Some travel catch-up and a birthday abroad

It's been a while since my last post, so there is some catching up to do.  Yesterday evening, my travels brought me back to Boulder for the first time in about two months, so it feels like a good time to put fingers to keyboard and crank out a new blog entry.

In October, I had my birthday in Edinburgh.  I'm sure some readers will be looking forward to tales of debauchery too scandalous to be uttered (or typed) in polite company.  It turns out, the reality was rather mundane as far as epic adventures go.

In 1776, Adam Smith invented economics.  In 2011, his statue was pooped on by birds.  Only one of the previous statements is true.

I walked around Edinburgh, saw Adam Smith's statue, and eventually wound up going to a pub with some other tourists.

Despite the text on the sign behind me, it turns out the real threat is not terrorists.  It is drinking with Australians.

I met some Australians who bought me one or more shots and promised that since it was my birthday, they would arrange for me to "hit the floor".  Evidently, their plans did not come to fruition, because they left the pub, I hung out with some German friends, and then I returned to the hostel and went to bed.  In the morning, the Aussies were in rough shape.  Perhaps they were planning to give me a terrific hangover for my birthday, but forgot it at the hostel and took it for themselves instead?

A few weeks later, after returning to the USA, I was out on a bike ride in the coastal hills on the San Francisco peninsula.  I saw a scene that reminded me of the cone-on-head art installation in Glasgow.

It's not Glasgow, but I appreciate it.

I noticed this afternoon that at some point in the past few weeks, while fiddling around with my privacy settings on Facebook, I entered a setting that caused a number of status updates to be visible only to me.  Talk about preaching to the choir...  If the above reference to the cone-on-head art installation in Glasgow does not sound familiar, it's probably because the links I shared on Facebook for the last two blog posts were visible only to me.  Feel free to check out the other November blog entries to see what else I've been up to.

At any rate, I think I have the Facebook-link-posting fixed, and will wrap up this post by sharing a couple quotes from a pair of books I read recently.

From The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain:
To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.

From Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck:
You can look back and say, "I could have been...," polishing your unused endowments like trophies. Or you can look back and say, "I gave my all for the things I valued." Think about what you want to look back and say. Then choose your mindset.

Visited Glasgow, was not stabbed

After my time in Edinburgh and the highlands, I took a train to Glasgow.  On last year's trip I had been told by somebody that most tourists' highlight when they visit Glasgow is not being stabbed.  When I mentioned plans to stay in Glasgow for a few days to some folks at the velodrome in Manchester, they warned me about being beaten up.

My Great Britain travel guide book, however, did not make any such predictions, so I went ahead with my plan to visit.  It turned out to be a fine place.  The city center, like many other cities in the UK, had a tough, gritty feel, but I never felt that I was in any danger of being stabbed or beaten up.

After exiting the train station, I had about a half mile walk to the hostel where I was staying.  The route I mapped out took me by an art gallery with a display of Glasgow humor on the statue in front of the building (pictured below).

I can appreciate performance/street art like this.

The hostel where I stayed was conveniently located, and affordable with respect to cost, and I'll leave it at that.  Not trusting the elevator, I got a little bit of exercise walking up to my room on the 6th floor.

In the city center, there was a large plaza/square in front of the city hall featuring statues of famous Glaswegians or otherwise noteworthy Scots.  As an engineer and a cyclist, it was great to see a statue of James Watt.

In engineering and science, the Watt is the derived SI unit for power.  I make measurements and calculations of power all the time, and the results are always in terms of watts or other units that relate back to watts.  Watt was a mechanical engineer who made important contributions to steam engine technology, helping to kick off the industrial revolution.

James Watt, looking at me like I owe him something.

As a cyclist, I am thankful for the watt as a unit of power measurement.  Throwing down a 450-watt pursuit sounds a whole lot more impressive than averaging 0.603-horsepower. 

The city of Glasgow experienced significant economic decline during the 2nd half of the 20th century.  In the 19th century, it was an important center of manufacturing and trade, and was very wealthy.  The square in the city center with the statues (including Mr. Watt) was constructed to show off the city's wealth.

The Glasgow city hall is a very Scottish-looking building.

The Glasgow city hall and war memorial (pictured above) sit on the east side of George Square (where the statue of James Watt is located).  When I took the above picture, there was an Occupy Glasgow protest, complete with tents and chilly protesters, sitting right behind me.

Near George Square, there was a part of town called Merchant City, essentially the city center shopping district.  For the most part, it was full of stores I was almost entirely uninterested in.  There was one store that caught my eye.  It had an American theme, and a huge display in the front window with a wall of Mug Root Beer and some sort of sugary breakfast cereal.  It made me cringe to contemplate the idea that those are the products Glaswegians think of when they think of America.  Blah!

Scotland: Edinburgh and the Highlands

I've gone a bit off the back in terms of blog updates, so it's time for a little catch-up.  After masters track world championships concluded, I hung around Manchester for a couple days, and then hopped onto the train to Scotland.

It wound up being a two-part journey, with a change of trains in York.  Last year, I visited York and spent a couple days there.  This time, I had about 20 minutes, but was able to make my way to the train station entrance and snap a quick picture.

The York train station felt familiar after my visit last year.  The station exit still welcomes visitors to the city.

The 2nd leg of the train journey took me into Edinburgh, where the station is still under construction.  This year, though, it was mid-afternoon when I arrived, so I was able to navigate to the hostel in the daylight.  Interestingly, the hostel where I was staying had a theme for each room and a theme-related name for each bed.  My assignment was the Riddler bed in the Gotham City room.  I astounded the front desk clerks when I opened my pack and withdrew my Batman logo towel.  I fit right in at that place.

The next day, I headed to the Scottish highlands to check out Loch Ness and hopefully encounter some interesting aquatic wildlife.  On the bus drive north, we saw lots of highland terrain, but only a little bit of weather (which is a good thing, wind and rain are not what I was looking for during my off-season vacation).

This almost looks like it could be in Colorado.

The tour bus stopped a couple times at scenic locations where we could get out, stretch our legs, buy snacks, visit the restrooms, and take pictures of the local terrain.  It's interesting to think that the top of the mountain in the above picture is at considerably lower elevation than where I live in Colorado.  However, they had already had snow in mid-October.  We were treated to some of the nicest weather of the year as Scotland goes.

Green and gold grass with a loch in the background.

The tour guide claimed that back in the Roman times, more than 95% of the land in what is now the Scottish highlands was covered in forest.  Since then, the logging industry has created lots of open range, but there are efforts underway to replant trees in large tracts of land.

This is the smallest lighthouse in the UK.

Around lunch time, we arrived at Loch Ness, home of the UK's most famous aquatic wildlife.  I saw some less-famous wildlife, in the form of a game of swans, being coaxed out of a canal lock by a worker armed with bread crusts.  While I missed out on seeing Nessie, the famous creature allegedly inhabiting the loch, I did not miss out on eating a Scotland delicacy: haggis!  Yummy.

On the way back to Edinburgh, we stopped at the commando memorial.  During World War II, the British commando soldiers trained in the Scottish highlands.  The memorial is dedicated to those original British commandos.  Since then, many tributes have been left at a nearby garden of remembrance for commandos killed in more recent conflicts such as the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The commando statues keep an eye on the Commando Training Depot.

On the way back to Edinburgh, we stopped in a small town for late-afternoon snacks.  I had a Chieftains Choice pie from The Wee Pie Company.  Who would've thought cold meat could be so tasty?