The neighbours...

......out for a post-storm stroll.

Having trouble with deliveries?

Suggestions on a postcard....

Florida summer...

....and how to deal with it.

Dehydration is to be avoided. Enhancing water seems to be the way Floridians do it.

To be fair, the Florida water is safe to drink but it tastes pretty awful.

I brought a packet of Yorkshire Tea (for hard water) over with me. When made with bottled drinking water the resultant brew is acceptable. Not brilliant, but it does the job.

I've been so busy that I've not had time to visit the local brewery tap in Dunedin, 5 - 6 miles from here. Cans of lager have had to suffice.

I was hoping to get out with the local Hash House Harriers, but apart from time constraints, the weather has been either far too hot to run or it's been too wet. This is the storm season, we've recently been battered by Tropical Storm Andrea - even wetter than a wet Sunday afternoon in Timperley. Now THAT'S wet.

It's now 4.30pm (the one in the afternoon) and the clouds are gathering. By 5pm it will be hammering down once again. Good tropical stuff - happens most afternoons at this time.

The good news is that I've achieved more than I'd intended on this trip.
For those who don't know, I've been renovating an apartment that my father and I own. The plan is to let the place out to make it self-financing. There's no point in trying to flog it, the property market over here is in a worse state than in the UK.

Anyroadup, as it's going to hiss it down I might as well get on with some decorating.

A post from The Colonies

From time-to-time I need to cross the pond to ensure that things are going satisfactorily.
90degF and all that goes with it doesn’t really do it for me, I’d much rather be somewhere wild and remote. But there you go, it’s a family duty thing and it has to be done.
Whenever I do pay a visit to our colonial brothers and sisters I’m always tempted to correct their spelling, grammar and vocalburary vocabliary vocabulary. This is one reason why I don’t buy books from here, I can’t abide poor spelling…..not that mine is brilliant. The Americans, to their great credit, don’t seem to misuse the apostrophe half as much as we British do.
I was delighted to see that the Publix supermarket chain (think Tesco, but with service) are in the good company of our very own Booth’s supermarkets: they offer an express till service for customers with ‘10 items or fewer’.
Whilst on the subject of niceties and stuff, have you noticed that our very own National Trust don’t have toilets? Oh dear me no, they have Lavatories. Much more English, don’t you think?
As well as being separated by a common language, our dress sense is rather different:
This delightful lady’s hat is probably not at all unusual on the left-hand side of the pond, in Timperley it may stand out slightly. 
The high temperatures of this part of the USA cause all manner of insect problems. Floridians take these things in their stride:

An former squatter 

I’ve now pretty well sorted the insect invasion problem. Whenever I leave for UK I put down a good number of ‘Roach Baits’….they’re like rat poison but for cockroaches. Probably wouldn’t do rats much good either. Come to think of it, I’ve not seen any rats here…..so it MUST work on rats too. Anyway, when I open up the building I just go around with a dustpan and brush and sweep up all the dead bodies. Then I bleach everywhere.

This visit is much busier than previous visits, I’m preparing the place for letting – there’s TONS to do. Whilst clearing out a load of old tat I came across a completely useless lightbulb – well it was completely useless as a lightbulb:

You don’t get these in Timperley

With the very high temperatures comes a rainy season. This last couple of weeks has already seen loss of life due to hurricanes & tornadoes. Fortunately this area is just out the tornado alley. That doesn’t mean we don’t get rain though:

  A couple of photos taken from the back door this evening.

The evening’s donner & blitzen stuff is bad for a chap’s nerves. Now I know why the flight tickets were so cheap….no bugger wants to come here at this time of the year.

Anyroadup, tomorrow’s an easy day. The morning will be spent working on the apartment, whilst the afternoon will be at a local folk club sing-thing. The evening will be spent at the Dunedin Brewery. A chap has to have SOME fun…doesn’t he?

Backpacking meals

The Mrs JJ had a significant birthday recently. We had planned to go out for a celebratory nosh at Greasy Lizzy’s, Timperley’s answer to the 5 star Cordon Bleu restaurants of Paris, London and Rusholme. Anyroadup, when it came to the crunch she didn’t feel up to it. I can’t imagine why.

Instead of going out to eat, I nipped round the corner for a couple of take-away curries: a Chicken Tikka Mosala for her, Vegetable Dopiaza for him. Both served with pilau rice of course.

You know how it is, we only got half-way through our meals and found that we couldn’t eat another mouthful. The leftovers were put in the fridge and would have likely been forgotten about…but I had a cunning plan.

Next morning I finely chopped up all the lumpy bits of the left-overs and put the resulting mush into my dehydrator. 8 hours later all the moisture had been driven off and the resulting crunchy bits emptied into zip-lock polybags. Along with Tesco’s garlic and something-or-other naan bread, I had two excellent backpacking meals.

Dehydrated Chicken Tikka Mosala 

Rehydration of home dehydrated meals is a much slower process than with the commercial stuff, but the results are immeasurably better. And so it was.

Whilst my neighbours were tucking into their rehydrated cardboard (with added MSG) I was enjoying my excellent curry. Stormin’ was the only exception I was aware of – he dehydrates his own meals and was enjoying a similarly delicious evening meal.

If you fancy making your own meals all you need is a dehydrator. I use an American Harvest Snackmaster, similar to this one. I’d suggest a bit of experimentation, but it won’t be long before you’re making your own backpacking meals.

May 2013

LDWA Introductory Walk

May Day Bank Holiday was pencilled in as an introductory walk for newcomers and potential new LDWA members. The walk was supposed to be in North Wales but it needed to be re-located….the walk that is, not North Wales.
Advertised as 15 miles, at least two potential members took part in what was expected to be a pleasantly demanding walk in a new location, Rivington in Lancashire.
28 (?) walkers and two doggies started, I think everyone completed. You can read a very good report on the walk on Alan’s Blog.
For an introductory walk I feel it was much too fast and, and….  Read Alan’s report.

  Pre-walk address

Towards Rivington Pike

 

Rivington Pike

Jon (on R) with his full TGO Challenge kit…and he’s still smiling!

Alan and Sheila cooling their sizzling feet

Excitement for the day – Bolton Mountain Rescue call out

I’ve little idea of where we went, although I do know we visited Rivington Pike, Great Hill, White Coppice and Brinscall.

What we did:

17.5 miles
2400ft ascent
4.9mph max speed
3.3mph average speed
More piccies here….but no map, I’m not sure if anyone knew where we actually went!

Saturday 18th May

Dunham May Queen: a procession, rain, cold, Morris Dancing….and tractors.
Some photos for Alan:

 Unusual in that it’s petrol-driven

An old Fordson

Then there was my mate Matthew’s birthday party on the Wirral in the evening:

The Birthday Boy….and no, he’s definitely NOT a Tory!

Yvonne, my favouritist singer….resting singing

Mary, Yvonne, May and John R

That was a good do…with loads of Scouse too!

Sunday 19th May

A recce…in between decorating duties:
John Bullen, walks secretary of the East Lancs LDWA, bullied pencilled me in to lead a walk in October for the group. My plan is to walk from Lostock Gralam to Hale. The will be beer at the end…so I know at least 2 or 3 will turn out on the day! When you’re responsible for leading a walk it’s important to recce it thoroughly…so here are some pics from the recce:

 

NOT a trig point

Plumley

More photos for Alan:

This last photo taken close to Bexton Hall…perhaps Bexton Hall Farm?

This is the first part of the walk…it will be tweaked before the big day:

This bit I did yesterday was 10.5 miles, including the bit where I got lost. On the day the walk will go furtherer, around 15 miles altogether. And there will be beer. Did I mention that before?
Now I’m going to do some more decorating and then I’m going Scotland to catch up with my mates. Sue is driving…she’s meeting up with Martin at the end of his Challenge. Ain’t she nice?!

For those in peril on the sea

It’s dead easy to get side-tracked whilst browsing t’interweb – this happened to me yesterday as I was searching out information on the now defunct College of International Marine Radiotelegraphic Communications, in Brooke’s Bar, Manchester. This was the college where I took my morse test around 1980.
When I was around 12 years old, I would listen to ‘Trawler Band’, that part of the radio spectrum above 2mhz – or 150m in English. I would spend far too much time listening to the ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore radio traffic from the comfort of home. I thought I knew what life must have been like on the rough seas.
That was until yesterday when I came across Sailing with Hunters – a Radio Officer’s memories of life in the fishing industry. It’s fascinating and quite horrific. Give it a read, it won’t take long A bit more wandering around the web came up with some seriously scary images of fishing boats at sea. They’re from the Daily Mail, despite that they’re tremendously good.

Google Image from Mirror website

It could just make you think twice the next time you grumble about the price of fish.

A squeeze key, great for sending fast morse – but I think they weren’t officially allowed to be used on board ships. If a surveyor came on board to conduct an inspection these keys had to hidden away!