Also, kudos to the UK Home Office. I just applied for my UK Electronic Travel Authorisation, paid my £10 ($13.06), and almost immediately got approved. It helps that (a) I just entered the UK twice in September with the same passport, and until the UK decided Americans could use the EU passport lanes, I was in the UK Registered Traveller programme. So they've vetted me quite a few times already.
When will I next go there? I hope January. I haven't said a lot about it, but I moved to a new practice at Milliman on November 1st, and half my team—not to mention, my boss—are in England. I really need to meet them in person before too long. The other half of my team are in Seattle, where I also need to go soon, when I can work it out with my friend who brought Hazel through my house when they moved out there.
So, I'm aiming for Southampton in January and Seattle in February, because who doesn't love passing north of the 48th parallel in the winter?
The US Thanksgiving holiday tomorrow provides me with a long-awaited opportunity to clean out the closet under my stairs so an orphan kid more boxes will have room to stay there. I also may finish the Iain Banks novel I started two weeks ago, thereby finishing The Culture. (Don't worry, I have over 100 books on my to-be-read bookshelf; I'll find something else to read.)
Meanwhile:
- Even though I, personally, haven't got the time to get exercised about the OAFPOTUS's ridiculous threat to impose crippling (to us) tariffs on our three biggest trading partners, Mexico's president Claudia Sheinbaum used our own government's data to call bullshit on his claim that Mexico hasn't done enough to stop the flow of drugs into the US: "Tragically, it is in our country that lives are lost to the violence resulting from meeting the drug demand in yours."
- The UK will start requiring all visitors (even in transit) to register with their new Electronic Travel Authorisation scheme as of January 8th—similar to how the US ESTA program has worked for the last 16 years.
- Evanston, Ill., my home town, wants to protect bicyclists on one of its busiest streets, which of course has a bunch of stores panicking. (Note to the merchants: bike lanes don't hurt business, and in fact they encourage more foot traffic.)
- John Scalzi mourns the loss of Schwan's Home Delivery and it's bagel dogs.
Finally, as I mentioned nearly five years ago, today's date is a palindrome if you happen to study astronomy. The Julian Day number as of 6am CDT/12:00 UTC today is 2460642. Happy nerdy palindrome day!
The History Channel sends me a newsletter every morning listing a bunch of things that happened "this day in history." Today we had a bunch of anniversaries:
And finally, today is the 958th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, which is the reason this blog is written in a Celtic-Norse-Germanic-French creole, not just a Celtic-Norse-Germanic creole.
President Jimmy Carter turned 100 today, making him the first former president to do so. James Fallows has a bit of hagiography on his blog today, and the State of Georgia has declared today "Jimmy Carter Day." I hope I make it to 100, too, but I don't expect the State of Illinois to declare that day a public holiday.
In other news:
Finally, yesterday the UK turned off its last operating coal-fired power plant, ending a 142-year run of burning coal to generate power. XKCD points out that in those 142 years, the UK burned the equivalent of about 3 inches of its land surface generating electricity.
And of course, I'll watch the Vice-Presidential Debate tonight at 9pm Eastern, but I don't plan to live-blog. Reactions tomorrow, though.
I can scarcely believe I took these 10 days ago, on Friday the 20th. I already posted about my walk from Borough Market back to King's X; this is where I started:
You can get a lovely snack there for just a few quid. In my case, a container of fresh olives, some bread, and some cheese set me back about £6. Next time, I'll try something from Mei Mei.
Later, I scored one of the rare pork baps at Southampton Arms. Someone else really wanted a bite, too:
Sorry, little guy, I can't give you any of this—oh darn I just dropped a bit of pork on the ground. (Lucky dog.)
Finally, this screen shot shows why I love Europe so much. (It's in French because I switched my phone's language settings to help practice while I was preparing for the trip.) The blue dot in the center-left shows where my train was at 20:06 France time (18:06 UTC) on Saturday the 21st. The stuff in the upper-right corner shows my phone's GPS utility. If you look at the left side of that box, you can see "Vitesse 303;" i.e., a speed of 303 km/h, or 190 mph. And that isn't even the train's top normal operating speed.
If we elect people in this country who actually care about climate change, we could have trains like that here, too. But given the proportion of the electorate who plan to vote for the convicted-felon rapist demented geriatric XPOTUS in five weeks, I am not optimistic.
I meant to post more photos from my trip earlier this month, but I do have a full-time job and other obligations. Plus it took me a couple of days longer than usual to recover, which I blame squarely on the shitty hotel room I had for my first night causing a sleep deficit that I never recovered from.
I posted a couple of these already, but with crude, quick edits done on my phone. I think these treatments might be a little better.
Sunrise at O'Hare on the 18th:
The hills of Hampshire:
Invasive megafauna preparing to attack:
Why I decided to walk for 10 km through Hampshire in the first place:
The Grand Canal:
It might take a few days to get more of these done. I'll post more as I get to them.
Welcome to a special stop on the Brews and Choos project.
Brewery: Two Tribes Brewing, Tileyard Road, London N7
Train line: Piccadilly Line, Caledonan Road
Time from Chicago: 8 hours
Distance from station: 900 m (about 1.5 km from King's Cross)
I don't know why I haven't made an official B&C stop in London before now. The UK has just gotten going with its own microbrewing industry, as evidenced by the continued success of pubs like the Southampton Arms. I've had lots of English micros, some from London. So I'm happy to report that visiting the brewery closest to my (new) hotel last Thursday turned out great.
They had two bartenders working an enormous crowd so I didn't bother them by ordering a flight. Instead I had a pint of the Campfire Hazy (5.2%, very tasty) and a pint of the Dream Pale (4.4%, also very tasty). And, because they have lots of communal seating, I talked to a pair of biology post-docs who were looking for jobs. I also read a good hunk of my book, enjoyed the low-intensity music, and contemplated how rarely London gets the kind of weather they had at that moment.
They also had tacos, in their food pop-up space. I had the chorizo. For Europe, they were really good tacos, despite the lack of taco sauce. (It's the UK.)
London has about a dozen other B&C-eligible breweries, so I might not get back to Two Tribes soon. But if you're anywhere near King's X, check it out.
Beer garden?Yes
Dogs OK? Yes
Televisions? No
Serves food? Pop-up; check the website. BYOF OK
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes
I had the opportunity, but not the energy, to bugger off from Heathrow for an hour and a half or so connecting from Marseille. Instead I found a vacant privacy pod in the Galleries South lounge, and had a decent lunch. Plus I'm about to have a G&T.
I've loaded up my Surface with a few articles, but I really only want to call attention to one of them. Bruce Schneier has an op-ed in the New York Times with his perspective on the Hezbollah pager attack and supply-chain vulnerabilities in general. I may even read that before turning my Surface off.
Next stop: Chicago, home, and dog.
Other than the hotel debacle, I'm having a pretty good time in the UK. Yesterday I went out to Berkhamsted to do Walk #1 in The Home Counties from London by Train Outstanding Circular Walks (Pathfinder Guides):
I followed that up today by getting lunch in Borough Market, then walking back to King's X:
(The maps are in French because I set my phone to French to practice in advance of my arrival in France tomorrow.)
The weather yesterday and today has been spectacular, to boot.
Another nice bit of news: I'm now less than 1,000 miles from lifetime Platinum status on American Airlines (with courtesy Sapphire status on another dozen airlines):
That should flip over 2 million lifetime miles when I get back to Chicago.
And now: a shower, a quick kip, and (I really hope) a pork bap at the Southampton Arms.
I mentioned yesterday that I've paid a £319 poor-research tax because I changed hotels after only one night.
The original hotel, the Argyle Square Hotel just south of King's Cross, has mixed reviews. My experience traveling to London for 30 years told me that I could either avoid or ignore the difficulties some people had with the hotel. For example, Americans always complain about European room sizes and British plumbing. Always.
This time my experience failed me completely. This is the best photo I have of my room there:
By "best" I mean that it puts the room in the best light possible. That said, please direct your attention to both air conditioning units (the fan and the window) and imagine how effective they are cooling a 3rd-floor cell when it gets up to 27°C outside. Also imagine carrying a 16 kg suitcase up to the third floor on a staircase barely wider than the suitcase. Also imagine that the bed you see there—hard to tell, but it's just over a meter wide—has not a mattress but a decades-old box spring, so that you can feel each individual coil digging into your body as you try and fail to sleep.
Now imagine brushing your teeth and discovering that the plumbing isn't just quirky, it's producing really off-tasting water. And the shower, barely bigger than a coffin, is nowhere within reach of anyplace to put a towel or a bar of soap.
I have traveled to Europe for over 30 years, staying in youth hostels as a kid and "charming" old hotels as an adult, and I've never stayed in a room that bad.
Contrast that with the room I have now:
Almost the same price. And just the other side of King's X. And with a desk big enough for my Surface, books, charger, and bottle of water. And places to hang my clothes.
Once I fled the Argyle Square, I re-read the reviews on Trip Advisor (there are only 18!) with a more cynical eye. I can't be sure, of course, but the 5-star reviews seem remarkably similar. And the 1-star reviews seem a bit more genuine.
This hotel has over 4,000 reviews and most of them are positive. Not to mention, multiple electronic security measures, and actual plumbing that does not produce horrible effluent.
I am glad I moved.