Maintenance

We got back from our European vacation on Saturday, and then immediately went into full blown activity mode. When you ignore items, the items rust and rot away, and then mushrooms and insects start to spontaneously generate thereupon, until, voilà, the roof is leaking, the front bumper of the car falls off during a downpour when the car is supposed to be picking up the kids at school, and you have 758 emails to delete. Maintenance is hard, though, so the fewer items you give yourself to maintain, the better off you are. That is why Phil Hellmuth is so good at No-Limit Holdem tournaments, and why NASCAR drivers can do a pit stop in 12 seconds. Focus is the key; multitasking is evil.

We had a great time in England and Holland for 9 days. We traveled by car, shuttle bus, airplane, car on the wrong side of the road, foot, ferry boat, bus, canal boat, and train. Strangely, we did not travel by tram or bicycle while we were in Amsterdam. We waited in many lines, and were usually last in line, since we had five people, three of whom were outside the first standard deviation for quickness.

First, we flew from Boston To Amsterdam, then changed planes, and flew from Amsterdam to Manchester. It took us quite a while to get through immigration and customs, because of the aforementioned outliers. Then, it took us a while to get our car, then we had to get some food and try to find a bathroom in the under construction terminal. Finally, we hit the (wrong side of the) road, and 242 rotaries later, we arrived at Studley Royal, which is a deer park near Fountain's Abbey in Yorkshire. We stayed in the Chorister's House:




The deer were all over the place, as were the giant old trees, several of which had fallen. It's not a forest, but more of a field with big trees scattered about. They leave the fallen trees as part of the "ecosystem", but the smaller trees have fences around them, presumably to prevent the deer from destroying them. Here's a pic of the largest diameter tree near the house:



That's my ten-year-old son standing in front of the tree, so as you can see, one of the pieces that had fallen was about four feet in diameter, and the main trunk was probably ten feet in diameter.

We had a couple of days of parties, including a trip to the nearby Lightwater Valley amusement park, which boasts the longest roller coaster in Europe, or maybe the longest wooden one in the world -- something like that. The kids did great, with my son going on everything that I did, and my daughter trying many more rides than I thought she would.

Then we had the big event, Magdalen's wedding. You can see her recap and photos at her blog. It was a beautiful day, the first since we had arrived, sunny and warm. After a nice short ceremony, we went down to the foyer of the Fountain's Hall and had a Pimm's cup, which was quite good. My wife brought home a bottle last time she went, so we'll have to serve that on nice hot summer days here in New England. We wandered around the ruins of Fountain's Abbey, which is very impressive:



I think I'll just stop here, and write another post about Amsterdam.