Florida

I'm here at my company's annual conference in Orlando Florida. There are certainly worse things you can do in january, as once you get past the sea of chinos and polo shirts, its actually nice and sunny. Just come back from a 70's nightclub to discover that the hotel shop stops selling beer at 01:30am and its merely 02:00. Land of the free? I don't think so.

Apart from the conference we managed to escape to the magic kingdom, although its not much of a kingdom if you ask me. Still, in amongst the pushchairs and the over nourished locals there was the chance to ride on a steam powered paddle steamer, and for 20 minutes I managed to feel at home as we traveled up a 'river'. You need to find these moments when you can.

No news is, well, no news
Not a lot has been happening boat-wise over the last week or so. I came back to the marina last night to find that IRIS and most of the other boats had been moved round, so I'm now about three places further along the dock. This in itself is no big problem, most marinas retain the right to move boats around when required, but I wished they'd let me know. Normally we get into IRIS on the port side door, so its the only one I carry a key for. So last night I had to work my way along the side deck in the dark and then retrieve the keys for the other side door. Following that, there was about ten minutes of fiddling with mooring ropes (and muttered cursing) as the boat was tied too close to the dock to open the side doors (IRIS sits quite low in the water compared to most narrowboats). I was a bit peeved about the whole thing.

Still, as predicted, it all looked better in the morning and I've been able to rearrange things so I can use the starboard side doors.

About the only other thing of note was the two foxes I saw this morning in the car park running round. Apparently there are small deer around too. This place is a veritable zoo.

2008
Slightly out of sync, here are some pictures from new years eve and day. Mary and I took IRIS into London for the night. It was a pretty grey day, but it didn't actually rain which was something.

Going into London we came across this seemingly abandoned boat.



On the way back it looked moored more normally, but still looked unloved.

Some general pictures on the way in...






Here is the view going over the North Circular, one day this won't be as fascinating to me as it currently is.



Note the pensive look as I try to avoid crashing onto the cars below.



I like the houses in this one, this is about a mile before Little Venice.




A couple of nice bridges on the way in......





Once we'd arrived, we ended up mooring at Paddington Basin, as Little Venice was full. A nice quiet place.



We went out to a local pub with friends Andy and Carolyn, plus Carolyn's mother and aunt who were over from the US. Before the pub I gave an impromptu tour of Little Venice, with a running commentary based partly on facts, partly on conjecture - well, I am in consulting after all.

They went off to watch the fireworks on the Thames, we went back to the boat to celebrate on our own. This is just after midnight.....



The following day after a leisurely brunch at Raouls cafe in Maida Vale (where the yellow eggs are flown in from Tuscany - not sure about the eco implications of that, but yummy all the same), we set off back to Willowtree. All went well, apart from a light drizzle, right up until I was trying to reverse into my moorings, in the dark. The engine suddenly stalled - there was a huge rubble sack wound round the propeller. Luckily we were able to get into the berth using a combination of too much power and some panic-driven ropework.

Here is a freaky night scene on the canal.



Finally, here is my favorite picture of the whole trip, I just love all the colours on such a grey winters day.

Bling
Got a couple of new things for IRIS as christmas presents from Mary, a horn and a tiller pin. The original Horn was tarnished and didn't work. There was no tiller pin before, just a rusty bolt. Here they are....





I also finally got round to fitting a little brass vent that I picked up on the wonderful weekend we spent in Lechlade in august - see the Rest of the trip here.



Shiny.