First Ade, then Frisco, then home, then back

It's alive! I must apologise for the lack of words recently - as I shall attempt to explain there is good reason for this - I have been busier than a bee in honey season. So, after a Yorkshire Tea Break from scribbling inane ramblings I'm afraid I'm back in story-telling mode. Are you sitting comfortably?

I had to go to San Francisco to recover from Ade's visit in December; we managed to get through an impressive number of alcohol units. He arrived on a Tuesday afternoon, and I managed to get to the airport on time to pick him up. No sooner had we dropped his stuff at my place and gobbled down a pizza, we were off to the pub. We headed to The Toad, a tiny bar in Porter Square which hosts a variety of different bands. I'd seen the guy playing before and I knew he was good - Sam Bigelow plays bluesy stuff on the keyboard and is ridiculously talented. Anyway, I was afraid that we'd have to slope off early due to Ade's jet lag but he showed an impressive amount of staying power. We came to the conclusion that his body just doesn't agree with the time zone that he currently occupies, as he tends to nod off early after a pint or two - but there was a significant delay before it caught on about the Boston time zone - he managed to stick around in the pub very well for a few nights before getting tired. Well played, sir.

Anyway, the second day we went for a curry at India Quality. We met up with a few disturbingly British guys (it seems that everyone had an English mate over for the week) in the Boston Beer Works for a pre-curry pint, and it was very surreal to sit in a bar on this side of the Pond talking to someone I'd never met about the Bridge Inn in Ripponden. So we eventually ended up at the curry house and ordered the curries. I confidently ordered the Lamb Vindaloo, secure in the knowledge that I'd tackled it successfully when I'd been previously with Em, and a pint of Krait (Cobra to you and me). I was reasonably embarrassed when this time it did turn out to be a horrendous fiery beast, and I was almost defeated. We decided that it was hotter this time because I was with a party of British lads, not the bird. To round off a thoroughly American evening we ended up at Cornwalls (an "English" pub) playing pool, drinking Newky Brown, and listening to Muse. 'Ave it!

Thursday is Redbones day and this one was no exception - I was looking forward to introducing Ade to the Beef Jerk. We had a combo platter and a side of the Jerk for Ade - and I'm pleased to say he was impressed enough to seek out a Jerk recipe for himself when he got home. The platter was about as far away from Nouveau Cuisine as is physically possible - loaded with big huge chunks of meat. It's a manly dish, straight from the Pleistocene, of mastodon ribs and buffalo legs. All washed down with big draughts of beer. Get in!

At the weekend I had more time to show him around, and we wandered to downtown Boston. We had thought about going to New York, but the train was ridiculously expensive, the plane would have been too much hassle, and the bus that "sometimes doesn't blow up" would have taken too long. The contingency was to take the ferry over to Provincetown and see Cape Cod, but it turned out that the ferries weren't operating in December. So, scuppered, we went shopping for outrageously hot chilli sauces instead. Obviously. Now, the Scoville Heat Unit (SHU), for those who aren't big on chillies, is a measure of 'hotness', originally defined as the factor by which a foodstuff has to be diluted before the heat becomes imperceptible. Tabasco is about 3,000 SHU , meaning it must be diluted 3,000 times before the heat disappears. We both bought bottles of 1,000,000 SHU pepper extract. It's so hot it comes with a disclaimer saying that it's a food additive, NOT a sauce, and that we were perfectly sound of mind when we purchased it. We tested a microscopic, minuscule, almost non-existent droplissimo on a hunk of bread. By gum, it's tingling I'll tell you that. Later on we made a chilli - a big vat with enough to feed two hungry lads with seconds - and put three small drops in and no other heat source (sauce). It wasn't tame. This is bloody hot stuff, and it's brilliant.

On Sunday we hired a car and went south - a direction I had yet to go, given my natural suspicion of the direction. First stop was Plymouth, where the Pilgrim Fathers eventually landed in 1620 and founded Plymouth Colony. Today it's the site of various museums, a ship, and a rock. The ship is the Mayflower II and the rock is, er, Plymouth Rock. I was disturbed to find that it was a real rock and not, in fact, the stick of peppermint-flavoured sugar that I was secretly hoping to find. But never mind. Oh yeah, the significance of it - it's allegedly where the Pilgrims disembarked, but this is probably, as Ford Prefect would say, bunk. Either way, it's a symbol that's been revered over by the Yanks for centuries and now it sits in an Ionic portico to protect it from the elements. To me it looked like a rock. Much more interesting was the British Shop in Plymouth, that sold McVities biscuits and Yorkshire Tea. Ade claimed it was a pointless shop to go in but I said it was alright for him, I hadn't seen a McVities Hobnob for almost four months! We continued on our road trip, West cross-country towards Providence in the state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, the smallest state with, ironically, the longest name. It's not actually an island, as the name would seem to imply, although there is an island of that moniker offshore. Ade wanted to go there as it's where Family Guy is set. In the end we didn't stop, but drove past and onwards towards our destination: Leicester. This involved briefly passing through Connecticut and we engineered the route to pass the lake with the longest name in the world, simply because I'd heard of it as a kid and never thought I'd get to see it. Many call it Webster Lake, understandably, as the other name is Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. A name almost as impressive as Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, in fact. I was miffed to find out that I had been fed a lie, and the name doesn't mean "You Fish on Your Side, I Fish on My Side, Nobody Fish in the Middle", as I had thought, but something more along the lines of "Englishmen at Manchaug at the Fishing Place at the Boundary". Much more boring. Anyway, we eventually arrived in Leicester, and we took photos of ourselves next to the "Welcome to Leicester, Massachusetts" sign. Bizarrely, the font on the sign is almost exactly the same as that on the University of Leicester logo. Strange, eh? [Cue doo doo do do doo doo do do spooky music] Leicester is actually very small, not much more than a one horse village with no pub (although it did have a very strange-looking crenellated restaurant called The Castle), so in the end we didn't hang around there either. As it was getting dark we decided to turn around and head back to Boston. Via Worcester of course.

On Ade's last night we decided to go Downtown, as I'd not yet been there to go boozing. We had been informed by a waitress that the place to go was The Rack, and ever since we heard the name we knew we would end up there. But first, we went to "America's Oldest Tavern" called (he he he) The Bell in Hand, dating from 1791 or thereabouts. It was alright. Nothing special, and certainly didn't feel old. So we pressed on to The (ha ha ha) Rack, which turned out to be a pool hall. So, we spent the evening playing pool and discussing (arguing about) sportsmanship and how I lacked it when I cheered when Ade potted the white and the black to lose a game he clearly dominated. I suppose he had a point, but I'd never admit it, of course.

So, with Ade gone I was almost immediately off to San Francisco for the (brace yourselves for the excitement) American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2006, ta da! In other words, a week of socialising with old friends I haven't seen for a while. Oh and fitting in some science here and there too. It's the second time I've been to AGU at SF, so I didn't do all the mad running around sightseeing like we did the last time we were there. I did more relaxing than sightseeing. I actually went down the Friday before the meeting started and kipped on my mate Scotty's sofa. The plan was to go and see some of his housemates run a marathon on Angel Island - a national park island in the bay - but we turned up at Tiberon just in time to see the ferry leaving. The only option under these circumstances was to go to the pub - and Scotty knew of just the place. It's called (rather ironically it turns out) The Tourist Club, and is one of the most hard to find, out of the way pubs I've ever had the pleasure of patronising. We knew the road that it was off (one in the middle of the Muir Woods national park) and that it was a "5 minute walk" to the place from the road. So when the road ended and we'd seen no sign we assumed that we should park the car on a bit of rubbly land next to some others (car park would imply too much organisation) and set off down a completely unsigned path in the hope that this was the right direction. We quickly found out that the path was one of those that took you further vertically than horizontally and realised that if this wasn't the right way we would have a rather pointless and knackering climb back to the car. It turned out that we were, in fact, correct and when we stumbled upon a sign that said "The Tourist Club: open 1pm - 5pm, if you're part of a group of more than seven please go away" we knew we'd arrived at probably the only pub to actively discourage business. The place itself was a brightly coloured bavarian-style wooden cabin bolted onto the side of a cliff (the one we'd climbed down) with a small terrace and a bare scout hut-like bar room. We ordered two pints of Hefferweissen and sat down on the terrace to oggle the view, which was, to be fair, wonderful. The day wasn't particularly warm and there was plenty of rain in the air, but this encouraged clouds of mist to drift over the steep valley of giant redwoods before us. There wasn't a single indication that we were 20 minutes from one of the world's greatest cities. It was very pleasant indeed, and we found out that most of the place's business stems from day hikers who set off further down the valley and walk up to the pub, have a pint (more than one would be out of the question) and then wander back. For us the prospect of lugging ourselves back up that path was enough encouragement to linger for a second bier. In the end we decided that we had in fact done it the right way round as the climb was, I'm sure, far less obnoxious with two pints in the belly than without.

No sooner did I arrive back in Boston after the meeting then I was on a back plane to good old England. Boy, was I looking forward to warm, flat beer. And seeing family, friends, and Emma of course. The flight was one of the bounciest roller-coaster rides I've ever had, meaning I didn't get a wink of sleep during the short night and I arrived at Heathrow an absolute mess. I was met by Em (who had, just to show me how it's done, arrived in plenty of time) and she guided my spaced-out wreck of a body to the car. First port of call was Leicester, and it was great to see my little house again, still standing in all its rubbish-carpeted glory. Em had had time to make it more of a home since I saw it last, and suddenly Boston seemed like a far-away dream that had never, in fact, occurred. There was my old, battered TV, there were my clothes and books, there was Em. It was all so familiar. After a brief call in to the Uni to see friends and my old boss, we made a bee-line for the Marquis of Wellington. Full of reverence and awareness of imminent satisfaction, I queued up at the smoky bar and uttered the immortal words: "A pint of Tiger please, love." There weren't vast numbers of people around, given that it was almost Christmas, but we had managed to gather a a few willing souls, and the plan was to go for a curry at the Nila Palace. I already knew exactly what I wanted: A poppadom to start with, along with their trademark seven-pickle tray, followed by a chicken tikka garlic bhuna, madras hot, with pilau rice, a cheese and chilli nan and a Bangla beer or two. It was, of course, bloody good grub and to top it off Abdul, the owner, was so pleased to see us that he gave us two bottles of very fine wine on the house. Yep, I was back.

The next day we headed north to The Fax. Just like I had found in Leicester, it was like I'd never left. My family and friends were all there, the same pubs, the same thievin' buggers who nick people's wallets. Honestly, they can have the blinking five pounds and two dollars cash, just leave me the ID cards, the driving licenses, the the credit cards, the stuff that it's a royal pain in the arse to replace. Nicked wallet notwithstanding I had a great time at home it was great to see my mum, dad, brother, and cousin, and I was handsomely fed by my chef mum and watered by my barman dad. It seemed like only five minutes before was time to head off, this time down to Lincolnshire to see Em's family and the associated moo cows. I stayed one night and then it was back to Leicester for New Year and to get the house ready to be turned over to the estate agents for letting. We had a fairly quiet New Year - some friends and my cousin came round to the house, and we had a great evening of booze and company, with the Hootananny on in the background.

Then it was the 2nd and I found myself back in an airport. The flight was scheduled for 3pm, I had booked online and we arrived well before 1pm, so we were fairly confident that we wouldn't be rushed. Yeah right. Heathrow was a nightmare - and even the checked-in-online bagdrop queue took over an hour. Almost immediately the screen showed that my flight was boarding and I still had to go through security - so it was with a very rushed farewell to Em (who would be following in three weeks) that I joined the security queue that ran the length of the terminal. Even after I joined the short-cut queue for those with imminent flights I still only arrived at the gate when they were closing it. And of course, given my love of kids on planes, I was placed right in the middle of a school load of Welsh kids on a skiing trip. Fortunately I was flying with Virgin so the in-flight entertainment system kept me occupied and almost unaware of their continuous shrieking for most of the trip.

And so, back in Boston, it now seems like England was nothing but a dream. It's all very strange, but I've been kept too busy by my work since I got back to really think about it until now. The Hubble Space Telescope campaign, the reason why I'm in Boston and the preparation for which has had me in the office until midnight every day since my arrival back on American soil, has just got underway and, ironically, I might be able to slow down a bit and take it easier now the data is coming in. Monday is a holiday here (Martin Luther King Jr. Day), but I'll be in the office waiting for the data like the sad, geeky child that I am. We will be putting the images on the interweb, so anybody who's interested in HST photos of Jupiter and Saturn taken in ultra-violet, I'll let you know the website as soon as I've verified that my data pipeline doesn't return a load of garbage... Not only that, but Em is due to arrive on the 24th, and the Boston saga will start a new chapter.

And with that I promise, dear Tea Partyers, not to disappear again.