Europe - March & April, 1997

3/24 - Oscars at 3 AM

I've got first night jet lag insomnia from hell. I was drooping pretty badly this evening, so went to bed before 10 & dropped right off. But by 1 AM I was wide awake. I flipped on the telly & what do you know... live from Hollywood: The Oscars! Cuba Gooding was too much! I have it on in the background while I'm writing this.

I had a good flight over. Got a fair amount of work done on the plane. Plugged in during my layover in Amsterdam & loaded all the email I wrote on the plane to the server. Got to the hotel here in Bisham by about 5 PM. It's really a cute place, actually more a B&B than hotel. Bisham is in the Thames valley, right next to Marlow where one of our offices is located. Veddy quaint. Thatched house across the street. It's still early spring here. Drizzly this afternoon, but trees are starting to leaf out & there are a lot of flowers. The countryside is very green.

This will be a different kind of trip from the last time I was in Europe. The pace is much more reasonable... no one night stands except for the time we are B&Bing around Ireland later. Last summer I went to 10 offices (one twice) in 3 weeks, this time 7 offices in 3+ weeks.

We will be here in Bisham until Sunday. We will get out and see some sights Friday afternoon & Sat, exact plans still open, but probably the south coast & maybe the Cotswolds. Then we go to Ireland.

Well, I'm not feeling very loquatious tonight, so I guess I will sign off for now.

3/28 - Good Friday

Wasn't so good. We spent the day in bed. I came down with an intenstinal problem yesterday & was pretty out of it by the evening. Went to bed about 7 & didn't get up until about 4 this afternoon. Had a light fever & just felt like crap everytime I woke up until then.

So we lost one of our travel days in England. I think we are going to do the Cotswolds tomorrow. It's not too far from here & because Monday is a holiday here & in Ireland we will have the day off, so we plan to tour the southeast of Ireland. We rearranged the rest of the trip too. After 3 days in Clonmel, we will have 5 days to travel through the southwest & up the west side of Ireland, finishing up with 3 days in Derry. Then we will have a day to get to Dublin.

3/30 - Easter in Hampstead

Easter morning finds me sitting on Hampstead High Street while Martha is attending services. It was kind of a mad dash to get here since no one warned us that the clocks changed today. A week earlier than at home, so we got up an hour late. Had a nice Easter breakfast at the hotel & figured out half way through that we should already have left. Oh well, she made the main service, so all is well.

Not much to say about Hampstead. It's an older London suburb, with a certain English charm. Mix of quaint 17th/18th century 4 storey brick shop buildings and more modern structures which still have some distinctive style.

Yesterday we went to Battle, the site of the great Battle of Hastings, 1066 & all that. If that doesn't ring a bell with you, you should have stayed awake more in history class because it was one of the pivotal events of western history. The site itself is a large green sloping meadow with the remains of the abbey that William had build at the top of the hill where Harold was killed. They provide walking audio sets which narrate the site using voices of Saxon & Norman knights & Harold's wife. There wasn't much left of the abbey, one of many torn down at the behest of Henry VIII after he split from the pope. Neither of us slept worth a damn Friday night after sleeping most of the day Friday. So we were kind of groggy by the time we finished, but we carried on.

Next we drove over to Bodian castle, maybe 15 miles away. It was built in the 13th century as part of the defences the Brits put up against the French in the 100 years war. But it never took a hit so is still in pretty good condition for a place that has probably not been lived in for 500 years. It is in the middle of a large man-made moat, the very picture of what you imagine a castle to be. Big round towers at the corners, complete with portcullis at the main gate. They showed a video that kind of brought it back to life.

All of this is on the south coast, about a 2 hour drive from Marlow. We headed west from Bodian about 3 & stopped at a farm shop around 4 for cream tea with the freshest clotted cream I ever had. Very nice English custom that. But that clotted cream must be pure fat. Then we tuned north at Brighton & came on home, had fish & chips for din & crashed out.

4/1 - Turf Fire in the Parlor

Ireland! We've been here about 48 hours now & are loving it. The B&B, Lady's Abbey, has turned out to be pretty special. It is located on a rise with a breathtaking view of the Knockmealdown mountains to the south. The proprietors are displaced Americans who really have something here. They are very nice; warm & unpretentious ex-Floridians (what a change!). The facility is an old 2 storey manor house on acres of green. It's kind of cold in the old place, but you wear a sweater, snuggle at night & it's ok.

The weather has been kind. Until today it had been mostly clear for 4 or 5 days, although cool and breezy. Today was cold and overcast, but it still hasn't been wet or stromy. The night sky here is very clear & bright, being hudreds of miles from the nearest large city. And the comet has been absolutely spectacular! If you haven't been out to see it recently, get your ass out there and check it out. It is at peak exactly now & you may not see anything like it again in your life.

On our way over here from Shannon Sunday afternoon we had to stop 3 times: First in a small village that was overwhelmed by every horse & cart from miles around. Looked like they were preparing for cart racing; traffic had to just crawl along through the crowd. Then we had to stop for a couple that was hearding their dairy cows home for the afternoon milking, merrily strolling down one of the main east-west routes across Ireland. Then again for another horse racing crowd, this time exiting from the first races of the spring.

Yesterday we drove on south & east to Waterford, kind of in the SE corner & yes, the home of Waterford Crystal. We window shopped, but didn't buy. Stopped at Tipperary Crystal too. Cheapest piece at eather shop was a very small vase at about $55. After Waterford we visted an ancient Irish doleman, ie, a set of henge stones. They were probably less than half the size of the famous Stonehenge, but impressive nevertheless. It took more that a leprechan to put them up, but they might have housed one underneath. Then we drove on west across the south & about half way to Cork we turned north & came back through the Knockmealdowns at a pass called The Vee. Great views of Tipperary on the way down the other side. We stopped at one of many Irish grottos where Mary has supposedly made a visit & Martha paid her respects. It was a nice day.

Irish roads are a kick! Except for occasional stretches that have recently been widened, the standard highway here is about the width and quality of Summit Road. Get off the main highway and there is no telling. Adams Road would be considered a decent secondary highway & some get really narrow. In the villages & towns the highway can turn into a narrow 2 lane street with no sidewalk or shoulders & cars parked on one side, or staggered on both sides. So you have to wait for the car coming from the other direction before you can wend around the parked car. Of course they drive on the left side, like the Brits. Roundabouts are popular here too. I kind of like them better than stop signs as traffic control for intersections, since for light traffic, you seldom have to stop, yet it is very safe as long as you follow protocol. Martha isn't so sure about them though. She thinks she wants to drive tomorrow so she can go see some things on her own while I'm at work. I'd worry about her getting lost except everyone is really friendly & I'm sure she will be able to get directions wherever she might be.

Today was a work day for me & it went well. I really like working with the people here; very positive & hard working. Had din at the Abbey tonight; Lynda fixed Irish salmon & it was excellent. Now we are sitting around the fireplace in the parlor with a cheery turf fire. Martha is writing post cards & I'm doing electronic cards.

We'll be here for a couple more days, then we will have 5 days to make it almost the length of the island up to Derry in Northern Ireland. We will go around & up the west coast. Supposedly it has been pretty quiet in NI recently. Hope it lasts for another 2 weeks!

4/4 - Kerry Country

This is the first day of our 5 day mini vacation tour of Ireland. We headed out a little after nine this AM. Almost hated to leave the Abbey, like leaving old friends. We feel like we will always have a place to stay in Tipperary.

Our first stop was at Hertz in Cork. Seems Martha went out adventuring on her own Weds & Thurs. She got her courage up & did real well... mostly. Except when she picked me up last night, she had the rear bumper in the car! Of course we ribbed her a lot for bringing the car back in pieces, but truth be told, it's just a typical Volvo with cosmetic stuff falling off. It's a 2 year old car with over 100K miles. I guess even the rental business here is from a different time. Anyway, seems she nudged a hedge row & the loose bumper fell off. The Hertz guys fixed it up & guaranteed us that no matter what happens to that car in the future, the bumper will never fall off again!

Then we took the scenic route across County Cork to south Kerry. We went up the River Lee, through the Lee Valley. It was really pretty. Hardly any traffic. We poked around a little, here & there. Stopped at a tiny church located on the site where one of the earliest Irish saints (Finbarr) lived 1500 years ago; it's nestled against a mountain lake in a pretty valley. Couldn't go in because a wedding was in progress. So we went on & later stopped for tea at a neat old hotel outside of Glengariff on Bantry Bay. As I was sipping my Murphys & Martha her tea, a caravan of cars drives up. It's the very same wedding party that had been at the tiny church at Gougane Barra! We were trying to decide if there was some cosmic significance to crossing paths with that group twice in one day. If we see them again tomorrow, we'll know something is really up.

Tonight we are staying at a nice B&B in Kenmare, with a sea view from our room. We really like Kerry. We drove up to Killarney this evening before dinner since we will bypass it going around the Ring tomorrow. It's a neat old city with tons of charm, nestled right next to a magnificent national park on a string of lakes.

We've been having fun noticing the regional distribution of Irish names as evidenced by the shops in the towns. Our friends the Ryans had told her that their family was from Tipperary & we must have seen a dozen Ryan businesses in Tipperary itself & many more in Tipperary county: Pubs, dress shops, realtors, grocers, florists... We had heard that the Murphys haled from Cork (my friend in Clonmel, John Murphy, is from Cork). Sure enough, all over County Cork & several times in the city we saw Murphys this & Murphys that. Murphys Stout is brewed in Cork.

I think that catches us up. We'll be off around the Ring of Kerry tomorrow, but we aren't sure where we'll end up for the day, maybe County Clare.

4/9 - (London)Derry

Today was my first day back at work after touring for 5 days. Since I never really had the chance to send messages from B&B stops, I sort of lost interest in keeping up with our travels, but I'll try to catch you up with some of where we've been.

After our stop in Kenmare, we went on around the Ring of Kerry the next day. Kind of took our time & smelled the flowers along the way. Martha was really interested in a place called Skellig which was an island monastery build of stones in the 6th century. Incredibly isolated & austere! We didn't really go to the island but we went to the Skellig ferry dock & a visitor center to learn more. Fascinating early Christian history. We also stopped at one of the stone ring forts that dot Ireland. I guess these started out as clan compounds for keeping families & critters in & the bad guys out. Some evolved to castles & towns, others are just rings of rock here & there. But they are impressive anyway. Walls 12 to 15 feet thick, 80 or 100 feet in diameter. Thats a lot of rocks! No mortar either, just carefully stacked.

We bypassed the Dingle penninsula after spending so much time on the Ring & ended up near Tralee (pronounced Tr'lee), a small city in north Kerry. We went in to find a pub for dinner & hopefully some traditional music, but we never did find the music. We ate at a small pub called The Abbey & it actually came to life like they say, with people spontaneously singing songs (at least the first verse... most songs petered out after one). But the funny part was we found out that it is really a rocker pit with a reputation for the hardest rock in town & the Irish singing was totally out of character. We got to talking to a friendly guy there who explained this to us, etc. The folks at the bar thought it was kind of cute that we had a genuine experience there. They gave us a rousing sendoff when we went to the next pub still seeking a traditional band.

Next day we went on up by Limerick & visited the Bunratty Folk Park, which is a bit like a theme park with relocated cottages & village houses set up to show how the Irish lived 100 years ago. Some of their homes were really pretty primitive. Then we went on up past Galway & into the eastern Connemara, an area frequented by James Joyce. Some exceptional scenery along a couple of large lakes & some really barren areas like moon scapes. We were looking for an lodge we read about, but it turned out to be closed. We ended up in Ballinrobe, a town in County Mayo, at a nice B&B.

Then it was on to Donegal, but first we stopped at Knock which is the Irish mecca for worshiping Mary. She is supposed to have appeared here about 100 years ago & now there is a thriving industry in plastic Mary junk. I guess it was nice for Martha, but I just had a coffee & waited for her. We took the scenic route up through Mayo & Sligo. Did a little shopping at Sligo, but didn't really like the town. We got to Donegal town about 4, did some more shopping & headed for Ardnamona, just a few miles outside town. This was the country hotel that Martha found on the Internet. It really is a romantic place, & one of the high spots for this trip. It's an old place, perched on the side of a hill overlooking Lough Eske (lough is pronounced like lock, only the 'k' sound is so soft it's almost not there at all). It was very special. The couple that now runs the place is very into tradition & making it a special experience. The grounds have been planted with all kinds of Rhodadendrons and evergreens from around the world. This area is Rhody heaven anyway & some of them have grown into trees over 30 ft high. There were serveral different ones in bloom, with many more to come. The lake was like glass both at dusk and again in the morning. We had a really nice dinner served there too.

Yesterday we explored County Donnegal, including the area where Roan Innish was filmed. Even found the real Roaninnish, but it wasn't in the film. We found out that the sets for the movie are long gone too, so there wasn't really much to see. But we stopped & chatted with the owner of the Roaninnish B&B who filled us in on a lot of lore from the filming. He had one of the films advance men stay at his place for several weeks & of course during filming, every B&B around was full. He told us that they had to wait 9 weeks for the wet foggy weather to film the scenes where Jaime & Fiona get carried off in the fog. Normally you won't get 9 weeks of clear weather ever, but of course when you want fog, you get sun. Anyway, that was neat & Martha got her RI fill I think.

We finished up in Derry or as it is known on this side of the border, Londonderry. I'll have more to say about that later, but just to set the stage for you: After checking in the hotel here, we decided to explore a little. There is an old walled section of town so we decided to go up there to find a spot for dinner. As soon as we got inside the walls we saw cops in heavy flack jackets with BIG automatic rifles. We went round the corner & there was the army in full fatigues with hemets, & their big guns. We talked to a couple of them & they were friendly enough. They said there was nothing special happenning, they were just out doing their patrols. But what a change after 1 1/2 weeks of friendly open Ireland!

Well, It's late. I'll write more later.

4/13 - Recapping Ireland

Time to wrap up our Ireland experience. I just saw Martha off at the Dublin airport, bound for London for her return home. I've got another couple hours before I depart for Scotland, so plenty of time to recap. It's hard to leave after 2 really great weeks. It was really great to have a companion on a long trip like this.

I don't know if it made the news back home, but there was an IRA incident in Derry while we were there. In fact it happened the same afternoon Martha went shopping in the heart of Derry. If she had been a little later she might have been a witness! The IRA shot a woman constable in the back, right near where we had seen all the heavy artillery the first night. It was big news here since it was obviously a provocative political act, probably timed to impact the UK parliamentary elections scheduled for next month. We passed a number of check points after that at various points in both NI & Ireland, including entering the Dublin airport today. They were obviously looking for the bad guys.

But otherwise we had a nice stay in Derry. As usual, the folks at the plant were great. We went out for dinner together one night & had a great dinner at a converted church. It was fun getting to know them. Of the 4 at dinner with us, 2 guys were local with accents stongly tinged with Scottish, Ann was from Ireland, just working in Derry & Graham was English, but has lived in Ireland for a number of years. And I really got the sense that the native NI people consider themselves to be Irish at the core. We hope that some day the country will be reunited.

We had some fun with Ann's Irish accent. We were asking about where to stay in the Dublin area for the last night & she told us to avoid the north side (nearest the airport) because it is one of the "purrer sections." "What?" "Purrer" As in poorer. I later heard a radio announcer talking about "the purr" too, so I guess it's just part of the Irish accent.

One evening we drove north from Derry back into Donnegal, up the Innishowen penninsula. It was a wonderful clear evening & we had great views across Lough Foyle & out into the North Atlantic. Ate at an old fortress from the Napoleonic era. Ireland really sent us off in great style for weather as it was clear and bright the last 3 days.

Friday we got away from work early & made it across to the east coast for B&B & dinner, just over the border. It was nice to be back in Ireland. We stayed in a small town called Carlingford, right on the coast. Then yesterday we drove on down & found another place on the coast too, about 20 minutes from the Dublin airport, so it was perfect. We had a great sea view out our bedroom window & went for a twilight walk on the beach. Another real nice meal too. We stopped at a couple of the early religious sites on the way down, including one with 2 of the finest high crosses in the whole country. Great massive crosses, one over 20' high, the other a bit shorter, but probably 18" thick. Both were cut from single blocks of stone & over 1000 years old. Very impressive.

Yesterday afternoon we went shopping in Dublin to try & take care of all the wish list items, etc. Did pretty well overall, I think I'm still solvent. Enjoyed the guitar work of a blues street musician on the busiest shopping street. You could tell the Dubliners were relishing the clear warm weather. They were out in force along with a lot of tourists of course. Spring was much in evidence around Dublin with lots of blossoming trees & shrubs... beautiful. Finished off with a respite at one of the pubs along the Dublin "Literary Pub Crawl."

Some lore we picked up along the way in no particular order... Along a lot of the secondary roads throughout Ireland you see various road signs indicating mileage to various destinations. It became obvious after a while that a lot of them were less than 100% accurate. It seems that many times the distances were arrived at by just asking the guy who happened to be passing by how far it was to the next stop. If he said 6 miles, 6 it was. If 3 miles later the next guy said 4 miles, that's what they put up. So you just take them with a grain of salt. The English versions of Irish place names came about pretty much the same. The English ran the country for 2 or 3 hundred years and as they build up maps, they would ask a local person to name a place & then try to represent the Irish sound with English spelling. In general then, the English names give a reasonable idea of the original Irish names. There's a lot of variation though since some English had a lot of trouble understanding the Irish & some Irish sounds don't translate well. So when you see something that ends in a 'y' or an 'ick', it most likely derives from an Irish name ending in 'aig'. Sometimes the result was down right funny as in the town called Templeboy in English... the Irish meaning had nothing to do with temples or boys.

I can't do a wrap without one more comment on Irish roads. I wasn't kidding the other day when I said Adams Road is better than some of the secondary highways in Ireland. There were some which I swear were never graded at all. They just laid the road bed right over the humps and dips. So even though they were very narrow, there was no real danger from meeting the other guy head-on because neither of us could go over about 40 MPH and stay on the road at all. On the other hand, some of the well laid primary highways are real dangerous because they are so smooth you can really cruise. Then you come up behind a tractor or local driver going really slow & you try to pass. The protocol here is it is OK to go over into the other lane on wider roads even if there is traffic coming from the opposite direction if there is usually a wide paved shoulder; the other traffic is expected to move to the edge to make way. But sometimes there is traffic passing a slow truck coming the other way too & you find yourself both straddling the centerline. Oops! Anyway, I tended to be very cautious about passing in those circumstances, but I can't say the same for some of the Irish speed demons!

Well, it's hard to summarize in a few paragraphs what was a wonderful trip. We had so many great experiences, met so many nice people, covered so much ground: over 2000 miles in a country that's only 200 or 300 miles from end to end. I don't expect to see or do much in Scotland. I'll have a bit of free time late today, but that's it except for evenings before I fly out Friday morning. I will be glad to get home though... 4 weeks is a long trip.

4/14 - Memorable meals?!?

My second night in Scotland and all I can say is: I miss Irish cooking! The Irish seem to have really focused on providing good tourism services across the board. Everyone is just great and their restaurants are in general quite good along with B&Bs, etc. On the other hand, this hotel is a dump! I'm in Ayr which is a small city on the west coast of Sccotland. As a city, I think it has potential, but the two meals I've had here leave me with even a worse opinion of the country than the hotel. Last night I ate at a pub down the street. All the Irish pub meals I had were good & some were damn good. This place obviously just dropped the chicken kiev & chips directly from the freezer into the fat. Yuk! And tonight I ordered a steak with a "French" peppercorn sauce at a family style restaurant recommended by a guy at work. It left me feeling abused! I think my gums are swollen! I never ate anything so hot (spicy) in my life, not even in Bangkok. There was nothing French about that sauce! I downed 2 pints just getting thru the steak after scraping off as much sauce as I could. I suppose I should just have walked away from it, but I don't think I realized how bad it was until I stopped chewing & realized my mouth hurt. Hope my innards don't react too violently tonight. I started thinking back to if I ever had a good meal in this part of the world. I think I have, but I'm afraid my opinion has been poisoned now (along with my mouth)!

The folks here warned me last week about this hotel, but we were never able to connect up to get it changed. And I didn't know where else to go, so I just made sure there was no obvious wild life in the room & took it. I think the Scots ought to send some people across the Irish Sea to get an idea how to do business in the travel trade. Tomorrow I move to a Hilton near Edinborough; maybe the mainstream hotels over here are better... I hope!

No time to do much sight seeing here. Last night it took me an hour to find the hotel which is on Burns Statue Square in the home town of Robert Burns. Wouldn't you expect the home town of Robbie to have a sign somewhere pointing the way to his statue? Or the square? Dream on... After I finally found it & convinced myself to stay here, I din't feel like heading back out to find the sights. I walked around the square though & thought I would finally catch some traditional Irish music at O'Briens (yes I know it's Scotland), but they were advertizing a band as like U2 & the Cranberries, so it seemed like something to check out. I got to the pub just before 9 (the advertized starting time) only to see the band packing up. Don't know the skinny, but no band. Tonight I worked till past 7, so forget touring. Tomorrow night I drive across to the East side, so will at least see some of the countryside since I will take the secondary highway to get there.

4/15 - Loose Ends & a Prayer

On my drive east across Scotland tonight I was musing about stuff and I thought of a couple of subjects I haven't really covered yet. I was reminded of the first, sheep, by all the tiny day old lambs I saw frolicking in the pastures. We saw loads of them across Ireland too. This seems to be prime lambing season in this part of the world. They are as cute as toys and it is just a joy to see them hopping up and down in what must be just a celebration of being alive. This is probably Nirvana for sheep anyway. Endless green rolling hills, cool temperatures... It was kind of fun in Ireland on some of the secondary roads to see them grazing along at their own pace along the shoulders, some times ambling down the middle of the highway with no sense of urgency.

The other topic is beer. I have really enjoyed the stouts & ales over here (as always). In Ireland my favorite is Murphy's stout & it seemed like a couple of my Irish friends were sort of quizzical that I preferred it over Guiness, the national drink. But I find Guiness to have a slight bitterness that Murphy's lacks. When I couldn't always find Murphy's (more regional, brewed in Cork), I went for Smithwicks, which is an ale I discovered that I like just as much. It wasn't until about the 3rd pub that I was told it is pronounced Smithix. Oh well. I will probably never grasp British pronunciation. Glouschester is Glowster for example. They don't just have silent letters, they have whole missing syllables.

The Hilton here in Livingstone (Dr. L, I presume? You know he was from around here...) is a big improvement over the Station Hotel in Ayr, at least on the inside. But it lacks the architectural style, being basically modern block house vs Victorian red sandstone. There must be a lot of the red sandstone around here somewhere because it is dominant in Ayr & several towns I passed through on the way here. Imagine building a whole town out of Grand Canyon stone... that's what it seemed like.

One more thing... thought you might enjoy the following, we picked it up at a restaurant in Ireland:

A Prayer for Tourists

Heavenly Father, Look down on us, your humble, obedient tourist servants, who are dooomed to travel this earth, taking photographs, mailing postcards, buying souvenirs and walking around in drip dry underware.

Protect us from surly taxi drivers, avaricious porters and unlicensed guides.

Give us the wisdom to tip correctly in currencies we do not understand. Forgive us for under-tipping out of ignorance and over-tipping out of fear.

And when our voyage is over and we return to our loved ones, grant us the favor of finding someone who will look at our home movies and listen to our stories, so that our lives as tourists will not have been in vain.

Amen.

4/18 - Wrapping another one

Somewhere near the North Pole...

Actually over Hudson Bay according to the monitor. I just looked out the window to see if I could tell where we are. Nothing but ice as far as I can see, except for a few small snowy islands & some gaps that are kind of shaped like rivers with tributaries. Wonder why they form like that. A little earlier we crossed over Greenland & I saw the glaciers & fjords just as I had last summer when I was returning from Europe. It reminded me of the mood I was in coming home from that hectic trip. I had to defer getting into it because I was watching Mars Attacks, which I had not seen before. What a mixed bag! But it did have some funny moments.

Anyway I'm thinking again how fortunate I am to be in this position. This was a very enjoyable trip, especially with the vacation in Ireland, having Martha along & not being so rushed. It looks like I may have quite a bit of travel in the coming months. I go to the Far East again in 2 weeks for probably 3 weeks. I've got a request to go to China, the other site this time, so hopefully it would be a more enjoyable trip. Also a request to come back to N. Ireland in a couple months; I hope the IRA & the Protestants aren't in open war by then. And there is a potential trip to Bangalore, India, that is starting to be discussed.

With all that, I'm wondering if I am going to be able to spend enough time at home this summer. We hope to get some real work done around the house. It has to be painted & we also want to redo the kitchen, hall & living room. Hard to manage all that from the other side of the planet. I have a concern about my "other" job... getting everyone to do their homework on fixing the millenium problems with our systems. I noticed on this trip that with full working days at various plants & then getting dinner, sometimes going out ro working out, it was very hard to devote time to the other job. As the weeks go by that gets more urgent too (the one software project with a deadline that can't slip), so I may be forced to cut back on travel.

Anyway, I guess I am going to try to get some sleep. I got up at 4:30 England time to catch the first leg of this flight & by the time I get home it will be 4 Pacific... 20 hours later.