Sorry it's been so long, I've been busy!

Well, I meant to start this post about 2 weeks ago, but better late than never. That reminds me of this: http://longestjokeintheworld.com/ Check it out sometime if you have a free afternoon and evening.

I seem to remember the last post being before I did my driver training, so let's start there. First off let me start by saying

IT WAS AWESOME!


There were four (actually five) parts, which I did entirely driving a manual, since it was faster than my auto and... why not?
1. On the mile straight. Basically, I took this time to learn how get up to speed, smooth out my shifting and then stop again from high speeds. There's actually more to it than putting your foot on the floor. Most people who've never done it before tend to be a bit hesitant about hitting full brakes at 120 mph, but its totally doable. Also, stopping fast without engaging ABS takes a bit of practice too.
2. In the high speed bowl. It's basically a circular track with the sloped sides so I learned about what happens to your steering when you go 130 mph (a new personal record). What happens? You go up and down (side to side) in your lane because of slight changes in the steering alignment as the suspension loads and unloads over small bumps. If you try to correct each little sway you'll only make it worse, so you just have to accept that its going to happen. Also, each lane has a speed marked on it, where if you drive that speed, the car will automatically hold the corner and stay in its lane. Since it's a circular track you could put on cruise control and take your hands off of the wheel. The car will keep going until it runs out of gas. That's pretty neat.
After lunch,
3. On the handling course. This is basically a small circuit with a couple hills and a bunch of corners that are all a bit different so you can learn different cornering techniques. This involves taking the correct racing line, braking the right amount at the right time to maximize your speed out of a corner (or not if you have another corner afterwards), how to combine two corners into one by taking the right line, how to steer around a corner only moving the steering wheel to one angle and then back (i.e. not making small adjustments through the corner). All of this makes the car more able to stay within or on the limit of adhesion (where the tires start slipping on the road) so you can drive faster and safer. This is the part that I can practice the most while doing every day driving since the rest involves going too fast or slamming on the brakes, which is generally frowned upon.
4. The alpine circuit. Similar to the handling course, except way more awesomer. There's lots of ups and downs and hairpin corners. The two other guys in my car have quite a bit more experience with track driving than I do, so they were about to do that course faster, and both of them got air coming over one particular hill coming into a hairpin. It was terrifying and exhilarating. We were all laughing hysterically after each time they did it because it felt like we just looked death in the face, even though we were actually quite safe. Don't worry mom. Fun bit of trivia, you know the scene in Casino Royale where Bond is chasing the baddies in his Aston Martin and then has to swerve (rolling and destroying the car) to avoid hitting the girl? Yeah, that one. It took place on that track. Very cool.
5 was a bit of a surprise for us, they told us at the end that to wrap everything together, they had set up a gymkhana course. If you don't know what gymkhana is, watch this. Actually, watch this anyway.

Our course was nothing like that, nor was our driving, but we it was a watered down version of that. Our course took about 30 seconds to drive, had a couple tight corners, a slalom section, a 360 "spin" and a little box to stop in. Fortunately, the cars we got to drive were separate from the rentals we had been using. The driver training company provided were about like these:

The one on your left is a run of the mill suped up Subaru Impreza, and the one on the right is a Caterham (pronounce kay-trim) roadster. When I first looked up the Caterham I couldn't find it because I thought it was actually called a k-trim car. Then I remembered people here have a silly accent so I started typing in different ways you could spell it. I never got close but fortunately google could figure out what I meant by cay tram roadster. Unfortunately we drew straws for who would drive what and I was put in the Subaru. Not that it wasn't awesome, it's just that I don't think I'll have a chance to drive a Caterham for a long time, if ever.

Anyway, the goal for the gymkhana was not to have the fastest lap, but the most consistent pair of laps. So after the warm up lap to familiarize ourselves with the course we got two more and the most consistent won a hat. It wasn't me unfortunately, because it was a really cool hat. I tied for 3rd out of 6 guys, so I'm reasonably okay with that. I think most of my time difference was because I had trouble getting the car started on one try, but I still did a lot better than I would have if I had been driving my auto all day! We all got certificates saying we completed the course, though I'm pretty sure they don't actually get us any extra privileges but it's still my best souvenir so far.

I'm gonna skip over most of the work stuff I've done since then because it was mostly boring. Did some tractor testing, some trailer inspections, and some brakes.

Now on to the fun bits, the weekends!

The weekend after the driver training was my Amsterdam Halloween trip! I left work a bit early on Friday, flew out of Bristol to Amsterdam and got on a train to the hotel to meet up with Megan. After checking into our super trippy room (see below) we decided to head into town for some delicious french fries and wandering around, checking out the scenery/people. This would become a theme for the weekend as the fries are amazing, the buildings and city are beautiful and the people are more diverse than Ann Arbor and even more free spirited and crazy. That was it for that evening.

Our hotel...

 

...was nuts. There was a panel on the wall controlling the lights. You could keep it steady or set it to strobe like a night club or have it slowly change between the colors. Surprisingly, this was not located in the red light district, but in the financial district, in the World Trade Center! Notice anything missing? Check the green one.

The next morning we had the bizarre experience of doing our respective morning routines while the other loudly watched TV on the other side of the wall, since the bathroom had no door. It was strange but we got used to it. We headed to the Nieuwmarkt to check out some food whatever else they might be selling there. Turns out it was pretty much just food, but it was really cool to see all the different stuff. Lots of cheese and bread, fruits and veggies and other things. For example, Megan found some vegetarian pate. I didn't know that was possible, but this very friendly Dutch guy figured it out. I think it was made from apricots? We bought half a loaf of yummy bread and a block of delicious gouda-ish cheese and ate it in a nearby park. After that we resumed our wandering around, checking out random things. We saw Rembrandt Square, near where I stayed last time in Amsterdam, the Anne Frank House (still didn't make it in, the line has been around the block every time I've gone past it) and of course did the compulsory walk through the red light district. It's such a surreal experience. That's all I'm going to say about that here. We went to a bar and had a couple drinks as everything besides the bars, coffee shops and street food close up pretty early, in fact the whole city goes to sleep quite early, and likes to sleep in. My kind of place (at least the sleeping in part). After the bar we got a large cone of fries for dinner and went back to the hotel and slept.

The next day we decided we wanted some Dutch pancakes for breakfast and it was a GREAT choice. I had an apple and cinnamon pancake and Megan had banana and nutella. They were delicious and filling (each one is roughly three times the size of your average double bed). That kept us going strong until we required our next fix of fries. I suppose I should explain why the fries are so good and keep you coming back. First of all, they're steak fries, and somehow always perfectly cooked. Second, and more importantly, every shop has a huge selection of sauces including but not limited to fritesauce (like a sweet mayo), ketchup (boring!), mustard, garlic, hot sauce, cheese and curry sauce. And it's served in a parchment paper cone with a cool little plastic fork so you don't get too messy. I would go back for the fries alone. Okay, and the pancakes too. 

That day was filled with more random wandering, this time checking out some cool drawbridges, the theatre, the ballet, and a duck that loved peanuts. We also found a few street performers who were really good. One was a "magician" from Australia. I hesitate to call him that since one of his tricks was making a handful of cigarettes from the audience disappear... into a box in his suitcase. The other one was escaping from some plastic wrap and a chain that was cleverly wrapped so he could shake out of the whole thing. His real talent though was in working the crowd. He was hilarious and I can't even begin to explain his shtick because it was all "you had to be there" kind of humor, which is the best when you were there, and the worst when you weren't. I won't ruin it. Another performer was playing an amped acoustic guitar with a loop box so he could essentially play all the tracks of a song simultaneously, and he was really good at it. What drew me towards him was the unmistakable sound of Stairway to Heaven, and he continued with some more songs I recognized but couldn't name. Eventually we moved on and found a guy playing a bunch of Bob Marley songs, he was really good too, and a perfect fit for... shall we say the atmosphere of the city. Back to the hotel-rave again to sleep.

Our last day in Amsterdam was spent checking out the museums in the appropriately named "museum district". We looked at the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum. They were both awesome. I especially liked the audio tour guide for the Rijksmuseum. It was very personal, friendly and funny. He talked about his experiences as a kid in the museum and as an adult with his kids and how he perceives it differently. Very cool perspective. It turns out he's somewhat famous. If you're curious what the tour was like... check out this video:

Jeroen Krabbe guides us through the first room of the Rijksmuseum

Yup, so that took a while. We were hungry afterwards so we went to an Italian restaurant nearby and I'm sure there are some people reading this who may not believe what I'm about to write. We ordered an appetizer of mushrooms with a garlic butter sauce. Just a plate of mushrooms, and I happily ate a good portion of it. Also had some good pasta and a frozen, hollowed out lemon filled with tasty lemon sorbet. It was a bit of a pain to eat with a fork, but totally worth it. The wine on the other hand was terrible. Especially with the lemon sorbet. Good thing we ordered water too.

That was pretty much it for Amsterdam since I had to get up really early for my 8 am flight. It was super fun though, and felt a lot more productive than my last trip there when no one wanted to be decisive so we just wandered around pointing at restaurants saying "Wanna eat there?" "I don't care." "Me neither." "Ok, I guess let's keep going then." As much as I enjoyed the city then, it's much better when you just go do things.

The beautiful thing about the flight from Amsterdam to Bristol is that it was an hour long with an hour time change, so I took off at 8 and landed at 8. I made it to the office by about 9:15 which is pretty darn good considering I woke up in another country. Only 3 days of work that week since Thursday night I drove up to Edinburgh to meet up with my parents!

Let me start by saying... I love Edinburgh! Walking around it made me feel like I was in a Final Fantasy game or something.

 Edinburgh

Final Fantasy

See what I mean?

Even the drive up there, in the rain, at night, was beautiful. About 75 miles from Edinburgh, the GPS pulled me off of the motorway onto a little two lane mountain road. It was such a fun drive with winding roads and nice hills. Having no other cars the entire way also contributed to the awesomeness.

Since the parents had just taken a train up from London after flying from home, they were very tired so after some brief catching up, we all went to bed. The next day we walked the Royal Mile which includes a lot of historical buildings. Check it out!

 There were lots of these cool little alleys (called a close)

 The castle, complete with tactless Americans :-p

 View from the top

 I can't decide if I like the composition of this picture or not. I really the castle coming out of the rocks though.

Calton Hill, we watched the Guy Fawke's Night fireworks here

And we saw a super awesome DOUBLE RAINBOW!!

SEE?!

I felt super lucky to have seen this, until I saw the wikipedia page for the royal mile... the first picture has a double rainbow! I guess Edinburgh is just cool like that.

We also walked through the Grassmarket and had lunch there, then bought some sweaters and other wool/cashmere things because that's what you do in Scotland. I ended up with a sweater and nice scarf, and unintentionally continued expanding my blue wardrobe. Whatever, at least everything goes together :-)

Dinner on Friday was my treat to the parents as my thank you for all the support they've given me to get where I am in life and it was exactly what I was hoping for. I booked a table at the nicest restaurant in town, called Restaurant Martin Wishart. It's French cuisine and good enough to get a Michelin star. Apparently that scale has lost some credibility recently, but this restaurant definitely lived up to the hype. We got a few amusee bouches, all fall themed, mostly with pumpkin, all delicious. Then I had a wonderful white truffle risotto for an appetizer and roast hare loin and leg for dinner. After all the talk of what wonderful stew and slippers the bunnies would make last year, I had to order it when I saw it on the menu. The other thing that I had to order when I saw it was the "soufflee of the day." I mean really, how often do you see that? It was mandarin flavor and came with a mandarin, something and olive oil gelato. It was all so delicious. I think I have to say this was the second best meal I've ever had, only trailing Alinea, which was out of this world almost literally.

Anyway, after a wonderful dinner we went to bed. The next day we drove to Roslin Chapel (the one that was in the end of the DaVinci code. It was really stunning, but unfortunately it was being restored so there was scaffolding covering half of it so we could only look at part of it. There was a lot of really ornate carved stone covering the entire inside. It's hard to believe that it's so impressive and they never even built half of what it was originally planned to be. That night was Guy Fawkes Night, which is kind of the British equivalent to the 4th of July. Basically Guy Fawkes tried to blow up parliament on the 5th of November, was caught and hanged, so now every year they celebrate his failure by blowing up other stuff and having big bonfires. We walked up to the top of Calton Hill to watch the fireworks from all around the city. It was a bit chilly, but aside from that a great show. It's pretty unique looking down on fireworks. It makes them a bit less impressive I suppose, but the uniqueness more than made up for that.

Sunday we went to the royal yacht Britannia, which was the Queen's ship for 50 or so years. The tour was really well done, but unfortunately we had to rush through so the parents could get back down town to catch their train back to London. It was neat seeing the officer's quarters, the marines barracks (for security) and the royal family's area of the ship. It was all very different, but luxurious no matter where you went, even the engine room was chrome plated and sparkling! I would post pictures but I've been working on this post for something like 4 hours and I'm kind of running out of steam so I think I'm going to end it here. I'll put up a bunch of pictures on facebook when I get a chance. That might not be until I get home, but that's only 9 days away now!

I can't wait to have a kitchen and a bed room to sleep in for more than 4 days in a row!

The trip so far

Rather than my usual style of play by play with commentary a la Mario Impemba and Rod Allen rolled into one -- Rodio Allemba if you will -- I'm going to try something a bit different, not sure how it'll turn out.

Basically I'd just like to summarize my observations, learnings and other foreign follies (see what I did there?) from the trip so far.

So some random obervations (and foriegn follies?)...

• Laundry is really expensive here. Like $5 per wash and another 3 or 4 for the dryer expensive. It's even worse if you have the hotel do it for you since they'll charge like $4 per shirt and another 2 for your socks etc.
• It is possible for a hotel to look beautiful on the outside and be absolutely terrible on the inside and vice versa, though the former is more common in my exeperience.
• Eating out by yourself on a regular basis is very wearisome, even when the food is good, and usually it's just okay.
• While driving on the left actually came quite naturally to me, I still haven't gotten used to sitting on the right. I still frequently walk up to the left side of my car and then am forced to play it off as if I just wanted to put my computer bag on the passenger seat before getting in.
• The road markings are confusing. Since all of the lines on the street are white and most are just dashed lines, its pretty tough to figure out when you're on a two way or a one way. I've finally figured out how to turn right at a big roundabout. It's all a matter of sticking with your lane, which spirals outward as you go around. Definitely took a while to figure out.
• Winshield wipers here tend to not be very good, but their washer fluid is great. It also smells like alcohol. Probably why it's so great. I can only imagine fish are getting drunk/going blind on the runoff.
• Pardon my crassness and shallowness, but I am a guy after all... Really attractive girls are few and far between here. Don't get me wrong, there are certainly pretty girls around, they just seem less common than in Michigan, which is saying something.
• British people do NOT have the fashion sense that Europe is renowned for. I would go as far as to say that suburban detroit, where fashion consists of jeans and a Hurley tshirt for guys and leggings and Uggs for ladies, is better than over here. They take all of our worst fashions (the highlights of which I've just mentioned) and scramble them up with other stuff that doesn't work. Even with my extremely limited sense of fashion, I have figured that much out. This will be my last mention of fashion. That sort of thing's not my bag, baby.
• The bad teeth thing is pretty overhyped, nowadays anyway. That said, I've seen some people who could certainly use a visit to the dentist. No excuse since they have national health care that covers everyone.
• There seem to be a lot more British accents than American.
• British people only consider themselves European in select, rare circumstances. Haven't figured out what those are yet but it tends to be along the lines of when it's to their benefit. How very French (more like Quebecois) of them.
• Culturally the English north is their equivalent of our south. Supposedly the accents are "lazier" in the north here as well, but I haven't figured that out yet.
• Instead of "Hey what's up?" people say "you alright?" or "you okay?". Still haven't really figured out how to responed to it.
• There are 4 radio stations that cover all of England and then some smaller ones scattered locally. The big four are, cleverly, BBC Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 3 and Radio 4. Radio 1 is pretty much all pop, some American, some British, funny DJs though. Radio 2 is where the old Radio 1 DJs wash out. I supposed thats why all the music sucks. Its like the worst pop of the last 20 years, except sometimes at night you'll find an old DJ who's into classic rock or something. Radio 3 is purely classical music. Radio 4 is non-stop talk. Generally pretty heavy stuff like radio theatre, monologue readings etc. Also a lot of news coverage similar to NPR, minus the whole "we need our listeners to fund us so let's make it interesting!" thing. Despite my general distaste for pop music, if I don't have my iPod plugged in, I'm listening to Radio 1. Rudowski, you would be proud of my knowledge of pop music.
• Barbers here (at least Dave at Scissorhands) do this really awesome thing where they take a pair of tweezers with a big ball of cotton soaked in alcohol at the end, light it on fire, and then wave it at your ears. Apparently its a Turkish technique and it's called singing. It's good for getting the peach fuzz off your ears which isn't something I was ever concerned about, but now I know how to deal with it should it ever get out of control.

Work learnings...

• The bottome line is, its all about safety
• While a lot of time and effort is put into making the legislation clear, by nature of there being so much of it and so much to it, it will always be muddy and require good engineering sense to straighten out.
• While watching something you don't understand too much of for 20 minutes may not seem very valuable, the connections you can make with coworkers/customers in those 20 minutes are.
• The ability to put faces and names together can be trained and honed. You just have to meet a TON of new people in a short span of time.
• Reporting expenses is a pain in the ass even when you have nothing better to do at work. I can't imagine how annoying it'll be when I'm actually busy doing stuff. Fortunately, at that point I won't be reporting every meal I eat and a hotel every night.
• An absolutely awesome lesson (which I haven't received yet, but will on Monday) is learning how to drive... fast (safely of course). Unfortunately I won't be driving the Jaguar as I was originally led to believe, but my Kia rental car instead. The good news about that is... thats the same reasonably priced car that the stars drive on Top Gear. I've been studying how to make it go fast, and this was the fastest lap (at the time anyway):

          You can call me Maverick. I will do my best to get it up on two wheels. Xenu will protect me. :)

Don't go away from this thinking that's all I've learned, there's plenty more I just don't feel like typing it all out right now and most (all) of the technical work stuff you would fall asleep before I got through the first point.

Back to my Rodio Allemba style, just to catch you up since my last post. Last week I was up at the Midlands office (towards the north of England, so apparently it's common for family trees to not fork if you catch my meaning) doing some tractor approval work. That's another one of the things on my list from Mark, so that was good. The hotel I was staying in was a prime example of a hotel that looks beautiful on the outside and is absolute shit on the inside. I described it in the last post but that review was extremely generous. There was little and less that I could say positively towards the bedroom besides the fact that it did indeed have a bed (with springs too! I know because I could feel every one of them). My hotel for the next week got much better reviews, appears to be much more modern, and is not located in the middle of nowhere so I'm expecting a much more relaxing stay. That and I get to be there for 4 nights in a row! I'm getting better at this whole long term stay thing. Thursday night I'll be headed back to Bristol for a half day in the office on Friday and then I'll be leaving for Amsterdam! I'm really excited  to get back in the country-hopper fast lane. These last two weekends have been good for recovery, but bad for excitement (other than last Friday, which might have been a bit too much "excitement").

I skipped over this weekend... oops. I should figure out how to work Tarantino into my pen name. Rodio Allembatino? I don't know about that. It sounds a bit too Spanish/Italian. If I'm going to pass as any sort of European I think I'd be more of a Haemish McFlannery. Anyway, this weekend I came back to Bristol on Friday in hopes of having someone from work to hang out with. Turns out no, they're all busy so I've been left up to my own devices. Thankfully, I was able to get a really nice deal on the City Center Marriott and they gave me a room on the 10th floor with a small balcony and a  pretty nice view of Bristol. See?

That big glass dome to the left is the Cabot Circus mall I had a few pictures from when I first got here. Looks quite a bit different from above!

Quite spread out for a 'European' city.

After arriving in town and checking into the hotel, I read for a while and then decided to go to a place called "The hole in the wall" for dinner. Wasn't much of a hole in the wall considering it was a freestanding building in a very nice part of town and a pretty nice restaurant and pub on top of that. I ordered a beer at the bar which was pretty good, and then went upstairs for some dinner. I had a good traditional English meal of steak, mushroom and Guinness pie with cheese covered mashed potatoes. It was delicious. Generally English food doesn't appeal to me but when done right it can certainly hit the spot. I also had a drink called a Dufftown Orchard, which was a shot of whiskey, a splash of bitters, ice and then some really good apple juice to fill the glass, finished off with a pair of straws which had been dipped in honey. I'm going to definitely remember that one and try to recreate it when I get home because it was amazing. Between the food, the drink and the weather --that perfect fall temperature where its almost too cold for a hoodie and all the trees are turning and starting to drop their leaves, leaving that nice fall smell in the air (before they start rotting)--it was autumn bliss. I didn't care that I was eating by myself at that point I was just drinking it all in.

Today I read again for a few hours after waking up. I'm reading A Dance with Dragons, the 5th book in the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin. The whole series has been absolutely wonderful so far. If you're into fantasy (or even if you're not) I can't recommend it highly enough. Martin has been compared to Tolkien, and if I'm honest, I prefer this series to the Lord of the Rings. If you want to get a taste of it without committing to reading several thousand pages, they made a series on HBO that follows the first book like a script and it was also really good. The book I'm currently on is a 1000 page hardcover, so I'm trying to finish it in the next couple weeks so my parents can haul it back for me since they'll have more room than I will anyway. Shouldn't be a problem, I only have about 150 pages left and its a fairly quick read. The one problem is that once I finish, I'm caught up with as far as the author has written. He's been writing the series for something like 15 years and I've been reading it for something like 6 months. I have a feeling I'll be waiting a while for the next book, especially since this one just came out this summer. This will be the second book I finish on this trip, the first (which I read entirely while over here) was American Gods by Neil Gaiman. It was pretty out there plot-wise and writing style-wise but I really enjoyed it. After I finish Dragons, I have one more book on my list. It's a personal finance book aimed towards my generation called I Will Teach You to be Rich. A few of my friends have already read it and praised it to no end so I'm looking forward to figuring out what kinds of things I should be doing with my money when I get home. If I finish that with time to spare then I'll start browsing around the iBooks store a bit and get some more use out of my iPad.

After the morning's reading, I went out to the store to get some soap, shampoo, laundry detergent and lunch. After that I found a laundrete did some laundry (while reading some more). I came back to my hotel, dropped off the laundry, wandered around Bristol a bit (theres a nice park with a castle in it right across the street from my hotel, it's called castle park). After that I came back to my hotel to read again, and then had dinner in the hotel restaurant which consisted of a delicious steak with bernaise sauce and some really good chips (steak fries), that were quite different than other chips I've had here. Something about they way they were prepared or fried gave the outside a much crispier texture. I've heard of places rolling their raw fries in potato flakes before frying them to get that crispier texture so I'm thinking that may be what they did. Either way it was another really good meal. I brought the book with me... what can I say, it sucks you in.

So thats you caught up.

Plans for next week are driver training on Monday as I mentioned, engine testing with Land Rover on Tuesday and Wednesday, probably some brakes on Thursday and then Amsterdam on Friday! After that comes Halloween, my birthday and the parents visiting! Things are starting to pick up again, I'm really excited!

On a much more somber note though, I would like to ask you to keep my mom's parents in your thoughts, they've both fallen ill this past week and my grandpa fell and broke his hip (it's since been surgically repaired, successfully from the sounds of things) but it could be a tough recovery. Also, if you've got a few spare thoughts, Kody has had 3 or 4 seizures this week and is currently staying at the vet until he stabilizes. I'm sure he'll be okay besides being freaked out, but it has been a lot of sad news to come down all at once.

I'm certainly about ready to come home and see my family and friends again.

See you all soon enough!

Past halfway!

I leave for the states in exactly one month! At this point I think I'd like to do a post essentially summing up my experience so far.

But I'm quite behind from last time so I'll catch you up first and then if I still have energy in 3 hours when I'm done, I'll do a quick summary. If not, I'll try to get that one up soon.

So where did I leave off... *skims first and last few chapters of the Portugal blog* ... Okay, last thing was Monday Night Football. We won! Yay! I didn't actually watch that much of it, just the 3rd quarter and then fell asleep a couple minutes into the first.

Hold on folks, I'm gonna jump around in time for a second. Cut to right now.

In hindsight, the whole messed up sleep schedule thing was probably a terrible idea since I've had quite a bad cold (borderline flu?) since then. Basically the lymph nodes in my neck have been really swollen. Like visibly noticible. It also hurt to swallow, I had a runny nose, a bit of a cough and no energy whatsoever. Enough moaning, I'm feeling better now. Lymph nodes are still a bit swollen but everything else is gone (other that still feeling quite drained). I came to the determination (from years of listening to my mom talk about why I was sick when I was a kid, see I was listening) that it was caused by the unholy trinity of dehydration, lack of sleep and stress. All three are moderately justifiable, but also fairly easily remedied (other than the stress). I've been making it a point to always have a bottle of water around, and get to bed at a reasonable time (usually around midnight). As far as the stress goes, I know its not caused by the job, because its all been quite easy. Mostly just watching the engineers do their thing while taking a few notes (either mentally or otherwise) and asking questions. I'm 95% sure the stress is coming from not having a lot of actual free time because I'm spending most of my time booking hotels, packing/unpacking my suitcases and searching for restaurants. I think I have a remedy for this as well, which I just put into action today, I'll let you know how it goes. The plan is simple: find a hotel, and stay there for more than 2 or 3 days. It's slightly complicated by the fact that I rarely know where I'll be for more than 3 days in a row, but at this point it seems like I'll be spending most of my time at the midlands office, since they actually do work on site there and its a lot of the subjects I've been asked to train on. That way I can keep going into one office for 5 days in a row and potentially see 3 subjects on my list. If I were at the Bristol office, though the engineers are all quite a bit more fun to be around, the work is never there, it's always off site somewhere (like the US office) which either requires quite a bit of driving, or staying in a hotel somewhere for a day or two. I'm done with that.

Ready... cut back to a week ago.

Now that I've figured out the Midlands office is where I need to be, now its just a matter of finding the right engineer doing the right work. It took a while to figure that out, so the first day I continued working on buses with Richard, the engineer I had been working with the week before. Buses are rather tedious and not on my training list so it was one of those just-to-fill-the-day kind of jobs. The next day however, I got to do something that is on my list, and it was at Jaguar. It was really cool getting to see their facility, though I will say their parking scheme needs a revamp. They have probably 4 or 5 separate lots and ALL of them were full. Apparently about 324857080932845 people work there... give or take. The test we were doing was (I think I'm allowed to say this) pedestrian protection, which basically means that if you get hit by the car and your head hits the hood you shouldn't get a concussion. That's tested by shooting a dummy head at the hood at a certain speed and seeing what forces it experiences. It's quite violent to see the first couple times but you get used to it. We also did a discussion of what type of approval they will need for a new vehicle they're working on. That I definitely can't say any more about, but it's cool. ;-)

Thursday it was back to buses. I mean that literally, I nearly threw out my back working on this one. We had to do masses and dimensions which is usually a pretty easy test, just weigh it with some weights for the driver in it, measure its max length, width and height and then put in 75 kilos per passenger and weigh it again. You can see where this becomes troublesome with a bus. Thankfully this was only a 16 seater as opposed to a 32 seat coach which isn't especially rare. Nonetheless, being the new guy, it fell to me to be the one to lift every 25 kg jug of sand out of the metal cages where they're kept, the other guys would then carry it a few feet to the bus and some other guys would arrange them in the seats. I realized by the end though that I was the only one who actually lifted every weight. Then 10 minutes later, after weighing it, we undid it all. This time I was moving the weights from the seats to the back of the bus for unloading, but since I was the only one doing that this time, I again moved all the weights. It was a good workout, if I hadn't been bending over the whole time. The other engineers were unsurprisingly unsympatheic. Don't worry, I'm fine.

Friday I got to do some tractor noise, basically watching it drive by and watching the numbers on a microphone. I imagine it'd be a bit more exciting with something like a Ferrari or Lamborghini, but they both stick with the Italian approval authority unfortunately. Though companies aren't actually limited to an approval authority (thats what the VCA is) based on what country they're in, it seems like a lot of European companies tend to stick with their local authorities anyway. I suppose it makes sense, but there is a difference in the service you get from each, and from the extremely unbiased opinions I've heard so far *WINK* the VCA is quite good. Apparently if a manufacturer fails a test with some other authorities, they'll just say, "no, its not good enough. Fix it and come back later" whereas we'll actually help them to make it pass, either by allowing them to tweak something onsite (of course they'll have to make all production vehicles with that tweak, which we do enforce) or replacing an obviously faulty part. Things like that. Wow, that was quite a tangent from boring ole noise testing. The point of the story is that Italian cars tend to go to the Italians, German cars to the Germans, British to us. So maybe I'll get to see an Aston Martin noise test. That'd be fun too.

After work on Friday I drove back down to Bristol, as theres infinitely more to do there over the weekend. I checked into my hotel, which was actually an apartment. I'm starting to love those. They tend to be the same price or cheaper than an equivalent hotel and you actually get some space to spread out and a kitchen! Unfortunately, I've only been in that kinds of room for 3 nights so far this entire trip, I'll have to work on that. Around 7 a couple of my coworkers picked me up and we headed to a bar on the far side of town for a bite to eat and a few pints. We waited there for the rest of our group to show up and by the time we left there were probably 10 or 12 of us. All VCA employees plus a spouse or two. We then progressed from pub to pub having a pint or two at each one and I was made aware of a few different things that make pub going in the UK more fun besides the obvious fact that their beer/cidre (not a typo) is better than ours. 1: The kitty. Basically, instead of everyone waiting at the bar and starting their own tabs or keeping who's round it is straight, everyone just pitches in a certain amount of money. Say 10 pounds. One person is designated the kitty holder and orders all the drinks from there on. As long as you make sure to say what you want when everyone else is ordering you'll get your money's worth. After a while you'll inevitibly need to top up the kitty, but generally you've lost a few people from the group anyway so its good to reorganize. Number 2: Mr. Freeze. This is just a game you play to make sure people are paying attention/drinking. One person is designated Mr. Freeze to start off with. They then, at any point in the next 15 minutes, can stop moving, conspicuously or inconspicuously, it's your choice. The last person to freeze has to drink 3 fingers of their beer (that is, the amount it takes to make the level of your beer drop by the width of 3 fingers) and then they become Mr. Freeze and it all starts over. We have a drinking game in the states that that would fit into perfectly, I'm going to remember that one. So after Mr. Freezing and pub crawling for several hours, its now about 2:30 am, our numbers have dropped to 5 and apparently they aren't done yet so I'm not allowed to be. I was ready to press on anyway, in the spirit of proving something about America (or so it seemed to me at the time). We went to a proper night club called La Rocca, had another couple drinks and then finally decided it was time to call it a night. Nick, who seems to be the most social of the engineers, had made it his personal mission to make sure I was okay that night so he was kind enough to walk me back to my hotel, which I probably wouldn't have found on my own anyway. We stopped for some food on the way back and I got some delicious chips smothered in cheese which was probably a good blanket to lay over all the beer in my stomach. I remember looking at the clock just before I collapsed into my bed and it said something like 5 am. I think I handled that 10 hours of drinking much better than I handled... well I'm not sure how many it was at Oktoberfest, and thats how I know I was better.

Saturday would say otherwise though. Whereas after Oktoberfest I had only a slight hangover (mostly just very thirsty) Saturday was a complete waste of a day. I stayed in bed until noon, took my first bath in years and just soaked for an hour or so and then took a nap. Then around 5 I decided to drag myself out of bed, despite alternating between sweats and shivers and go down to a pub I found online that advertised having wifi. I ordered one beer (to earn my keep so to speak) and a glass of water and sat at a table with my laptop and headphones watching the UM v MSU game. Again... What a waste of a day.

Let me just take a moment to say that I'm embarrassed for how poorly we played and embarrassed for how... can't think of an adequate adverb here so I'll just say embarrassed for how MSU played. I'm going to go on a little rant about Sparty, so bear with me. On facebook immediately following the game, all I saw were the same conversations over and over again...
"Haha, we won!"
"Yeah, but you played dirty"
"Yeah, well winning's all that matters. Besides, we only play so dirty against you because you don't respect us. Calling us little brother and stuff"
"Well, we don't respect you because you play dirty"
"We only play dirty because you don't respect us."
You can see how annoying this becomes very quickly. Look, the point is we haven't respected you because you made SUCH a big deal out of a game that was, until recently, generally a cake walk for us. And now that you are winning, you do it so unclassily that it is still impossible to respect you. Did you see the pictures of your field after the game Saturday? Did you see your players trash talking our marching band before they went over to celebrate with your student section? Did you see your baseball team spitting (really) on our marching band? (Notice I didn't mention anything that happened in the game, if our team is willing to let it go, then I am as well). All I'm saying is, act like you've been there or we'll be forced to assume that you haven't and won't stay there long. If you act like a child, we're going to treat you like one, and call you little brother from time to time. If you complain like a baby about that, we'll know we were right. If you brush it off like a man. Hey, we'll probably show you some respect.

Whew, glad I got that off my chest

Anyway, after the game, brought some dinner back to my hotel, and upon inspecting the kitched I discovered I had a washing machine! but wait... no dryer? nope. It was a two in one machine. I'd never seen or heard of such a thing before but there it was, taking up the cabinet next to the stove. Overjoyed that I wouldn't have to go find a laundrette the next day, I put in a load, deciphered the bizarre laundry code (there was a cheat sheet to help me as well as some detergent in the drawer) and got it started. I realized after about 2 and a half hours the thing was still on washing mode and I'm just praying it doesn't take so long to dry as well, but it took longer. The thing was really small so there was no room for the clothes to tumble, I ended up splitting it into two loads and they still took well over an hour each to dry. I only ended up having time for one load since checkout was at 11 on sunday and I still had to finish the drying in the morning. I got the bulk of my clothes cleaned, and all of the socks and underwear which is what I really needed anyway. After checking out of the hotel, I went to the mall I had stayed near before to add some more data to my iPad (250 MB goes really fast, even when you buy 3 or 4 of those) so I bought 40 pounds worth this time (2 GB) and hopefully that'll last me until I leave. Also got some shoes. I'm hesitant to say it was an impulse buy since that starts making me sound a bit Sex in the City, but I came up with three seemingly reasonable reasons (apparently there are unreasonable reasons?) which seemed like justification enough for me. Basically I knew I was going to need something good to walk around Amsterdam for 4 days (Oh yeah, I'm going to Amsterday for 4 days over Halloween. I'll get to that at some point), I also would like to be able to take advantage of the gyms that some of the hotels I have booked include, not really feasible in Sperrys. The third reason is that I haven't really bought any souvenirs yet. I guess it's not really my style. It is occurring to me that I do still need to pick up some gifts for some people back home though, but this is probably the last you'll hear about it since you could be one of them, but don't get your hopes up :-p

After that I came back up to the Midlands, checked into the Sketchley Grange Manor which is a really long mansion essentially and because historical buildings don't apparently need any sort of regulation, they didn't have to have a lift to every floor etc. All the rooms were off one main hallway, but there were random stairs up or down to chunks of 4 rooms or so, and then the hallway would go up 2 steps and then 3 more and then back down a few. It was a right pain in the ass with all my luggage, especially because I was only there two nights. Aside from that, the hotel was very nice. The room was huge for a hotel room and appropriately it was called the King Henry Suite. It didn't specify a number so I'm going to guess VIII since the bed was apparently designed for his... girth. It was big. Texas big. The hotel also had a pretty nice gym/pool area, which I checked out. I tested my new shoes by running a mile or so on the treadmill. I'll count that as a success since I haven't run in at least 2 months and I was always crap on a treadmill anyway. The restaurant had really good food too, but it was way overpriced for what you got. First night I payed 35 pounds which is like $45 for a salad, burger and a coke. WHOA! 2nd night I balanced my budget a bit with some good ole Burger King which I noticed is way more popular here than McDonald's. Must be the royalty thing.

My current hotel is a similar deal as the Sketchley Grange: mansion, no rhyme or reason to the floor plan, no elevator that goes to my floor, overpriced restaurant, located in the middle of nowhere. The room itself is quite a bit worse though, it's tiny, it has 3 sets of outlets but they're all right next to eachother, in the closet, the floors are super creaky and the walls are paper thin. At least the grounds look nice.

As for work this week, I've just been taking what comes to me, so yesterday I did horn tests a few different small cars, and some headlight stuff. Today I did some trailer stuff: more masses and dimensions, brakes, mudflaps. Random stuff. Hopefully tomorrow I'll actually get to do some air brakes or legit trailer brakes (as opposed to the parking brake style I did today), but we'll see. It's always a bit of a crap shoot with these guys.

This weekend I'm going back to Bristol, no plans yet other than take it a bit easier than last Friday, but hopefully hang out with a couple people from the office or maybe Rachel and her buddies that I met a few weeks ago. The weekend after that I'm going to Amsterdam with Megan from Friday evening until Tuesday morning (flight leaves AMS at 8:05 and lands in Bristol at 8:15) so I'll be able to go into the office for pretty much a full day on Tuesday. We're supposed to meet up with some people from her English teaching dealie in Seville as well, though I'm not sure what their situation is at the moment. Either way, it'll be Halloween and I'll probably take that opportunity to celebrate my birthday as well even though it'll be a couple days early so I'm sure that weekend is going to be awesome!

Anyway, thats enough out of me, as predicted it took almost exactly 3 hours. I hope you've enjoyed this essay!

I wish 3,383 words could have come to me as easily when I was in school!

Portugal!

Well, aside from being entirely sleep deprived the entire time, I had a great time in Portugal. It was really beautiful... the scenery, the weather, the people... Everything. So why was I sleep deprived?

Here's why: my flight to Faro left at 6:30 AM on Saturday, so I had to wake up around 3:30 to check out of the hotel on time and get to the airport early enough for an international departure and I had gone out Friday evening with Nick and Rachel from the Bristol office partially because I wanted to see them before I left and partially because Rachel had agreed to bring my credit card from the office that had been FedEx'd there this week. I ended up getting to bed around midnight. The flight was about 2 hours, but it was on easyjet which doesn't exactly specialize in comfort (small seats, no leg room, no reclining) so I couldn't fall asleep. After landing I went and found my transfer bus to take me to Lagos. I'm really glad easyjet advertised that on their website since it saved me a lot of money over taking a cab (like $150 each way!) and only cost me an extra hour. Unfortunately, that bus was particularly uncomfortable as well, so even though I had about 2 and a half hours on there I probably didn't sleep for more than 15 minutes or so.

So I arrived at the hotel around 12:30, walked up to the front door and pulled... it was locked! I was pretty confused at this point, considering looking in I couldn't see a reception desk or anything, it looked more like an apartment building. Fortunately there was a buzzer box next to the door with a button marked "reception" so I pressed it and after it rang for a minute a woman came on and told me I had to come somewhere else to check in. I was a bit sketched out at this point, but she told me they'd come pick me up so I figured I'd just roll with it. It turns out it was just couple minute walk up the street, but since I had my bag with me, the ride was much appreciated. Everything was all well and good once I got up to reception, pretty standard deal aside from being separated from the rooms, I assume it's because they manage more than one hotel from there (at least every other building in Lagos is a hotel). They told me the room wouldn't be ready for another half hour or so, but I was welcome to go around the corner and wait in the hotel bar/restaurant/pool area so I did. I ordered a caiperinha and sandwich and read a book for a bit, it was quite relaxing really so I didn't mind the wait.

About half an hour later the guy who drove me up came down and told me the room was ready and he could take me down and show me to my room whenever I was ready. After paying for my lunch, we went down and he let me in. It turns out the room wasn't so much a hotel, but more of an apartment. It was by far the nicest place I've stayed in since I came to Europe.

These two were the view off of my patio (yup, my patio)

The living room

Kitchen (complete with dishwasher and full set of dishes)

Bedroom

What kind of hotel room has a hallway?

Probably should have mentioned earlier, but the whole motivation for going to Portugal was that my friend Megan, who lived with my friend Mike (hey Mike!) last year and briefly with us this year before I left for training is now in Seville teaching English. Some of the people she's teaching with signed up for this trip to Lagos and she invited me to join them. Originally I was going to travel the whole way with them, but that would have involved taking 3 days off work since they left from Seville on Friday morning and got back late Sunday night. Unfortunately they couldn't give me a full refund, but thankfully the guys running the trip felt bad about that so they were happy to allow me to tag along for the parts of the trip that I was in Lagos for. I'll get to that later.

So after quickly dropping off all of my stuff in the hotel, changing into my swimsuit, putting on some sunscreen and grabbing my towel I headed off to find the beach that the group was hanging out on. Megan didn't have a reliable phone there so basically we had just arranged to meet on that beach at some point between noon and 4:30 when the group was scheduled to be there. It was about a 40 minute walk from the hotel but I saw some interesting stuff on the way there...

A skatepark...

...conveniently located right next to a dilapidated fortress,

an interesting modern fountain,

and a scenic walk along the inlet opposite the breakwater

After crossing the inlet and walking a bit more (not through anywhere particularly scenic) I finally made it to the Meia Praia, the beach I was looking for!

Look right!

Look left! (if you look really carefully, you might be able to see Megan and co.)



 After walking about 5 minutes I found them, it was actually a lot easier than I expected it'd be. It wasn't actually Megan that spotted me, it was on of her friends. Apparently Megan told them to keep an eye out for a confused looking redhead. I guess I fit that description pretty well. It helps that I didn't see another redhead the entire time I was there aside from one who was in their group. So I put out my towel and lay down with them (I think I used the right tense of lay/lie there). I chatted with them for a couple hours and then they decided to go shopping to get some clothes for the evening. We agreed to meet up in front of their hotel at 6 for the next part of the Lagos tour. I went back to my hotel to figure out how to get to their hotel, check my email and take a shower. My iPad told me it was a 5 minute walk to their hotel which I thought was incredibly lucky considering I had no idea where their hotel was when I booked mine and considering the sheer number of hotels in Lagos. So around quarter to 6 I set out to find their hotel, which the iPad told me was right near where I checked into my hotel so I figured it'd be easy to find. Got up there about 10 to- and couldn't find it. I walked around the block a couple times with no hint of a hotel. I decided I had probably missed them so I just walked back towards my hotel to check the iPad one more time in case they were still around and I could make it. On my way back down I just happened to see something I hadn't noticed on the way down the first time...

Yup. It wasn't 5 minutes away. It was 30 seconds away. Just after I spotted their hotel I saw the bus driving away and I was pretty disappointed. Then, at the peak of my disappointment I happened to spot Megan jumping up and down waving her arms at me telling me to hurry up. I wasn't late! Well, I was, but not TOO late. They were riding in a separate van since the entire group didn't fit in the bus. As I seem to have a horseshoe, 4-leaf clover and a couple rabbits feet where the sun don't shine, there just happened to be one seat left in the van. The next stop on the trip was the west coast of Portugal to watch the sunset. In case you wanted to know what the end of the world looked like when it was flat about 500 years ago... here it is:

Pretty spectacular, really.

Here's some more...

The lighthouse at the end of the world (caption credit goes to Megan, I stole it from her blog)

Got some groovy color, care of Megan's sunglasses

It was bright. And windy. Hence I look like I'm riding in the front seat of Millenium Force





So after the sunset at the end of the world we bussed back to Lagos, got some pre-dinner drinks at the store up the street from the hotel and then drank them while waiting for a few of the girls to get ready for the evening. Needless to say I had a bit of a buzz after all of that waiting. We then walked downtown for dinner which was some pretty good pizza at a place near the bar we were headed afterward. The bar was called Joe's Garage, I assume they picked to to cater to an entirely American tour group, though it didn't feel at all American besides the name, which is fine by me. We were there a bit early for the Portuguese party scene since they don't start until quite late, but eventually it picked up and there was a bit of dancing a drinking... a lot for some and not so much for others... a few girls decided to go Coyote Ugly on the bar. I'm not sure if the bartenders appreciated it or not, but either way they decided to use some compressed air cannister hidden somewhere to blow up the skirt of anyone who did it so that pretty much ended in a hurry. Can't help but think that'd be a lawsuit waiting to happen in the States...

Eventually, I made it back to the hotel and crashed, but it was quite late, since the club scene doesn't start until after midnight, it doesn't end until at least 4. I think I made it back around 5 or 5:30 and crashed for just long enough to be fast asleep when the alarm went off at 8 to wake me up for surfing on Sunday morning.

We went surfing on Sunday morning!

There's the beach

and theres us looking like some proper beach bums

It was a ton of fun, though way more exhausting than I expected. Probably something to do with the lack of sleep (6 hours for 2 nights if you're counting). After about 3 hours in the waves I was so parched from all the saltwater I had involuntarily ingested and being a bit dehydrated from the night before that I couldn't go on. Megan and I went up to the cantina and got a huge bottle of water and some lunch. Eventually we made it back down to the beach to work on our tans (stop laughing, it almost worked for me!) and get a nice power nap in. I decided right then that I need a lot more naps on a nice warm beach in my life.

That's pretty much it for the trip, after surfing we came back to the hotels so everyone could gather up all of their luggage, load it on the buses and shower the seawater off before they headed back to Seville. I did the same except waited an extra half hour for my bus which picked me up at 6. This time I was exhausted enough that I was able to sleep for most of the ride despite being quite uncomfortable.

Because of the nature of the bus transfer service I got to the airport well before my flight and had time to eat some dinner and watch the last bit of the Saints/Panthers game. Normally I wouldn't care about that game, but it was just nice to see some real football for a change albeit with Portuguese announcers.

After landing in Bristol around 1:40 AM on Monday, I got out to my car and got to my hotel as fast as I could. Checked in and checked my email very quickly and went to the room. The key didn't work. Ugh, I'm too tired for this nonsense. Went back down to reception and the guy made me 2 new keys in case one of those didn't work as well. They both did, but I still appreciated him trying to get me in the room quickly. Finally fell asleep around 3:30 and woke up for work around 7:30.

That puts me at work on Monday with 10 hours of sleep for 3 nights after a weekend that probably would have been pretty exhausting with a normal amount of sleep anyway. It was pretty rough, but fortunately there wasn't really any work for me to do so I could just take care of logging my hours and expenses. I killed the rest of the day basically just chatting with the other engineers a bit about the trip and other random stuff.

After work I made the drive up to the Midlands again since I'll be working up here for the rest of the week (and probably quite a bit the rest of the time I'm here). That's when a great idea came to me: since my sleep schedule is already messed up, and this is the first time the Lions have been on Monday Night Football in a decade, I should go to bed early and wake up at 1:30 to watch the game before work (maybe squeeze in another hour after the game if there's time). Then I realized that ESPN is scrambled on my TV in this hotel so I gave up on that idea and decided to watch the episodes of Dexter and South Park that I had downloaded. When those ended around 11:00 it occurred to me that I could watch the Lions online, so I figured out a site I could use for that and set my alarm for 3:30 (a bit after halftime) and decided I'd watch the 2nd half. I caught most of the 3rd quarter and about half of the 4th before I fell back asleep and I gotta say... The Lions are looking great. Still feels weird to write it, and I was having a really hard time believing it until this morning when I saw for my own eyes, but its true. Being one of two undefeated teams in the league doesn't just happen the same way that being winless over a season doesn't just happen. Somehow we managed to make the change in 4 years which has got to be some sort of record and I doubt it'll ever be broken.

Anyway, that'll be all for now.

Adeus!

Post Oktoberfest wind-down

Well there won't be a whole lot to this post since it's only been a few days and I've been working, so no wild parties or vacations.

After getting back to Bristol, I finally heard back from my coworker who I was planning on working with on Monday and Tuesday. He told me that the work was up in Manchester, which is about 3 hours north of Bristol. Since I already had the hotel booked I figured I'd just suck it up and make the commute for the two days. We were doing some seat testing which basically involves mounting a couple seats in a the chassis of a transit van (think a 12-16 seat van) and then strapping some brackets onto the chairs and giving em a nice strong pull with some hydraulic rams. Essentially if they don't rip out of the floor they pass. This particular van was fitted to be wheelchair accessible so we had to test those mountings as well. I can't tell you what company it was, but they ran into some problems. Part of it was due to the fact that they misinterpreted the agreed testing procedure in the first place and part was due to the fact that some of the seats (in some cases quite catasrophically) didn't stay put. It was an interesting learning experience as far as figuring out how to deal with a really disorganized test and do some damage control.

Nick (who I was doing the test with) ended up leaving his car up there and riding back with me to save gas, so I picked him up the next morning to drive back up, then after lunch I drove back so I could do some laundry at the hotel (didn't end up working out since the entire country of England is determined to keep me in dirty clothes) and get to sleep early since I'd had a couple early mornings, and would be having another on Wednesday since I had to drive up to Nuneaton which is also about 3 hours away, but northeast. I did some non-type approval work on trailers there. I know, I'm a type approval engineer so what am I doing that's not type approval? Well VCA, unlike our German counterparts, also acts as a technical service, which basically means that we will do the testing and write up the test report on top of giving a certificate. Generally we do both for a given customer, but occasionally we'll just do the testing if there is no relevant approval to be granted, or we could just award an approval without doing any testing if the customer has all the appropriate test reports from an approved test center. I think that's one of VCA's competitve advantages, since not every certification agency will do the testing as well.

The actual testing we were doing was on the side curtains of a soft-sided semi-trailer. Basically it was loaded up (with about 30 palattes of year old, Carlsberg 6-packs) which were then strapped to the side curtains of the trailer, which have straps running vertically and horizontally through them. Then you drive the truck such that the trailer experiences a force of half a g in 2 dimensions (forward/backward and side to side) by driving an S shaped route at about 40 kph and slamming on the brakes while going forwards and backwards. As long as the beer doesn't break through the side of the trailer or smash through the front or back they're good, it was a piece of cake. Tomorrow I'm doing a similar test, except the load will be sandbags and they won't be strapped down, so when the trailer swerves around the load will topple over and it still has to hold it in. I have a feeling its going to be a bit of a mess inside when we're done.

Today I did some bus inspecting, basically just going through a checklist and making sure it has the right size emergency exits and stairs, the handicap stickers are the right size and shape, the walkways are big enough... that kind of thing. It was a bit tedious, but that's type approval. I'll probably be doing more of that next week.

Aside from work, I haven't been doing much, mostly planning this weekend in Portugal and finding a laundromat. Oh, and walking around my hotel a bit. Why? Check out the view outside my window...

Yup, I'm staying in a soccer arena. My window is actually a sliding door which opens out into the seating area. Unfortunately there's no games while I'm here, but it's still pretty cool. Theres also a casino and restaurant attached so there's plenty to do here (though I haven't actually gone down to the casino yet, I don't think I can expense that), I've just been too tired this week to feel like doing much. Between catching up from Oktoberfest, the early mornings and the 6 hours in a car 3 days in a row plus another 4 the day after I'm pretty beat.

It's nice to be so busy.

Happy Birthday to Grandma, Jason and Tammy!