next entryThe Bitch Is Back!
Vista Extrodinare! What I got to see most evenings
Well you see I was goaded into using that title by a familiar and well liked reader, so I thought I'd take the bait and blat it up there for the sake of humanity and humour :)
And so, alas, I am home. Back from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, removed from the snow lined countryside and extracted from SuperSize portions... I had a wonderful time it has to be said, and despite the 16.5 hours on a plane and 11 hours spent in a car, on my arse travelling to and from said destination, it was worth the numb butt and back ache :)
It may be surprising to hear that despite being some 3000 miles from home, I stayed far removed from the tourist side of things, though we did have time to go see Smith Mountain Lake which was beautiful. In all honesty just being nestled on the side of another mountain, surrounded by forest and doing sweet FA was good enough for me, after all I wasn't there to relax, I had much more important things to the details of which are sufficiently boring to not divulge on here.
Other highlights for me included a trip to IHOP where I got food sweats (if there was one thing I had to do in the US was to indulge in some american pancakes!), and participating in a meatfeast at Texas Steak House who may I add have a rather zealous view on portion sizes :) I also got to shop for clothes whilst I was there which was super great considering there are not the constraints on sizing that we have in the UK, it's also shed loads cheaper too. So I'm now fully stocked up on decent underwear, jeans and tops.
Another day we took a trip out to a railway model shop and yet again the variety was the thing that struck me the most - lots of choice and a fantastic layout up and running for all to have a look at - it even had kids flying kits, dogs chasing people, bulldozers digging up the road, flashing neon signs, smoke from chimneys, moving cars and trains etc etc I could keep the list going for ever! You may be wondering why I went to a model shop, well the answer is simple. I thought I could pick some stuff up for Phil for his birthday, the prime intention being that a train would be a good idea since they are cheaper in the US and the HO scale is virtually the same as OO in the UK. My plan was somewhat scuppered however upon being informed by a very helpful salesman that despite the fact the HO trains would run on OO track, because of the voltage/current differences between the US/UK it might not be a fab idea to try it.
Being a train newbie I decided to take his advice and settled on getting some more scenery bits for Phil, including some "fat people" and "park bums" to dot around ;)
We also got snowed in for a couple of days, and had I'd say about a foot of snow in a very short period. Other weather curiosities include the fact that the temperature went as low as -17 C at night and as high as 20 C in the day, and you could still see snow on the ground. Which I found very odd. The forecasting system in the US is way better than here in the UK, it seems much more accurate and updated that the bog standard crapola reports we get from the 100 untrained monkeys locked up in the MET office :)
In summary then I'll do a comparison list, US v UK:
| US: | UK: |
| Everyone is very polite and helpful in shops | You get happy slapped for even thinking about bothering a shop assistant |
| Everything is big including houses, cars, chicken breasts, eggs and garlic bulbs | Big is bad, expensive, frowned upon and the only indicator of wealth |
| It's cheap, in a good way! Finger in the air... I'd say everything is about half the price we pay in the UK, maybe even cheaper | It's expensive! Nuff said... theiving government. |
| There's no shame in asking for a doggy bag after a meal, in fact it's expected if you leave anything edible on your plate | Doggy bag? Are you on the bread line or just a tight bastard? |
| Religion, everyone's doing it (or so it seems from the number of churches I saw) | No where near as devout (I include myself in that category) |
| Traffic jams are a thing of myth and mystery, as are roundabouts | No one's day is complete unless 1/8 of it is spent sitting in a queue of equally frustrated commuters who's misery is compounded only by the fact that the root cause of the delay is a set of broken traffic lights on a roundabout 30 miles away in the wrong direction |
Posted by Abi on the February 26, 2006 9:29 PM
With a picture of the Troll mountains under that title ...
Pity you couldn't get down to the really nice part of the Blue Ridge, in North Carolina. I particularly like Grandfather Mountain. Of course, we have a vacation place near there, so . . .
Religion? sorta depends on where you are . . . but also remember there are approximately seventeen mutually incompatible sects of every major (i.e. Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, Episcopal/CofE) religion. As they couldn't possibly cooperate, they each have their own facilities.
Traffic jams - You got lucky, coming into Dulles I imagine, so were spared DC and traffic which can be every bit as bad as anything you've ever described, and worse. Plus - if you think your mss transit is inconvenient, you should try what passes for such in DC.