The Yeagers’ Experiences

After 5 and 1/2 months on the run, we are finally returning home! Joe and I are so excited to be able to see all of our family and friends again. We will have our old US cell phones with us, so please give us a call.

See you soon!

Joe’s last post had a teaser at the end - the promise of a truly interesting account of our time in Wales. After waiting a week, I suppose its time to let you all in to a small secret. Wales is possibly the most fascinating principality in all of the United Kingdom. I say this not because things were obviously different. No, it was the subtle differences that added up to one very comical culture.

On first glance, Wales is a very nice area. It is largely rural with 2 big cities on the southern coast. I would liken it to living in Kansas. Outside of Kansas City there really isn’t that much besides livestock and open fields. This of course isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I found the countryside to be a very quaint place to live. At one point while we were driving through a tangle of country roads, a friendly local offered to help us get our directions sorted out. Despite having to translate his very thick Welsh accent, we did find our way to the rally that day thanks entirely to his directions.

Once you move into the cities however, you get the feeling that the urbanites are trying desperately to make up for their former sleepy lives on the farm. While eating dinner we were transfixed by the sight of scantily clad women going out for a night on the town wearing nothing but a short skirt and a tank top. Now if you have seen the pictures of our time in Wales, you will know that I had to wear 6 layers to keep warm. It was easily about 35 - 40 F with lots of wind. Yet here were these women, so desperate to look their best that they were walking down the street, huddled together for warmth, and no one had the foresight to bring even a light coat. The same thing was happening with the guys. They were all wearing shorts and short sleeved shirts. They were walking down the street gritting their teeth trying to be manly and ignore the bitterly cold weather. I can tell you that no one in their right mind in London would ever be caught dead in the cold like that. Everyone relishes a good coat/scarf combo here, and quite rightly so.

None of this seems too strange however, compared with what we saw as we were leaving. A rather hefty woman (as is about 75% of the Welsh population that we saw) was walking down the street. She actually did have a suit jacket on, but that was about it. I’m not talking about another one of those skimpy outfits, but literally…she had nothing else on. She wore some fishnet stockings a g-string to go with the jacket. I kid you not, this woman was walking down the street with no pants on and proud of it. No one on the street was staring at her either, so I can only guess that this is not that strange for Wales. She was laughing with some guys on the street and showing off her less than perfect physique and no one batted an eye!

Combine all that with the weird street signs we kept seeing (WATCH OUT FOR THE ELDERLY!!!!!), and you can see why we have a very odd snapshot of the Welsh culture. That’s not to say we won’t be back though. If anything it was the most interesting trip we have taken so far.

I fixed the problem with the comments on the pictures site (www.joeyeager.com) so feel free to post any that you would like.

To do so, there is an “Add Comment” link on the left-hand side of every page where you can add a comment to the album or picture you are viewing. There is also a “View Comments” link that shows you any comments on that item as well.

Another nice feature is the different sizes of pictures. When you are just viewing 1 photo, you will notice the picture is fairly small. To see a larger version, you can use the drop-down list on the top-right and choose something larger, or you can click “Full Size” to see the entire image as it was uploaded.

One more feature (mostly for you camera buffs) is below every picture you will notice an information section about that photo. It shows all of the settings that were used directly from my camera including shutter speed, ISO, and aperture value.

If you had not noticed, I added the random picture view to the blogsite as well (look on the right). If you see a picture you are interested in, feel free to click on it to visit it directly. I also made the width larger for the blogsite, so that should help with reading it.

Feel free to ask any questions on the comments section of this post.

This past weekend we went to the World Rally Championship, which is like the World Series of rallying. Actually, it is a circuit with several rounds of competition that take place all over the world. We went to Rally GB, which took place near Swansea ( in Wales) this year.

For those that do not know what rallying is, it’s the art of driving cars extremely fast on roads that were never designed for it. The roads are usually gravel, but they can be paved, dirt, snow, stones, brick, or sometimes nothing but mud. The cars are quite incredible: beefed up with tons of horsepower and torque, slapped with aerodynamic fins and completely gutted so they are very light, with brakes and suspensions only dreamed about. The drivers are the best in the world, with co-pilots in the passenger seat that read out specifications for every bump and bend in the road. It is truly a sight to see.

Or is it?

You see, when you watch rallying on the television, it is chock full of cars flying through the air, sliding sideways around U-turns, sinking into puddles up to their mirrors, and crashing in stupenduous ways that make those police chase videos look like child’s play. It keeps you on the edge of your seat the entire time.

Observing the sport first-hand is a completely different story. Picture yourself standing alongside a road, even near a pretty good-looking turn, waiting. And it’s not the good kind of waiting like when you are eager for Christmas to come. You are standing outside, with the wind reaching 30 mph, the rain soaking every inch of your body, and your feet freezing off from the huge puddles you had to walk through to get to where you are.

Then the first car comes: you hear it roaring throughout the canyons. Its deep rumble getting closer and closer. A few seconds later you can see it, winding far off through the trees or across the countryside. Before you know it, the car leaps around the bend in front of you, races down the small straight, flies around the next corner, and disappears. It’s gone in about 4 seconds. You think, “Well that was neat!”. About 2 minutes later the next car comes, flies around the same bend, at exactly the same speed in the same manner, and then disappears. After seeing this about 8-9 times it starts to wear on you. You start to get bored and wonder, “Is this it?” 120 cars were entered at this rally, so you can see how it might get a little redundant. The only cool thing we experienced in the two days we were there was when one of the cars flung a rather large rock out when it was going around the bend, and it hit me square in the chest (missing my camera by about 6 inches). Overall, we learned a sad lesson — that watching rallying in person is nowhere near as exciting as watching it on TV. You only sit at one place for about 2 hours watching the same maneuver over and over. Sure, you could walk a few feet down the course, but you would see exactly the same thing. Unless you managed to find that one incredible area of the course where everyone crashes, or stand right by the huge jump or massive mud-puddle, it’s not interesting.

What was interesting is Wales, but that’s for another entry.

A few weeks ago we realized (or “realised”, as they spell it over here) that we had completely forgotten to mention our trips around England or post any pictures of them. This entry will be a brief description of the places we have gone to in between flights to Europe:

Stonehenge: It was really rainy and cold, and being the seasoned travelers we are we only had one umbrella and sweatshirt. Suffice it to say that we were miserably cold. Stonehenge was really cool, although it gets boring looking at it after a while. You can’t walk amongst the rocks anymore for preservation’s sake, so we just looked at it from afar wondering in awe: both how they did it… and why…

Salisbury Cathedral: The tallest cathedral in England, it also is one of the brightest. Some bishop a few hundred years ago decided that he didn’t like it all dark and gloomy so he had all of the exquisite stained glass ripped out and melted down… and the Brits complain that Americans don’t respect history! We went in right after an ordination service, so we saw lots of guys (and women) dressed up in funny robes. We even saw a few monks!

Bath: This city really is lovely. The architecture of the buildings is really pretty… classic Georgian crescents everywhere. The main draw is the Roman Baths built on top of natural hot springs. This gave us a really nice primer to our later trip to Rome. It was very well preserved; we could see remains of statues and decorations, the underfloor heating mechanism, and the drainage system. The floor of the baths were lined in lead, so unfortunately no one could even dip their fingers in. Both of us really want to go back and spend a weekend there.

Windsor Castle: Classic English monarchy right here. The castle was amazing. It’s just what comes to mind when one thinks about what a castle looks like. We were lucky enough to see the Changing of the Guard (funny hats and all!) while we were here. It was actually really long, and the band kept playing the same song over and over. However, it does save us the trouble of going to Buckingham Palace and fighting the mobs of people who want to see the Changing of the Guard there.

Hampton Court Palace: We spent way too much time exploring the inside of this palace. It was the home of Henry the 8th and William and Mary of Orange. It wasn’t spectacular from the inside, but truly extraodinary in the gardens. We made our way through a hedge maze which was mildly entertaining, but the real sight to see are the back gardens. They were so orderly and colorful, and there were these weird triangular trees that I have never seen before. it reminds me of this cartoon I watched when I was little where an outcast has a round head and lives in a pointy world. The trees, buildings and people all have pointy cone shaped tops. Does anyone remember this??? But I digress… We spent so much time looking around that we almost missed our tour bus back to London!

Windermere, Lake District: This is the most beautiful place in England that we have yet come across. Very large hills (or massive mountains to the Brits) rolled down into lush valleys. We saw enough sheep, swans and slate to last a lifetime. Our hotel was set right on Lake Windermere, which was exceedingly pretty. We also took a boat cruise and a 10 hour tour through the heart of the Lake District (thanks to Marsha for the suggestion!). We had a great time exploring the little villages and sampling the local beer. Despite going in October, it didn’t rain and the weather was actually quite pleasant.

So we have uploaded pictures from Stonehenge, Salisbury, Bath and the Lake District. Hampton Court Palace and Windsor Castle should be up shortly.

Our new picture site is finally up!! Make sure to have a look!

New Site (same URL): http://www.joeyeager.com/

Map View: http://map.joeyeager.com/

It has Rome pictures up, Belgium pictures, and all of the older pictures imported. There is a huge list of upgrades, but the main ones include a Google map view, many sizes for each picture, random picture view, rss feeds, a shopping cart feature that has many individual benefits, and a whole lot of options for me :). If you have any questions feel free to add a comment to this blog.