Just got back from my vacation in Scotland. Thought I'd share a few pics I took: Spoiler One thing about Scotland, is that there are churches and abbeys everywhere. And they're pretty amazing. Not into the religious thing, but can absolutely appreciate the workmanship and artistry that went into them. Abbey in Glasgow: Here's the monument to Robert The Bruce, the first King of Scotland, at the Battle of Bannockburn, where they Scottish won their independence from the British. It's kind of the final battle in Braveheart. Scary to think that more than a few of my old family members fought and died here. As a quick geeky aside, it was also very cool that, with my iPad and a cool app called WikiHood, I could stand on the field, and up popped the battle plans and the detailed history of what happened there. It basically recalled the battle for us, and provided tons of location-specific WikiPedia information. The castle at Urquhart, near Inverness, is one of the most famous castles in Scotland. It also turns out that it was my ancestral family castle. It seems that we had it for more than 400 years. In the end, a besieging force was about to take it from us, so we opted to blow it the fuck up instead. My ancestors fucking ROCK! When we showed up to the castle, it was also very cool that everyone that was working there treated us like returning nobility, like the family returning to the castle. Here's the main entrance blown to fuck after it was packed with black powder. And there were castles EVERYWHERE. This is the one that they filmed the movie Highlander at. Where a Scotsman played a Spaniard, and a Frenchman played a Scotsman. And what kind of Scotland tour would it be if we didn't partake of a little Scotch? We went on a tour through the Glenlivet distillery, which was all right. To me, it was like visiting Italy and touring the Ford factory rather than the Ferrari shops, but it was still not bad. I just wish we could have stopped off at one of the thousands of smaller, more intimate distilleries instead. Still, the tasting was not too shabby. By far, one of the coolest things I experienced wasn't part of the tour. Three of us fucked off on one of the free nights to a small pub below Sterling Castle. It had a live, traditional Scottish band playing (a few mandolins, violin, guitar, and a keyboard player), and we went in and had a few pints. I was talking to one of the guys standing beside us, and it turned out he was in the band, just on a break. Anyway, he hops up to play, and drags me with him, and handed me a guitar. So, I ended up playing a few songs and having a blast. I went with the traditional Scottish ballads of Sweet Home Alabama, and Green Day's Boulevard of Broken Dreams. (You haven't had fun until you've heard that last one sung with a crazy-heavy Gaelic accent). We closed down the pub, but then the band said "follow us, we're going for a wee pint". We went across the street to another pub, and hung out and jammed in a private room upstairs until 5 in the morning. I'll tell you, music really is universal, and I can tell you if you want to have a shit-load of fun while traveling, learn how to play something and entertain people. It'll pay off HUGE. Along those same lines, I ordered a set of custom bagpipes while I was in Edinburgh. Here's the shop where they are being made. It's small, and intimate, and the guy is a real craftsman. We arrived the day before the Bagpipe World Championships that were being held in Glasgow, and he'd made the pipes for more than a few of the contenders. Sure beats some CNC mass produced set. I'm really looking forward to playing again, and scaring the shit out of the fish in my lake. Drunken evenings will have a whole new dimension to them now, I'm thinking. And we also went to the Edinburgh Castle Military Tattoo. Pipes, drums, and complete awesomeness. And as a final shot, here's a pic of Edinburgh. It really is amazing, and I will definitely be going back.
Went to a boat race thing this weekend, and I didn't stay until the end, but this little boat was in the lead at 208 mph as of yesterday afternoon. It was pretty fun, you can kind of hear the power going on (along with somebody saying "Jesus Christ" because you could hear it way before you could see it). edit - eh, I'll try to youtube it. I actually don't have my name on facebook though, more of a nickname so I didn't see the harm.
I ended up taking a rather nice photo in my shop tonight. It's a delicate ribbon of cedar and carbon fiber planed from a laminated beam (in the background). I really like how the razor-thin strip of cedar and carbon fiber (that somehow managed to be perfectly spaced and not split apart) keeps twisting and curling over and over again. It's in the details. .
Last night was Riverfire, which is an annual event in my city to mark the beginning of River Festival. Each year they put on fireworks and fly an F-111 jet fast and low over the river and city, with its afterburners on. It then dumps fuel next to the afterburners, causing it to catch fire. The air force is retiring the fleet of F-111's so this is the last year they did it. For the occasion an urban explorer friend and I decided to sneak into a construction site and scale a 40+ storey crane to get a good view. It flew directly over us at one point. He's a pilot and estimated the altitude of the plane at around 200m. 40ish storeys is about 120m, so we were quite close. The photo doesn't do the distance justice, as I still had the wide angle lens on. Anyway, here's a few shots:
Went to a Mariner's game at safeco on Friday, in what could possibly have been the last nice night of the year.
My boys were baptized at my mother in law's church in the beautiful mountains of Virgina a few weekends ago (Episcopal, not snake-handling, don't worry!) The first picture is my 2 year old and it actually was taken by a cell phone. The second is my 5 month old and I didn't get a good picture of his little baptism outfit, but I think it's cute anyway.
I was working in the shop last night, changing a CV axle for my mother-in-law, and the stub shaft was stuck inside the transmission. It was really awkward to get to, and I had to weld up a tool out of some scrap metal to pry it out. When I did that, it came out with so much force that it flew about 6 feet away, and on the way, it cut my wrist! There was a lump of now-dead skin hanging uselessly, so I cut it off with some wire cutters and finished the job. Pictured is the stub shaft and my cut:
I came to stop before snapping this last fall. I loved it, wish I could've caught more fog and mist from their breathing. Maybe its time I download some photo editors and play around with it.