10/07/15
Kath and her boyfriend Rob had me over to their house for a really tasty meal. The main dish was rabbit meat from Scotland, which was very tasty. And then they had made a very tasty pie for dessert. Rob is a cool guy. He's into climbing peaks and glaciers and such, and someone I would definitely be friends with if I lived here permanently.
10/08/15
After work I took a bike path that goes for 7 miles to a small town called Nailsea out in the country. On the way back there was a most glorious sunset.
10/09/15
I put my bike on Gumtree (UK equivalent to Craig's list) and within 10 minutes I received a call for it, and 30 minutes later I had cash in hand for it! After looking at some of the other bikes for sale and the quickness of my sale, I obviously could have sold it for much more, but considering I had such a short time remaining, my goal was to sell it quick. And I ended up selling it to a student, so it's also nice to feel like I gave a student a good deal. In the end though, I made £5 off of it. I bought the bike for £55 and a used lock for £10 and ended up selling them together for £70
In a small world connection, Carleen and Glenn Ogg--our wonderful Bronco loving, music playing, and very fun neighbors in Solar Hills, Montrose--informed me that they had good friends, Dave and Sue, from Bristol who had neighbors of Carleen and Glenn for 2 years in Montrose. [mom and dad, they lived in Dave and Betty's house]. Incredibly enough, Dave and Sue live only about a 5 minute walk from me down by the harbor. I always love visiting Carleen and Glenn because they are fun and like to laugh a lot, which I appreciate. In fact, Elisha and I stayed with them this past June on our way to Telluride Blue Grass.
They invited me for dinner last night, which was a most wonderful experience. Carleen and Glenn were right: Dave and Sue had a great sense of humor and were most entertaining to talk with. Mom and Dad, it's too bad they didn't live in Montrose while we were there b/c you most certainly would have gotten along well.
When I arrived they welcomed me into their nice home and introduced me to their daughter in law, Mithy(sp?) and their 3 year-old granddaughter and served up some beers and very tasty hors d'oeuvres. Fresh vegetables from the garden, really tasty pesto and tomato sauces, also from the garden, and cooked goat cheese that was most delicious, but I am blanking on the name. Their son, Andrew, arrived shortly after from work (He's a professor from the other big university in Bristol, University of West England). They were all very nice, quick-witted, and genuinely interested in me, my life, and what I'm doing. For dinner, Sue made a really tasty (I will use some British lingo here) and gorgeous fish pie--so incredibly tasty that I really stuffed myself--and some veggies and curried sweet potatoes. And they served me a really tasty berry crumble pie that was very tart just like how I like it.
I stayed late into the night at their house, long after Andrew and his family left. It was most interesting to hear Dave and Sue talk about Montrose and to have a British take on Montrose. Keep in mind that I left Montrose before my 7th birthday, so I don't remember tons about it, but I do remember some. And I've since visited Montrose several times for state swim meets, to visit Eric Gladding, and Carleen and Glenn. First off, the reason they were in Montrose was because Dave worked as an engineer for some contract company that worked with the US (and maybe UK) military base on Diego Garcia (in the middle of the Indian Ocean). B/c they were dealing with entities all around the globe, there was no best place to have the company, so why not in lovely Montrovia?
They described Montrose as such a beautiful place and talked about how heavenly the views of the San Juans are from our old neighborhood. They had such positive praise for Montrose, which made me happy. And of course they talked about Telluride's beauty and Sue mentioned how the Gondola ride up the Telluride mountain must be the most lovely free ride in the world (Amazingly, it is indeed free of charge in the summer...I took Elisha on it this summer). They talked about how amazing the Silverton-Durango railway is, and I loved hearing them describe how crazy and just completely unfathomable the 4WD passes in the area were to them (like Engineer Pass and Cinnamon Pass). I'm including a pic of Cinnamon pass from last summer a friend posted on FB.
Sue said what she took away from Montrose was just how genuine, nice, and generous the people of Montrose were. But they also had some funny stories about the sort of innocent ignorance of the Western Slope. While in Montrose, it was looking like Dave and Sue were going to be sent to Romania for his job next. They had dreams of building a log cabin there and Sue had checked out a bunch of books on building log homes at the library. Some women noticed the books and asked her about it. And she told them they were planning on building a log cabin in Romania. She said there was a pensive silence for a while, and then the ladies asked how they were going to get the logs from Colorado to Romania. Sue told them that they were planning on using Romanian logs, which baffled the ladies b/c they didn't imagine there were trees in Europe! Another story was that when Dave and Sue were getting ready to move back to the UK, some people in Montrose generously gathered clothes and goods for them to take back to England b/c they genuinely believed that in England you couldn't get such things and that England was a poor country, so they would need those items. They had many other good stories that would just take me too long too repeat. But Dave did mention something he found so amusing was that when Montrose was getting a small mall, the people of Montrose were very excited saying that now they would have 2 malls within 2 hours driving distance (the other being in Grand Jct). Dave reckons that within a a 2 hour drive of Bristol, which would include places such as Cardiff, Birmingham and London) there are probably several thousand malls. They also really liked the Montrose airport, which I never used b/c it was built the last year I was there but said how sometimes it caused them trouble b/c they often were flying out to connect with international flights. B/c of the difficulty of flying a small plane over the Rockies to Denver, they had weight limits on the luggage that could be loaded. Hunters with their freshly killed meat got the priority, which meant that Dave and Sue were often separated with their bags on the int'l trips.
They have moved around a lot and travelled quite a bit with Dave's job, so they regaled me of stories of many places besides just exotic Montrose, including Thailand, Jordan, Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt, Dubai, India, Nepal, and Cambodia. I also learned a few things about British politics from them. And they were quite intrigued about Kenya and especially Antarctica.
It was a great night and I thoroughly enjoyed it. So thanks to Carleen for making that happen!
In another small world connection, Barry Fujishin emailed me the other day that the C of I sent a gal this year to Bristol for a study abroad semester. I emailed her, and maybe we'll have a chance to meet up at a pub before I head off
10/12/15
Last day of work at the university. The weather was gorgeous yet again. In my 6 weeks here, I only had 3 days of rain, which is quite amazing for England this time of year from what I've been told. I took a short walk up to Cabot Hill and then up the stairs of Cabot Tower for a very nice view of Bristol. I gave Kath some flowers to say thanks, which she was very excited about. I told her I had also gotten some bees for the flowers, but they had flown away
Kath and her boyfriend Rob had me over to their house for a really tasty meal. The main dish was rabbit meat from Scotland, which was very tasty. And then they had made a very tasty pie for dessert. Rob is a cool guy. He's into climbing peaks and glaciers and such, and someone I would definitely be friends with if I lived here permanently.
10/08/15
After work I took a bike path that goes for 7 miles to a small town called Nailsea out in the country. On the way back there was a most glorious sunset.
10/09/15
I put my bike on Gumtree (UK equivalent to Craig's list) and within 10 minutes I received a call for it, and 30 minutes later I had cash in hand for it! After looking at some of the other bikes for sale and the quickness of my sale, I obviously could have sold it for much more, but considering I had such a short time remaining, my goal was to sell it quick. And I ended up selling it to a student, so it's also nice to feel like I gave a student a good deal. In the end though, I made £5 off of it. I bought the bike for £55 and a used lock for £10 and ended up selling them together for £70
In a small world connection, Carleen and Glenn Ogg--our wonderful Bronco loving, music playing, and very fun neighbors in Solar Hills, Montrose--informed me that they had good friends, Dave and Sue, from Bristol who had neighbors of Carleen and Glenn for 2 years in Montrose. [mom and dad, they lived in Dave and Betty's house]. Incredibly enough, Dave and Sue live only about a 5 minute walk from me down by the harbor. I always love visiting Carleen and Glenn because they are fun and like to laugh a lot, which I appreciate. In fact, Elisha and I stayed with them this past June on our way to Telluride Blue Grass.
They invited me for dinner last night, which was a most wonderful experience. Carleen and Glenn were right: Dave and Sue had a great sense of humor and were most entertaining to talk with. Mom and Dad, it's too bad they didn't live in Montrose while we were there b/c you most certainly would have gotten along well.
When I arrived they welcomed me into their nice home and introduced me to their daughter in law, Mithy(sp?) and their 3 year-old granddaughter and served up some beers and very tasty hors d'oeuvres. Fresh vegetables from the garden, really tasty pesto and tomato sauces, also from the garden, and cooked goat cheese that was most delicious, but I am blanking on the name. Their son, Andrew, arrived shortly after from work (He's a professor from the other big university in Bristol, University of West England). They were all very nice, quick-witted, and genuinely interested in me, my life, and what I'm doing. For dinner, Sue made a really tasty (I will use some British lingo here) and gorgeous fish pie--so incredibly tasty that I really stuffed myself--and some veggies and curried sweet potatoes. And they served me a really tasty berry crumble pie that was very tart just like how I like it.
I stayed late into the night at their house, long after Andrew and his family left. It was most interesting to hear Dave and Sue talk about Montrose and to have a British take on Montrose. Keep in mind that I left Montrose before my 7th birthday, so I don't remember tons about it, but I do remember some. And I've since visited Montrose several times for state swim meets, to visit Eric Gladding, and Carleen and Glenn. First off, the reason they were in Montrose was because Dave worked as an engineer for some contract company that worked with the US (and maybe UK) military base on Diego Garcia (in the middle of the Indian Ocean). B/c they were dealing with entities all around the globe, there was no best place to have the company, so why not in lovely Montrovia?
They described Montrose as such a beautiful place and talked about how heavenly the views of the San Juans are from our old neighborhood. They had such positive praise for Montrose, which made me happy. And of course they talked about Telluride's beauty and Sue mentioned how the Gondola ride up the Telluride mountain must be the most lovely free ride in the world (Amazingly, it is indeed free of charge in the summer...I took Elisha on it this summer). They talked about how amazing the Silverton-Durango railway is, and I loved hearing them describe how crazy and just completely unfathomable the 4WD passes in the area were to them (like Engineer Pass and Cinnamon Pass). I'm including a pic of Cinnamon pass from last summer a friend posted on FB.
Sue said what she took away from Montrose was just how genuine, nice, and generous the people of Montrose were. But they also had some funny stories about the sort of innocent ignorance of the Western Slope. While in Montrose, it was looking like Dave and Sue were going to be sent to Romania for his job next. They had dreams of building a log cabin there and Sue had checked out a bunch of books on building log homes at the library. Some women noticed the books and asked her about it. And she told them they were planning on building a log cabin in Romania. She said there was a pensive silence for a while, and then the ladies asked how they were going to get the logs from Colorado to Romania. Sue told them that they were planning on using Romanian logs, which baffled the ladies b/c they didn't imagine there were trees in Europe! Another story was that when Dave and Sue were getting ready to move back to the UK, some people in Montrose generously gathered clothes and goods for them to take back to England b/c they genuinely believed that in England you couldn't get such things and that England was a poor country, so they would need those items. They had many other good stories that would just take me too long too repeat. But Dave did mention something he found so amusing was that when Montrose was getting a small mall, the people of Montrose were very excited saying that now they would have 2 malls within 2 hours driving distance (the other being in Grand Jct). Dave reckons that within a a 2 hour drive of Bristol, which would include places such as Cardiff, Birmingham and London) there are probably several thousand malls. They also really liked the Montrose airport, which I never used b/c it was built the last year I was there but said how sometimes it caused them trouble b/c they often were flying out to connect with international flights. B/c of the difficulty of flying a small plane over the Rockies to Denver, they had weight limits on the luggage that could be loaded. Hunters with their freshly killed meat got the priority, which meant that Dave and Sue were often separated with their bags on the int'l trips.
They have moved around a lot and travelled quite a bit with Dave's job, so they regaled me of stories of many places besides just exotic Montrose, including Thailand, Jordan, Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt, Dubai, India, Nepal, and Cambodia. I also learned a few things about British politics from them. And they were quite intrigued about Kenya and especially Antarctica.
It was a great night and I thoroughly enjoyed it. So thanks to Carleen for making that happen!
In another small world connection, Barry Fujishin emailed me the other day that the C of I sent a gal this year to Bristol for a study abroad semester. I emailed her, and maybe we'll have a chance to meet up at a pub before I head off
10/12/15
Last day of work at the university. The weather was gorgeous yet again. In my 6 weeks here, I only had 3 days of rain, which is quite amazing for England this time of year from what I've been told. I took a short walk up to Cabot Hill and then up the stairs of Cabot Tower for a very nice view of Bristol. I gave Kath some flowers to say thanks, which she was very excited about. I told her I had also gotten some bees for the flowers, but they had flown away
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| L to R: Dave, Zena(sp), me, Andrew, Sue |
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| with Mithy |
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| View out towards Clifton and the downs |
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| View out towards the suspension bridge |
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| View out towards where I live |
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| View out towards the University |
2 comments:
Thank you SO MUCH for your wonderful story about your evening with Sue & Dave. Just smiled and smiled; the obvious regret being that I wasn't there too! So glad to have made the connection with them just in time before you left. HA, were you able to make those crazy rock-yourself-back wooden chairs work? -- I never could! Thanks for that photo, too.
Pls. keep the blog going for future adventures, and stop in at the Free Lodge anytime you are passing through.
Carleen
Yea, they definitely really wished you had been there! I couldn't figure out those crazy chairs, but they just tilted me back in them and said to trust it. I love the Western slope, so no doubt I'll make my way back towards Montrose in the not too distant future and stay at the Ogg hostel.
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