Nugland

Including many like this one taken on approach to BFS, the Belfast International Airport.

I’ll be in Armagh for the next two weeks, so expect me to be curt on the phone ($1.25 per minute, fer cryin’ out loud).

I’m taking a spare phone that I’ll try and get a SIM card for; I’ll post the number here if I pull that trick off.

I’ll be back at the end of the month.

And my Flickr page is pretty much all Guam by now. Click the pic if you don’t believe me.

Sunrise/Sunset changes for January:
Guam:
Jan 1, 2008 6:44 AM 6:05 PM 11h 20m 45s + 0m 09s
Jan 31, 2008 6:49 AM 6:21 PM 11h 32m 21s + 0m 33s
Sunniness increases by 12 minutes
Detroit:
Jan 1, 2008 8:02 AM 5:10 PM 9h 08m 18s + 0m 42s
Jan 31, 2008 7:48 AM 5:44 PM 9h 56m 51s + 2m 17s
Sunniness increases by 48 minutes

Seasons can matter four times as much in Michigan.

I arrived late last night (early this morning, really) after 24 hours in airplanes and airports. First there was a 13 hour flight to Tokyo, then a layover (about 4 hours), and then over three hours to Guam.

I showed up beat (and without a rental-car reservation, which added more time).

The time difference is huge. Right now it’s 3:38 pm here, but 38 minutes past midnight in Ann Arbor (which is Friday night, really). In the morning, I can talk to people in Michigan (where they’re about to go to bed), and, if I stay up a little late, I can catch them right when they get up.

There is zero overlap during the work-day, which makes contacting the office annoying.

I am, apparently, the only passenger gold or better. Never seen this before.

Mom and Mike are probably getting upgraded again.

On Saturday I set out for home (from Youngstown, OH) with the plan of using a stretch of, if memory serves, I-76 on my way back to Ann Arbor. I can usually hack 60 or so for as long as I want, and I didn’t expect a lot of traffic, so I figured I’d be OK. Besides, people can always pass me.

Still, I had a bad feeling about that stretch, and stopped for a break right before the on-ramp. Resolve restored, I motored on. Right on the on-ramp, which was up-hill, the engine hesitated, so I pulled over short of the freeway to regroup. Back down the on-ramp? Nope. So — continue.

The short rest seemed to have helped, and I got up to near sixty. More engine hesitation, so I backed off (and tried not to feel bad for taking up a lane at, oh, 52).

I got off at the next exit and continued on slower roads. The hesitation started manifesting at lower and lower speeds, and ‘resting’ the motor started having less effect, so I gave up and put-putted to a hotel to rest and think.

[Moderately talented automotive trouble-shooters will already have a pretty good idea of what was probably wrong. I didn't, but I was a little too close to the problem.]

Sunday was a repeat of Saturday, OK for the first hour (where top speeds were about fifty), but the hesitation eventually showed up again (at about 53 MPH) and then crept down to 40. That’s it. I called a wrecker figuring he’d know a shop to tow me to, and I was right.

Speedy, at the Haas’ Service Station in Stony Ridge, agreed to take a look at it on Monday, so off to another hotel (Howard-Freakin’-Johnson!) to wait.

I am now very happy, though, ’cause Speedy pointed out what I should of seen for myself the previous day — and could have tested by visiting any parts shop: It’s probably a slightly clogged fuel filter.

Having slept on it, I am now certain that it was the fuel filter. I’m also patting myself on the back a little too for never pushing it when it was hesitating. The mixture gets real lean right before it cuts out, and lean mixtures burn much hotter than the normal (slightly rich) mixture. Air-cooled engines hate extra heat much more than water-cooled ones, and can break.

Update: It was the fuel filter; I got home fine.

I’m here at the Holiday Inn in ‘Boardman’ Ohio. Yup, them are scare-quotes. It turns out that ‘Boardman’ is a polite fiction used to separate the relatively polite part of Youngstown from the actual, blighted, Youngstown of downtown Youngstown reality.

Tonight I’m going through two emotionally wrenching experiences. By ‘wrenching’ I have to admit I’m referring to the small sort of wrench we used to use (in airplane-wrenching school) for the very small nuts and bolts associated with fuel-control systems — the ones around a quarter of an inch or less.

Emotionally wrenching experience one: My humble room happens to be next to the room that next weekend’s local golfing outing is using for their Thursday Night Poker Room. That sucks in about the way you might think. Being me, the smell of cigars is actually comforting. The yelling, not so comforting.

Source: Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Hotel \Ho*tel”\, n. [F. h[^o]tel, OF. hostel. See Hostel.]
1. A house for entertaining strangers or travelers; an inn or
public house, of the better class.

2. In France, the mansion or town residence of a person of
rank or wealth.

“[O]f the better class”

Emotionally wrenching experience two: I’m trying to watch the movie Little Children.

Um, wow. Way different than trying to ignore drunken golfers. Way harder as well, yet way more rewarding.

I’ve got almost 55 minutes of it left, yet I recommend it. Tough stuff.

One million miles.

… use dollars to pay for your drinks. At least on Continental; they charge $5 or £3 (which works out to $6) per libation.

So stash some greenbacks for the trip home.

A bloggy blog post.
On my way home from Belfast, NWA offered me a bump on the EWR->DTW leg. I had a seat up front, but, as it happened, my ‘travel plans were flexible,’ so I took the vouchers. (One for a north-american round trip and a second one for a hotel room.)
Northwest had a bunch of cancellations on Saturday that caused my flight to end up overbooked.
I’ll be sitting in the back for my replacement flight, but I did get a bulkhead.
The Newark airport isn’t in a terribly grand area, and I was five time-zones of tired, so I just ate dinner and crashed.
[UPDATE: I got bumped on Sunday, too. Now I have two round-trip vouchers!]
Random:
●The immigration agent asked me what I did; after I answered (“I install newspaper software”) he said “do you have to train the software too? Man, I’d hate that.” The dude knew.
●I had a dream last week where Marilyn Manson brought two undressed women to my house. He said they wanted to meet me, and since he knew me he figured he’d bring them over. Odd. Sexy, but odd.
●My $14 can of cigarette tobacco lasted almost the entire two weeks I was in Ireland. I had to buy one pack ($12!) on the last day there. When I landed and got to where we could finally smoke, a woman saw me smoking and asked if I could spare one and I offered to roll her one (I had bought some duty-free rolling tobacco). She looked conflicted, but then I remembered that last pack (of filtered cigs, the only kind you can find easily in Ireland); there were over ten left. I said “wait, you can have these.” Nice moment.

Takin’ a break back behind the Coleraine Chronicle. Happy birthday to you, too.

My new passport arrived today, two days before my departure for Coleraine.
That’s a relief.

Including this one of a seagull (shot from my 9th-floor balcony).

More on my Flikr page.

That would be Montréal’s old port area.
I got a lot of sun and a few pictures. Here are some of the pictures.


Later I noticed that Bob Harris (of Prisoner of Trebekistan fame) seems to have figured out the last episode of the Sopranos. Very interesting.

I guess there’s not much I can add to this beyond that you could find it yourself in the lobby of the Holiday Inn Select on Rue Viger in Montréal, Quebec.

Mon 7/16/07 Colraine
Fri 7/27/07

Mon 8/13/07 Moygashel
Fri 8/24/07

Mon 9/3/07 Moygashel
Fri 9/14/07

Mon 9/24/07 Rathfriland
Fri 10/5/07

Just found out that Montreal might be delayed.
Quark is being pissy about letting us have Xpress 6.5 (French Canadian version).
We’ll see.

Getting the hang of this wordpress stuff.