house, overlooking the North Atlantic,

and towering above the ruins of a Viking village

The penultimate stop on the cruise was at a little village in Norway, at the end of the most scenic fjord in the country (well, some people said so!).  So we visited the Geirangerfjord, and it is breathtaking! I showed my name to some of the locals, and am still surprised that they didn't give me the key to the city - it's almost the same!  Again it was a cloudy, rainy, cool day, but the weather broke just long enough for us to capture some stunning images! Here are two of my favorites.

Geirangerfjord from way above (but not as high as we went - more later)

Geirangerfjord from not too far above!

Finally we returned to London for two final days. We had a great time, and saw some lovely sights. I feel like I could spend a month here and not see everything I want to see!  But we did spend several hours of loveliness at Kew Garden, the first botanical garden in the UK - oh my, so much color! Near the end of the second day we found our way to the Crusader's Church featured in The daVinci Code film, and there was one feature so stunningly unique that we just had to catch it!

Kew Garden in West London

Gargoyle at Crusader's Church (please click the image)

So there, in a quick look, is our summer trip last year! I promise to be more timely about posting any images from a trip this year if we ever get around to taking one.  And I may pop in a few more from last year here and there.

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." - Mark Twain

Best to all! Mark

No Coincidences

I gave a guy a ride tonight. Sounds simple enough, right? But there was more to it than that. Let me walk you through it, and show how sometimes one thing happens that leads to another in ways you simply could never predict. And remember, there are no coincidences.

A few days ago I put a new battery in my motorbike – a Honda Wave. I call it that because it’s too big to be a scooter, but doesn’t have a proper gearbox so it’s not really a motorcycle either.  It’s not a bad ride but I wish it were a little bigger.  It has a 125 cc engine which is just enough to move me around ok.  Then again if it were any bigger I’d probably be in trouble all the time for speeding.  I haven’t had a battery that worked since I got the thing last year, so I thought it was time to have lights and horn and turn signals and a starter that worked. 

After I installed the new battery I was pretty excited about turning the key and pressing the start button, but felt pretty let down when I turned and pressed and nothing happened.  But by that point the sun was about to set and it would be quite dark very quickly, so I put it back together to ponder the mysteries of the motorbike electrical system.  

The next day a friend said something about it that led me to a new thought, so after work yesterday I thought I’d check it out, and sure enough the main battery fuse was burned out. And the kind Honda engineers had built in a placeholder for and filled it with a replacement fuse!  10 minutes later we were in business – lights, electric start, the works!

I had a pretty good day at work and got a lot done. I’m sure if you ask them my family can attest that I don’t keep a neat, tidy desk. In fact, when I am deep into a project, as I am now, my desk tends to look something like a train wreck.  But I know where everything is – it is filed in my head and can pretty much put my hand on anything I need in short order.

After work I came back to my flat with a very specific rank-ordered list of things to do – check my email to see if there were any messages that needed prompt attention, change clothes, take the old battery to the auto hobby shop on camp and see if they had a replacement fuse and ask if they knew anyone who could do an oil change for me, then ride it around the camp to give it some charge.

I usually don’t ride very far at a time – it is literally 5 minutes from my building to the gate at work.  I mostly walk during the fall, winter and spring, but when the heat index at 0700 is 112F (44C) it’s nicer to ride and not be soaked when you arrive at the office, which is normally kept a shivery cold 62-65F (17C). (I know, in the normal world that's not too bad. But when the outside temperature is double that, it's cold!)

So, I had a great plan, which fell apart during the read emails component when I fell asleep in my chair. I hate doing that. I finally woke up enough to realize what happened.  I got up, changed, and headed out to complete my list!  Wait!! Where’s my phone??  Search the room, look in my pockets, look on the floor, check my bag – no phone.  Must’ve left it at my office, which is always exasperating.  When you are on the other side of the world from your loved ones, the phone is something you keep handy.

OK, new plan, stop by the office to get phone after doing the other stuff.  So I got to the auto shop, which is full to the brim and overflowing with cars and people, but I parked and dropped off the battery in the battery drop off area, then walked to the empty desk right as the guy behind the desk arrived.  Remember about coincidences? Perfect timing #1.

He said they didn’t have any fuses that size, and I should check with a bike mechanic. I asked if he could recommend someone because several others I’d been referred to had dropped out of sight.  He said, oh, maybe we can still catch him, come on, and I followed him out through the door he had just come through.  We caught up to Charlie, who was about to leave, and I will now get my oil change a replacement fuse Friday (my weekend) morning!  Perfect timing #2. 

So I hop on the Wave and proudly hit the start button and rolled out to the street not long after sunset. For the record, it was about 98F, with a heat index of 117F (47C).  Looking to my right I saw a big yellow bus pull off the shoulder 200 yards down the road. Aramco has a small army of migrant workers who maintain the place, in brutal conditions some parts of the year (like now), and a bus ride to their camp at the end of the day is small comfort.  

worker harvesting dates

Looking to my left I see a worker in his yellow jumpsuit running raggedly in my direction, yelling and waving at the bus.  I looked back to the right and observed that the bus (or its driver) chose to not see this poor fellow and it lumbered on down the street.  This guy was small, thin, dark, and could have been from any of a dozen third world nations, imported for raw labor and low pay. But they come here in droves because whatever they earn here is double what they can earn at home.  Perfect timing #3.

My first mindless action was to turn in my intended direction, which was away from the guy and toward the dwindling bus. Suddenly my mind saw this poor guy walking miles, missing dinner, getting fined, and a dozen other instant mental pictures, and I was shouting to myself to go back and help.  So around we go, get back to him and pull over and asked, will they come back for you?  And this poor little man, heaving great deep breaths, after a long day’s work in the heat, from Nepal or India or Malaysia or somewhere, replies in broken but passable English, no sir, they go on, they not come back.  

(Of course at this point I was humbled and embarrassed by myself and the U.S. education system. This guy spoke enough English to understand and answer my question, and could probably do it in 3 or 4 other languages, and my brain can still only handle my home tongue.  It’s not that I didn’t have the opportunity to learn another language, but I wasn’t forced to and was too lazy to do it on my own.)

So here I am, giant Mark on a small motorbike, but I put the rear footrests down, patted the seat behind me, and told him to climb on. Must’ve been some picture, the two of us on my Wave – fortunately we didn’t cross paths when any security guys – chasing after his bus all the way across camp.  He told me where the bus was going, which I’d assumed, and I knew where that was, and we made the best speed I could without knocking him off or burning out the engine from the load.

We never saw the bus until we came right to the gate, and the bus was on the other side, but that was ok. Most of his co-workers were still on this side. They put everyone off the bus, drive the bus through, then take the workers through one at a time. Perfect timing #4.

My new friend hopped off the back and I figured he would sprint for the gate. But first he had to stop, bow, shake my hand, and tell me thank you, thank you sir, I so grateful thank you, all the while grinning ear to ear.  Then he ran to join his friends who had seen us and were calling to him, laughing.  It was a nice moment for both of us!

Mark's Wave!

Then I turned my wheels the other way, went to my office, and found my phone under a single sheet of paper, which I don’t even remember having in my hand today.  But if I hadn’t covered the phone with the paper, I wouldn’t have been delayed to look for my phone after I woke up from sleeping at my desk in my room.

This means I would have missed the bike mechanic, and would still need a fuse and someone to change my oil and filter and do a tune-up. I wouldn’t have seen the guy who missed his bus and ONLY ride to his quarters. I would have missed the opportunity to give him a wild ride across camp. He would have missed food and rest that he would sorely need tomorrow. 

He also would have missed the joy of experiencing someone doing something nice for him in a foreign land, and the gratitude that comes with it. And I would have missed the joy of being able to do something for a stranger, who I would never see again, knowing it would never be paid back and fine with that, because between us we both got immense benefit from the experience and it cost me nothing. I was going to go for a ride anyway!

So what’s the moral of this story?  First, trust your instinct and go with your feelings. They are there for you, built in pointers to show you the way – most of us just don’t bother to listen.  Second, doing something nice for someone, for no reason at all except to do a good thing, is a great feeling.  Watch for an opportunity and try it!

It was a nice night . Best to all, Mark