I spent some time in jail!

A Coyote in the woods.

I am sorry I have not posted for a while, I find it really hard to keep the blog up to date over the summer time, there is so many things to do and see and not enough time to spend on writing blogs (although this excuse doesn't really stand up, as I have found plenty of time to stare at the computer screen and rekindle my love of championship manager 2007!).

Have I been arrested?

The weather has undergone a wonderful transformation over the last few months, August has been gloriously sunny with just enough summer storms to keep things cool. I wasn't so happy with things around my birthday however, when our air conditioner decided to become as effective as a chocolate teapot and had to be replaced, thank goodness we did not have to pay for it - at least not in cash - though we certainly paid for it in other ways. The temperature outside was in the 90s, and the apartment was instantly transformed into the Mojave desert thanks to the sunshine pouring through the large windows we have running the entire length of the apartment and practically baking us alive. It is fixed now and the annoying thing is you know that in a few weeks we would do anything to be so warm, as the windows have the opposite effect in the winter time, graciously allowing all the heat to rapidly leave our apartment. Except for the faulty air conditioner I had a great birthday, Amanda made me the most delicious cake in the morning and then we went to walk it off with a nice stroll through the woods to find some caves!

My cake!

It was as delicious as it looked!

Amanda floating at the waterfall

Is this the first sign of Autumn? or do I mean fall?

So you may have noticed the title of this blog.... well don't worry (or unfortunately!) I have not been arrested, although Amanda did take me to prison for my birthday. Amanda and I both have a not so secret soft spot for the TV show Ghost Adventures and as we were looking for a fun day trip decided to follow in the footsteps of Zack, possibly the greatest ghost explorer of our generation,  We went to Moundsville, West Virginia to visit the old state penitentiary and wow! What an amazing place! After a long car journey, made longer due to a failure of the sat nav system at a critical juncture (or possibly this was a ghost, sapping all the energy from the phone to enable it to appear as an appirition in front of us later in the day?) and several arguments later the West Virginia penitentiary finally came into view. The imposing structure seems to loom over the town and does bring on a sense of real foreboding. This sense is only deepened when you walk inside the prison and are greeted by Old Sparky, the old electric chair responsible for 8 executions before it was deemed inhumane as a form of capital punishment. How death by lethal injection or the idea of capital punishment in general can possibly be considered humane is beyond me, but that is for another day.

We had an excellent guide showing us round who positively beamed at the prospect of the of the stories he had in store for us, One of my stories happened during one of the many riots and involved an officer being cooked in a huge pot of beans, He was busy cooking a massive pot of baked beans in the kitchen when the riot started and one of the inmates decided this was the prefect opportunity to push him into the pot and put the lid on!! Here are some pictures from our trip, including a potential ghost sighting, can you spot the ghost?

The West Virginia Penitentiary 

Possible evidence of ghosts?

In a continuation of the rather morbid theme Amanda and myself also visited the Lakeview Cemetery on the East side of the city last week. It is a really incredibly and extremely large place that one morning just can't do justice too and we shall definitely visit again! During the early parts of the 20th Century Cleveland truly was a great place of wealth and opulence and this is on show all around the Lakeview cemetery which is home to the family plots for many of the cities leading and richest families. The highlight of the cemetery is definitely the Garfield memorial, President from 1881 until his assasination later in the year. The Memorial was built with no expense spared to rival any in Washington DC and is a really beautiful, ornately decorated monument as the pictures below show.

View from the top of the Garfield Memorial.

I also included here a picture of the Rockefeller Obelisk and a picture of a nice little chapel, in which everything in the interior was designed by the Tiffany company of New York City

I have got myself some time off over the next week as Laura, Tim, Ali and Charlotte from England are coming out to see me! I cant wait to see them and have got a zillion things planned, it is going to be a lot of fun :D 

P.S Laura and Tim are currently embarking on a trip around the world... without flying! They are going to be using all manner of transport including camper vans and cargo ships to get them from A to B and have given themselves 80 weeks to do it! I am extremely jealous of them, it sounds like a lot of fun! They have their own blog and you can read about there adventures here...    https://aroundtheworldineightyweeks.wordpress.com/

Cincinnati

Countdown is over!

At work in the Christmas raffle this year I won a free stay at a hotel in Cincinnati and now that it is May and there has seen some substantial improvement in the weather Amanda and me thought it was time to take advantage! Ohio is said to be a almost perfect mini representation of America - with the industry in the North, the great plains in the Middle and the south of the state being very similar in terms of lifestyle and culture to the Southern USA . You can certainly see this while driving across the state, (it is over 300 miles from Cleveland to Cincinnati) at one point during the journey the landscape was so flat it would make East Anglia look like Mount Everest... I could see for miles and managed to count about 11 seperate farms out the window with nothing, not even a tree between them. I also got to see some staggeringly bad driving, a blue car in front of us seemed to be driving quite erratically and on closer inspection the reason for this seemed to be the fact the driver was eating breakfast with a bowl and spoon, occasionally lunging forward to put one hand on the wheel to adjust the course of the vehicle. As a word of advice if the driver happens to read this article, next time can I suggest you eat breakfast at home and do your makeup in the car, at least then you can keep one hand on the wheel! When you combine this with the man who decided to load the entire garden furniture selection of Homebase (or home Depot for Americans) into the back of his pickup truck with a broken tailgate tied together with a piece of completely inadequate red rope it is a miracle we made it to Cincinnati and back in one piece! In fact if anyone needs some nice garden chairs or perhaps some pillows or a barbeque there are plenty of them strewn across I71 Northbound just past Akron, along with a lot of dented cars, angry drivers and a seemingly abandoned pickup truck with a broken tailgate and a couple more garden chairs in the back.

Mt Adams

Once we had arrived safely we had a lot  of fun!!!! we started off by parking downtown and then heading up Mt Adams to the art gallery. Things went a little awry here and there was some discontent in the camp, it was very hot and humid with storm clouds forming  overhead with the rather pathetic looking Mt Adams transforming itself into Mt McKinley before our very eyes! it was a horrific climb made worse by our wrong turns to a abandoned swimming pool and our less than pleasant diversion through the car park of the local cinema.

Mt Adams after an hours grueling climb

Abandoned swimming pool

Had we followed Amanda's suggestion instead of mine it is entirely possible that we would have enjoyed a 10  minute stroll up the hill while enjoying views out over the city and the Ohio river instead of the hour long Hot and Horrible hike which we... erm... decided to take. Once at the art galllery our mood improved after we found out entry was free and even more pleased when we discovered this delightful little courtyard where you could sit undercover (as the threatening storm had now arrived, Thank god it started after we had arrived at the gallery!!) and watch the raindrops fall into a nice garden while enjoying a cup of tea or a coffee for just £1!

The art gallery was great fun, Amanda loved the total look exhibition all about the collaboration between fashion designer Rudi Gernreich and the model Peggy Moffitt, he was the first American fashion designer who showed the knees!! I enjoyed the section of Pete Rose (a Cincinnati Reds baseball player) paintings by Andy Warhol.

A nice little house in Mt Adams

Me getting very wet in Cincinnati

After the art gallery we enjoyed a nice 10 minute stroll in the rain back down Mt Everest oops I mean Adams to  the Cincinnati institution that is Arnolds, it is the oldest tavern in the city dating back to the 1850s and I know what you British are thinking, well don't scoff for America this is very very old indeed! They had the classic barfood menu including a greek pasta dish which has apparently been on the menu since the 30's, I opted for this and thank goodness it seems the ingredients didn't date from the 30's as well, it was delicous, especially when washed down with some local pre prohibition lager! yummy! We followed dinner with some pudding from another great local institution - Graeters ice cream! I had the Buckeye ice cream - chunks of peanut butter in a deep chocolate ice cream and it was gorgeous! here I am eating it in the rain in front of the countdown to the baseball All Star  Game which shall be happening in the city in  a couple of months!

Arnold's Tavern

Me enjoying my Graeter's ice  cream!

After Ice cream we went to watch the ballgame which coincidentally happened to be going that night between the Cincinnati Reds and the World, yes I did say World (this is because there is a Canadian team that also plays in the American baseball league) Champion San Francisco Giants. Although the use of the world world may be questionable what is unquestionable is that San Francisco are indeed the Major League Basebal champions and they played like it, destroying Cincinnati 11-2 in the rain :(

The Bench brothers battling with an umbrellla

After enjoying our free nights stay at the hotel we had a delicious complementary breakfast added on courtesy of the rude and inept Reservations manager Basil Fawtly who took 2 months to respond to my simple and numerous requests to book a room and then had the cheek to say "because you say you have called seven times I shall include a free breakfast". He never apologised but we gladly ate the breakfast. After refueling with  scrambled eggs it was time for us to hit the road and head for the Zoo, which is easier than it sounds when using Amanda's 'smart' or as it shall now be known 'Stupid' phone which insisted on sending us to the Zoo exit and not the entrance which was over a mile away. 'Stupid' seemed to have real trouble in Cincinnati, on another occasion the sat nav wanted us to enter the highway, cross 20 lanes of traffic and then exit the highway all in about 10 yards and then when we failed to achieve  this impossible direction informed us to "travel southwest and then turn left"..... what? Next time we shall buy a old school yet reliable map of Cincinnati, if they still make them!

There is a snow Leopard in this picture, can you find it?

Can you spot the Gorilla? luckily he decided no to throw anything at us :)

The zoo turned out to be excellent, even the now daily rainstorm which is such an integral part of summer in the American Midwest could not dampen our spirits! They had such an excellent array of animals to see all in wonderful natural exhibits including peacocks that just roam free! I thought it was funny how this one decided to show its back as soon as Amanda went to take the picture of me but turned back around immediately as I took a picture of Amanda! 

All in all we had a great weekend in Cincinnati, It seems smaller than Cleveland but is a much more bustling place with lots of energy. Mt Adams reminded me of San Francisco with all the winding lanes and steep hills with the glimpses of the skyline and all the bridges over the Ohio River in the background. If you ever happen to find yourself in Southern Ohio I highly recommend it for a visit :)

Countdown set for our next adventure!!

Norwegians can be funny!

Hello! The film festival is currently going on in town and I am delighted to announce that I have made a new discovery, Norwegians it seems can be funny after all! After all of those bleak, depressing (though excellent) crime shows to come out of Scandinavia the comedy 'Chasing Berlusconi'  really bucks thee trend, It is the story of Bjarte, a harness racer who has lost his winning touch and comes upon bad times financially, The final  straw seems to be when he is issued the horse 'Blackie' a pathetic looking horse that consistently finds itself at the back of the pack. Keeping his cool, Bjartie hatches a plan to resurrect his career and finances, He is  going to drug Berlusconi - the favourite for the big race, put his blind faith in the 2nd favourite and reap the financial rewards. Things don't go quite to plan however, as when his partners in crime go to drug Berlusconi, the horse falls backwards, sitting on and trapping the hapless criminal! Things really go downhill from there for Bjarte and the end sequences had us in absolute fits, I am still chuckling to myself now, 3 days later! I was going to include the trailer for you to watch but I can only find it in Norwegian with no subtitles however if you ever happen to be in Norway or come across this movie I highly recommend it :)

Here is a picture of Bjarte the harness racer

It has gotten really cold again, it had been warming  up nicely but yesterday the temperature dropped to -8!! Mustn't grumble however, as Wednesday will be a high of 15 degrees, how are you supposed to arrange to do anything when the weather is so changeable? I suspect all of April will be  like this then in may we can finally start relaxing in the long overdue sunshine :)

Cleveland is a beautiful city to visit however for the longest time has been the butt of jokes among the American media and public - not helped by the terrible sports teams and that bright and sunny morning of June 22nd 1969 when Clevelanders awoke to find all the oil and debris that had collected on the surface of  the Cuyahoga river as it meandered through Cleveland alight in a blazing inferno. just checkout this picture, I love the way the picture combines the old with the new. Environmental progress really has come a long way since 1969  and many people say the river fire was the event that triggered a national change of conscience towards environmental issues. Maybe we could do with another river fire now!

Anyway it seems that finally Cleveland is getting some decent national press and I though I would share a recent article published in the Boston Globe, the content is a little expensive for my taste, but I like the pictures and the positive vibe the city receives.

Cleveland in the Boston Globe

For Christmas this year I was delighted to win a certificate in the raffle at work for a free weekend stay at a hotel in Cincinnati, however my enthusiasm for the place is slowly starting to disintegrate and collapse under the weight of the amount of entirely one way correspondence it has taken to attempt to get it booked!!! I have now called up 7 times, each time to be told the same thing, that the department manager has to confirm the weekend and that he will get back to me later that day. It has been over two weeks since my first call and I have left the manager 5 voice-mails yet I am confident that the tides may finally be changing, Yesterday I actually had a missed call from them, I was cycling to work, heard my phone ringing pulled over to answer it, saw it was a Cincinnati number and got super excited by which time it had stopped ringing. it rang once and no voice-mail was left. I don't undrstand what the problem is, why is this guy incapable of making a 10 second phone call? Anyway he has until tomorrow morning when I shall escalate the situation so if you are reading this My Dooley the reservations manager please give me a call back today... or else! :)

I am off to work now but I shall keep you informed with  the Cincinnati hotel debacle and we shall catch up soon no doubt!

P.S Don't forget to vote on Britains National Bird!

Vote for your favourite bird!

How to get yourself banned from the Post Office

Happy St Patricks Day!!!

I am delighted to announce the snow seems to have gone and is a thing of the past! February was terrible in every way (hence no blog posts), the AVERAGE temperature was -9 degrees celsius, I couldn't ride my bicycle and our heating bill was extortionate. Needless to say I am pleased February has passed and I never want to hear mention of it again. The snow melting is a wonderful thing but does create a quirky little issue - it has been  sitting on the ground for  so long (around 3 months) that now it has disappeared all the rubbish or 'trash' which has been deposited in the snow over that 3 months has suddenly reappeared and everything looks disgusting, along every road there is piles of trash and as for the field next to our school - 3 months worth of frozen dog poo has suddenly magically appeared on the grass!!

I havn't taken any decent pictures for a while but as it is St Patricks day I thought I would include some pictures of  Amanda and myself in Dublin and some animals from the Dublin Zoo!

Animal at the zoo.

I have been off work for the last two days and have had a great time! Yesterday me and Amanda went out to the zoo and purchased for the brilliant price of $60 (about £40) a years long zoo membership, meaning we can now go to the zoo for free whenever we want instead of just on Mondays when it is free to local residents and as a result is extremely crowded! It gets so cold here in the winter time that they have to send a lot of the animals on a long  vacation down to Florida till the  weather warms up so sadly we didn't get to see any bears or Zebras but most of the animals were still hanging around including all the lemurs and my mums favourite Fossa (which eats lemurs). It always makes me chuckle that the fossa is in a cage right next to the lemurs and is completely oblivious to all that tasty food hiding just a thin wall away, god help them the day the zookeeper leaves the connecting door open!

The talking parrot, just look at his beedy eye!

In other news my mums big 21st birthday is coming up at a rate of knots and although this is exciting news I am going to have to have a little grumble. I am having terrible trouble posting her present! Yesterday I managed to get myself banned from the local  post office over a pathetic little matter in which I am completely blameless. On my way to town I decided to stop off at the post office quickly to post mums present, there was nowhere close  by to lock up my bicycle and as it  is new I decided to take it into the post office with me - as with most things in America the post office is large and there is a lot of space so this was and should not have been an issue at all. Well having placed my bicycle in the corner of the store away from everything I joined the queue only to hear the one lady behind the counter nagging at me that I am not allowed to leave my bicycle in the post office, it has to go outside. I gently protested but to no avail so I left the post office and cycled it around to the extremely large car park at the back  (it had about 50 spaces) only to discover that there was nowhere, not even a tree, to lock my bicycle to.

USPS take note - here is a cycle rack in Dublin.

This annoyed me so I took my bicycle back into the post office, cunningly left it behind a door where I thought the lady wouldn't see it and rejoined the queue. I ignored several calls of 'sir' before the pressure of everyone in the large queue looking at me was too much to take and I looked up. She informed me that I wouldn't be served while my bicycle was in the building as this is a federal building and it is a health and safety hazard. I asked where exactly was I supposed to put my bicycle and how can you ban bicycles form the building without providing so much as a simple post for me to lock it too? she reiterated the same thing she said before. I asked her about the pushchair that was currently blocking the exit, maybe the children should be left outside too? she reiterated the same thing again. Well the argument escalated and to cut a long story short I am now banned and was informed that if I did not immediately leave the post office the police would be called and I would be chased out the building by an angry mob as I had been holding up the queue for about 5 minutes. when I made my escape I still had mums birthday package in my hands.

A cute red panda smiling, unlike me at the USPS!

Well, today (next day) I decided to try again to post the package but this time in a different post office and armed with a car and not a bicycle! I parked in one of the ample spaces no problem and while entering the building noticed yet again the complete lack of any facility for a cyclist. however things went quickly downhill in this post office too. I picked out a padded envelope with  which to post the present only to slightly rip the top of the seal while putting the present inside, undeterred I carried on to the front of  the queue where I asked the guy if he had some tape I could borrow  to seal the package. Unfortunately apparently this is no longer possible at the USPS(at least  according to the guy at the Lakewood post  office), they will only give you tape if you send something by special or next day delivery, regardless of whether you are spending $20 on postage. He also said that in any case he didn't have any tape but I could buy some for $7. I refused to buy any  and asked him to  look a little harder for some tape. grinning, he refused again. I backed down (keen not to be banned from yet another post office) and suggested that if he could just price up the package I will take it home, tape it up and bring it back tomorrow. This he did and then proceeded to give me about 3 sheets of stamps to put on it. The stamps would clearly not all fit on the envelope so I asked him for a barcode sticker instead but of course there was an issue with this too, "I cant possibly give you a barcoded sticker if you take the package out of the store" at which point I yet again stormed out of the post office, I still had mums birthday package in my hands.

Another weird animal at the zoo.

It seems the gentleman from the Lakewood post office makes quite a habit of being as awkward as possible. Amanda recalled a time the same guy had refused to allow her to send chocolate to me as apparently you cannot send chocolate through the post (huh?!?) she took it to a different post office and posted the chocolate no problem. I have also had an issue with  the gentleman before, my Dad is a keen stamp collector and likes to have stamps (not a barcode) on the front of the package, I was informed by this guy about a year previously that it is in fact not possible to post an international letter with stamps on it. I took it to a different post office, asked for the same thing and posted it no problem. oh wait! was that the same guy who just gave me 3 sheets of stamps to put on an international package? why yes it was! argh!

I apologise for the rant however I am pleased to have gotten it off of my chest! On a happier not did you know that in Chicago on St Patricks day they dye the river green? it looks really cool!

link to watch the Chicago river turn green

P.S A big shout out to Nanny Hart, who has now reached the grand  old age of 90!!! Happy Birthday :)

Amandas Birthday!

2 posts in 2 days! I am spoiling you! We had a absolutely brilliant day yesterday for Amanda's Birthday! The Crawford Auto Museum was fantastic! It contains a lot more that just old cars (and of those it has plenty), the first thing to greet you as you enter the museum is a huge Chief Wahoo (the Cleveland Indians mascot) who used to stand at the top of the old municipal stadium before they pulled it down. just check out the size of it in these pictures! A lot of people think it is time for the Indians to retire chief Wahoo, it is seen as a very offensive mascot to many native American Indians and I have to say I agree, I just wish they could find a better replacement logo than the block 'C' which I think is to put it bluntly quite boring. A good idea I have heard is to possibly switch back to the teams original name from way back when - the Cleveland spiders, there would be some seriously cool logos to be had with a nickname like the Spiders!

Me by Chief Wahoo.

The new Indians logo

After you have been introduced to Chied Wahoo you'll embark on a incredible journey of Americana and nostalgia, including one of the most incredible collections of cars. Amanda had told me there was a lot of cars there (she said a basement full) but I was not  at all prepared for the scale of his collection, There must have been over 100 cars in the place dating back to the early 1900s, When many of the cars were made in Cleveland before Henry Ford and Fordism monopolised the market with the first mass produced car and caused the Cleveland car market to collapse overnight. My absolute favourite of the cars was the monstrous Lincoln Continental, This thing is painted in a beautiful chrome and is absolutely massive, as can be sen from the following pictures. I cannot think of anything better to drive around in, especially with the roof down in the summer, a lack of space certainly wouldn't be an issue, you could probably fit Amanda's little 2 door Toyota Yaris in the boot as a spare car in case the Lincoln brakes down!

The Lincoln Convertible

As you can see it is extremely Looooooooooong!

Amanda loved this green Cadillac!! Other highlights of the collection in my opinion included the Ferrari California simply because I seem to remember Chris Evans getting a lot of press for buying one for an insane amount of money, apparently there are only 8 of them in North America and 14 overall so it is an exceedingly rare and beautiful car. I also loved this old wreck from 1910 which incredibly drove around the world! considering the conditions of the roads and difficulties of the terrain and just thee sheer distance involved this is an incredible achievement for the little car!!

Ferrari California

The car that went around the world in 1910

Amanda's Cadillac from 1931

Just look at all those cars!!!

After seeing the cars we went on a little guided tour of the mansion where the collection is housed, the mansion is in fact 2 mansions joined together and is one of the very few surviving houses down the old Euclid Avenue or 'Millionaires row'. This used to be regarded as one of the most beautiful and extravagant streets in the world, stretching from downtown to University circle (several miles), you can just imagine the style and opulence on show down this tree lined boulevard. Unfortunately imagine is all you can do, as progress for progress' sake has to be made and Millionaires row now consists of burger kings, Mcdonalds, a couple of brutal 60's shopping centres and several decaying factories. It is such a shame as I for one would love to see how this street once looked. 

After our little history lesson it was off to the fair and to the Euclid Beach carousel, the museum contains a fully restored carousel from the old Euclid Beach amusement park which was by all accounts the place to be seen when Cleveland was the place to be seen back in the 20's and 30's. With your entrance to the museum you get 2 free rides on the beautifully restored carousel and it was a lot of fun :)

Amanda on the Carousel

The sun is in our eyes!

The museum was full of interesting exhibits on Cleveland's history including it's time hosting the Great Lakes Exposition in 1936 when a young son decided to write this nice little note to his parents. Cleveland also used to host the national air races, and the picture below shows a model of one of the winning planes and if you look closely you can see the actual aircraft hanging in the background! One of the pictures below also show a A Tiffany stained glass window which used to stand proud in a church on Euclid Avenue (Millionaires row). The window was saved from the wrecking ball and donated to the museum by some eagle eyed residents before the church got turned into either a Burger King or more likely a part of the ever more greedy Cleveland Clinic.

That pretty much concluded our trip to the museum which as you can see I thoroughly enjoyed!  Not half as much as I enjoyed my dinner in Little Italy afterwards however! Amanda only managed to eat half of her pasta so I am hopeful I may be able to get my sticky little fingers into it for my lunch today :)

There is supposed to be over 20 cm of snow today, so I am going to stay in the warm and possibly head out  to a superbowl party this evening. Personally I think that the Seattle Patriots shall win the game. Goodbye!

The worlds first traffic light that used to stand guard at the roundabout by the art gallery.