End of Fiesta.

Another AIBF comes to an end with all flying cancelled on the last day due to high winds. In all we did not fly on three days due to wind (2) and rain. The rest were great flying days. I managed a flight on Tuesday and had another great one, although the landing was pretty boring, a soft one with a couple of hops and a gentle stand-up landing. I much prefer when we come in at over 20mph and bounce, hit, crash and drag along the ground. When you walk away from those the adrenaline is certainly pumping.


We flew south of the field



past the balloon museum,



Over other balloons,


and little boxes laid out in neat rows, how boring,

Glad I don't live in places like this.

Looking back more were taking off,


Later that day when we were back at the field Keith was approached by a guy who asked if we could fly a banner in memory of a US marine killed in Afghanistan. As Keith and Tina are both ex-marines, and fly a flag from the back of the chase truck, they readily agreed. All we know about the marine is that he was called Sebastian, came from Santa Fe and died about 6 weeks ago. We took some pictures of the balloon flying the banner and Tina will try to find the man's mother who gave the banner to the guy who passed it to us.

In memory of Sebastian USMC, RIP.

The last week seems to have taken a lot longer as getting up hours before dawn, having 2 breakfasts a day as well as multiple naps daily stretches ones concept of time.
It affects some worse that others.

Ray taking another nap!

Sometimes looking out from the field it seems that the whole sky is filled with balloons


Finally the best banner seen on the back of a chase vehicle was this one showing that with age comes enlightenment:

Fiesta

On my holidays again ....... when am I not I hear you ask :-)

Had a few days in England where I visited the Blue Anchor in Helston whilst staying with my friend Robin.

Robin

Fiesta started with a pretty good day. Up at 03:30, to the field by 05:30 for breakfast which consisted of green chillie chicken soup which was very good.

Dawn patrol took off by 06:45 before sun-up and flew in all directions as there was a box forming.

Dawn Patrol

For those who do not know a box forms when the drain winds coming from the mountains are in the opposite direction from the ground winds. Today the ground winds were from the South whilst the winds higher up were from the north. This enabled many balloons to fly over the field a few times.

With The first two days always being mass assencion days, for the weekend crowds, we were in the second wave of over 500 balloons registered.

Mass ascension

After seeing the first wave fill the skies and head off into the distance,

The first wave goes

We inflated and launched Keith in SkyAngel off into the wide blue yonder.

Keith, Dennis and Sandra in SkyAngel

Amost there.

It has finally happened - I have sold the house. Exchanged contracts last Thursday and have to be out by Wednesday 1st July.

Have a busy weekend with the boys coming round and getting what they want in the way of furniture and stuff. Lorcan wants my bed so I will be on the floor for a few days, but so what I have slept in worse situations.

Just have to push her to get the divorce finalised now and I will be free, for a while.

Nearly there...

The house saga is slowly coming to a close. We have agreed a price and signed contracts, although she decided to dig in her heels one more time and threatened not to sign as she would not 'be rushed' into moving out. Can't quite see that one as the house has been on the market for over 30 months and we accepted this offer just after I went to China for 5 weeks.

Anyway we are awaiting contract exchange which hopefully should be this week and completion in a fortnight.

Freedom awaits......

Enough for now, three posts in one morning and my fingers are getting worn out, must away to the Blue for some libation.....

Wembley.... again.

On my return to England I met up with my son in London and we went to the new Wembley stadium for the second time. This trip much more important as Millwall were there in the League one play-off final. (For those unfamiliar with the English football league system this is the old third division).

Anyway who cares why we were there the fact that we were there was enough of a reason for around 48,000 Millwall fans to cross the globe, or venture across the river, to cheer on the lads to a historic first win at the place. Previouse finals were the AWS cup in 1999 (1-0 loss) at the old Wembley and a 3-0 drubbing my Man Utd at the Millenium stadium in Cardiff in 2004.

This time it was going to be different, we were going to WIN, despite not being the in form team, having lost to scunthorpe twice during the regular season, having a young team who had never played there before where the opposition were there earlier this season in the paint pot final (Johnsons paint trophy), or having played in front of such a huge crowd. A record for League one play-off finals 59661.

Crowd segregation - Millwall to the left. Again we completely dominated the crowd with over 80% of the support, like a very big home game.

After going a goal behing against the run op play we hauled ourselves back into it through goals by Gary Alexander,

The first having been described as the best seen at the new stadium to date, a 30 yard screamer into the far top corner, Alexander on right of picture..

The second a header just beating the keeper and crawling over the line.

This was as good as it got. Two silly mistakes at the back, one a goalkeeping howler left us on the wrong end of a 2-3 scoreline.

All in all after wanting to rip northern monkeys to shreds for a few hours, which you will be pleased to hear I did not act upon as I was playing the responsible parent as Lorcan was even worse than me. Probably as I have 30 years more of Millwall letting me down than he has and although it still hurts I am slowly becoming used to it.

Surreal moment of the day came back at the underground station where I found myself going down the stairs side by side with a guy I once spent 29 hours in jail, in Cleethorpes, with. A story for another time, although some may have heard it already.

Roll on next season..........

Journey into the unknown.

Some journeys are real eye-openers!

After finishing in Qingdao we headed for Chongming County, an Island off of Shanghai. A journey of almost epic proportions as it involved travel by car plane and boat. Getting to Shanghai was the easy part, a taxi and a plane, done thousands of times each day.

On arrival at Pudong we, John and I, foolishly went looking for a hotel shuttle bus as we thought the hotel was in Shanghai. John had been told that when the initial install had been done the guys had to get a ferry every day to the site. How wrong can you get!!!

After finding that the only shuttle busses serviced the two hotels next to the airport we secured a taxi only to find that at an international airport they spoke chineese only. This is where mobile phones really come into their own as we gave the driver the hotel details and he just called.

An hour later we were unceremoniously dumped out of the taxi onto the street somewhere in Shanghai. Baffled and confused we watched helplessly as our luggage was transferred to another car. What can one do when language is a barrier but shrug and go with the flow. The second taxi then roared off onto another elevated highway and headed for the industrial part of town. we were full of trepidation with what sort of hotel we were booked into, concerned that it may be a dockside seamans mission type place handy for the ferry and full of working girls!

Fears relieved somewhat as we sailed on past the docks and headed for the power stations. Finally we parked up in a queue of traffic waiting for a ferry, the taxi was taking us across to the island.

Thankfully not by this boat....

...but by this one instead.

Another link to Sierra Leone in that these are the only times I have has to get a boat to a work site yet.

After chugging an hour and a half across one of the busiest waterways in the east, if not the world, dodging an assortment of craft from huge bulk carriers to little coastal tramp steamers we arrived in Chongming which did not look all together too bad as it seemed lively enough and a busy little town.

Didn't really matter what the town was like as the driver drove straight through heading for the countryside as if a brigade of taliban were on our tails. Seems that once you are away from civilisation there are no speed limits except for the vehicle's own limitations. The guy was clearly beyond his and I was just thankful that the taxi wasn't new or we may not have made our destination. Was also pleased that the roads were mainly straight so not too many turns where we were grabbing for the 'fuck' handles, you know the ones above the door you grab and scream 'OH FUCK' when hurtling round corners to stop rear seat passengers from injuring each other.

After what seemed like forever, and at least 5 stops for directions we eventually were dumped out at what must surely be the remotest hotel in China. If you had a map of the middle of nowhere then this place would not even be marked on it, it was beyond there.


If it wasn't for the trees I swear you would be able to see the edge of the world!

To top it off and make it seem even more remote it was a pretty big place,



with its own lake.....


.... empty swimming pool.....


....... gym in a corridor......

.....and one other guest......


...who was a noisy little bugger that was up at the crack of dawn shouting and hollering as if there was no-one else around to disturb.

So if you ever find yourself in the Shanghai Dong Tang International Conference Centre remember the following

1. It is not in Shanghai,
2. It is not international as Chineese is about the only thing spoken
3. What little English is used mainly consists of NO.
4. Take a shotgun for the bloody cockerel.

Spent 10 days there installing equipment in a cable station 10 minutes drive away. Would have been 20 but for all taxi drivers on the island thinking they were competing in an F1 race.

Had fun though as even at world's end one has to make the best of things. The guys, John and Sean, were good to work with but eventually became fed up with my relentless quest for knowlege. After a week of 'why do they do it this way?' and 'Wouldn't it be better if we did it that way?' and other annoying questions I was finally told 'Don't ask why, just install the bloody stuff'. Kept forgetting why I was there.

Qingdao... contiued

Qingdao - pronounced Chin dao - is not as plastic as I first thought. Had the wrong impression as we are staying in the business district. Which is brand new with nice wide streets and plenty of tower blocks, not very interesting.

A couple of days ago we went 'downtowm' and found the old heart of the city. Lots of German archeticture as it was occupied up until 1949. The govenors house, a church, a cathedral and the prison still stand although they are now used by the communist party.

Many of the sights that were shown on a little map were either well hidden or in different locations as we could not find them. Gave up looking after a few hours and went to Old Jack's Cafe a great little bar near the hotel.

What we did find was the following.

A cathedral, who's I don't know as the dedication was in chineese, but think St Mary as there was a statue to her in the garden.

A pagoda at the end of the pier with a lighthouse on the distant island.

A German hunting and fishing lodge overlooking No 2 beach, yes another beach with that name., although this one is officially called Taiping bay.

No 2 beach Qingdao, not to be confused with....

No 2 beach Sierra Leone.

Down on the beach and all over the rocks there were what seemed like hundreds of wedding couples with photographers posing for the pictures of their happy day. Not sure if it was a special day for weddings or it was a daily occurance but there were an awful lot of them for a daily occurance, unless every couple the weds in Qingdao has to get their photo taken on the beach under an old bylaw or ancient charter or somesuch!

Away from the beach area, which was right downtown as Qingdao sits on a promontory that juts out into Jiaozhou bay, a natural deep water harbour on the Yellow sea, we found a mixture of old and new buildings. Like most cities some were nice and some ugly, others just plain bizzare.

Mixture of old and new.

The culture market, newish in an old style. In here were many stalls selling pearls and watches at dirt cheap prices.


Bizzarely there was a family of three bridges going nowhere, and indeed coming from nowhere. Maybe a job training exercise for apprentice concrete pourers. The apprentice demolition team will be by later to take them down, maybe?

Chineese fortune tellers on the steps by the bridges to nowhere. Maybe they know what it is all about, although they won't tell unless palms are crossed with silver Yuans and a translator is employed.

All in all a pretty interesting place, but full of little chineese people and some of the worst driving I have seen outside Italy and Cairo.

At last an offer.

The day before I left, Saturday 18th, we had a third viewing of the house by a couple from Mullion, this time with their builder. This arrangement sounded very positive as they wanted to get estimates from him on work they would like to do to convert part of the house into a self-contained flat. Unfortunately the mad woman was in one of her moods caused by Lorcan an I offering a spare room to one of his cousins who had recently returned from living in Wales and was sleeping in a tent in a friends back garden. With all the spare space in our house I could not see a problem. But yet again I overestimated her capacity for compassion. She went off on one on the Friday night when we arrived home and wouldn't let go. When she is drunk she can be like a dog with a bone. Both Lorcan and myself having been down the pub for a few hours probably didn't help with her mood.

Saturday morning with the crucial third viewing looming she was threatening to put a stop to it, just out od spite. Shee seems hell bent on staying in the house and forcing us to co-habit forever. Trying hard to understand her motives in this ploy, as she constantly reminds me that I am her biggest problem and that she hates me, I asked her if '"she was still so much in love with me that she couldn't bear to have the house sold so we would have to spend the rest of out days together" as I cannot afford to live elsewhere while I am still paying the mortgage and the bills. If looks could kill I would not be writing this now but a fine wake would have been held at the Blue.

Anyway she finally calmed down and hid in her room whilst the prospective buyers came around.

The Monday after, once I was in China, they made an offer. After some negotiating on the price, and a lot of convincing the mad woman that we would not get a better one as the last one was around 18 months ago, we agree a price and with fingers crossed we will be sold up and on our seperate ways within a couple of months. Although she is still banging on about not signing any papers and will scupper the sale. God knows what is going through her head as she seems determined to scupper any chance we have on moving on with our lives.

Anyway she does make life a little bit interesting and looking back, even while in the middle of this madness I have to laugh.

Hammers and spanners....

Back in work now and instead of the cerebral stuff I have been doing for the last few years, audits on GSM networks and like stuff, I am back on the nuts and bolts and hammers and spanners of installation. Good fun and no need to think too much. No real pressure as I am number three of a two man team plus a site supervisor. I have ended up in Qingdao, China. This seems to be a very modern city with many tower blocks and lots of new ones going up. It is the site of the olympic sailing reggatta of 2008 and they seem to still be building the venue.

Olypic flame.

Entrance to sailing venue.

Downtown from hotel window

View from the site.

A new stadium being built along with flats.

On the way here I had a few hours in London whilst getting my visa, for all you that have never been, or those who have but can't get back here as some pictures of the west end.

The new statue along the Mall to the dead queen mum.

Horse guards and the eye.

A dead war hero (Nelson) in Trafalgar Square.

Two old cadgers having a chat.
(FDR and Churchil)

Another trip over.

Just returned from another trip to Sierra Leone where as usual I had a great time.
Spent a lot of time this visit laying in the beach soaking up the sun, although I did identify a business opportunity that I will definitely follow up on, more of that once it gets under way. Suffice to say that the authorities in Freetown have made it much easier to start a business there than it was previously. All rides on selling the house here in the UK and getting rid of the missus who is still stringing out the divorce. Not sure what the record for streaching out a divorce is but it is now 2 and a half years since she started proceedings and I have a decree nisi to show for it.

Saw some fun things whilst laying on Lumley beach, first there were the fishermen who I have mentioned earlier. Here they are landing the catch,


And stowing the nets,


It seems an awful lot of work for a few fish,


But these ended up on my plate that evening.


Other fun things seen on and around the beach include a couple of spiders,



many lizards like this,


and this.