that volcano thing.

email to department from prof. M.M.:
Subject Seminars and volcanos
Dear Colleagues,
This week's seminar has been cancelled due to the lack of flights from
Germany to the UK.
It may be re-scheduled for early May.

from facebook (via dr. D. S.): Can you see the ash cloud from Eyjafjallajokull? Can you pronounce Eyjafjallajokull?

text message from G. C.: Due 2 a volcanic eruption in iceland my dads flight has been cancelled,so he's crashing here another night.I'm sorry,i can't make the cinema. U around tomorrow?

final note. iceland owns the UK lots of money. the joke here is that instead of paying with cash, they decided to pay with ash.

Riding into the sunset

We woke up from our nicely hidden camping site between a canal and the river connecting the many lochs. I remember Lyonell asking me about farts. Asking how I was reacting to the food of the previous night. What do you mean I am not supposed to be writing stuff like this in a blog? So you don’t want to know my answer? Fine. I’ll skip it.
The second day included a lot of of-roading. Some serious of-roading in fact, to the point that a road bike would not be able to make this trip.

Of course the shocks on the front of Escriptius Robustus were quite handy. The trailer squeaked and sure made it sound as if it wasn’t so happy. We had to deal with quite a few obstacles on this day. First, fallen trees made us feel, hmmm, welcome on the forrest trails.

And of course, that would be ok – if it wasn’t immediately proceeded by the world famous dangerous lambs!


And I am not even mentioning the fact that we had to drive, scratch that, ride on the left side of the road! Pssh. How is one supposed to hand signal in this situation???
From the area of the lakes we eventually made it to the Highlands. This is where a Scottish national park stands along with the highest peak in Britain, a towering snow capped of a beast peaking above the clouds at 1300 meters. Yes, that is Ben Nevis. You could see it in the background…

The highlands were quite different. this almost felt like desert meet far north meet lots of water. I mean, it was desolate, very little fauna and very few types. Yet there were streams everywhere and the land was drenched to the point that it was hard to find a spot to camp. The water was drinkable. And by that I mean, we drank it. But not so showerable.
Damn that Scottish cold water.

The final day of the trip included finishing the climb into the highland eventually, completing the descent from the highlands… quite quite beautiful. Glen Coe is the main village, I guess the best known one in the area. And Glen, it turns out is not just a popular name, it also means valley, in Scottish that is. I did see a sign for Rob Roy’s grave from the train station where we boarded back on our way towards Edinburgh.





Beautiful weather was our lot. I might be the first ever person to return from Scotland with a tan…
142 miles total. Two nights out. Pretty lakes. Lots of hills. And so so many sheep.
Fun way to travel, by bike.

Scotland on two wheels

Inverness is the northern most Scottish city (so described to me by a Scot, so I’ll take it for truth). And this is where our trip begins. Let me clarify this ambiguous ‘our’. Well, I guess I am clear, relatively. The other main protagonist is Lyonell Boulton is a math professor at Hariet-Watt university. A Venezuelan who has decided to leave his homeland, and his faculty position there, to escape an uncomfortable political climate, and take a postdoc position in the UK. Eventually, he landed this faculty position. Of more importance to this story, he is the route planner. This means well folded pieces of 8 by 11 with hybrid pictures of maps and terrain courtesy of our friends at google maps.




From Inverness, the route goes up hill. Well that’s not accurate. Up many hills is more like it. And they seemed to not end. Of course the wind which was blowing according to reports at 6 mph, but felt much stronger and in my stories will definitely be stronger. Oh wait. I mean, the wind was blowing at least at 15 mph and really impeded our climb. Add to that H being out of shape worsened by three weeks of lots of food which included family time and conference time, and the extra baggage up the hill was tough. Lyonell was riding in very low gear (something he called ‘cadence’) and I thought he was doing this to allow me time to catch up. Eventually I found out that this is a system developed by Lance Arm-o-strong which is supposed to be the most efficient way to ride. I on the other hand usually begin at higher gears, especially up hill, and slowly move down my gear ladder. Lyonell said that this is not so good for the bike. Ok, I need to be educated about this. Internet – I am coming to you!




Meanwhile, after all of the uphills we reached a nice downhill, which was rudely interrupted by another uphill, but then was followed by a beautiful downhill to the southern end of Loch Ness. This is of course the famed monster lake of Scotland. Well, I wasn’t impressed. I mean the lake is beautiful and the setting is stunning, but Nessy, the monster? Our cat has meaner streaks. She was tame and sweet, made no fuss about my hiking-boots-pretending-to-be-biking-shoes or about our lack of powerbars or gels. Simply nodded, and with a thick Scottish accent (roll the r’s and pretend you are speaking with a giant gum ball in your mouth) ‘chop chop chop, drink drink drink.’