Tales of Home [3]

Watch the Cowal Highland Games on webcam- well the main street anyway.
Should be more interesting sometime between 6 and 9pm local time- somewhere about then the march past with all the bands will go by.
Keep an eye out for me, I'll be the one in a kilt with the buckie  

http://www.dunoon.tv/

but they ALL have kilts and buckie  

Well did you see me?  

The winning dancers-



Some people whose pint you really dont want to spill!



Or this happens-



Short bit of the march past through town (from stadium to ferry)

Couple of the Bands from the Piping competitions- these are both school bands.
The standard of pipe bands in schools round here is incredibly high.

West Lothian School Pipe band



Oban High School

dude, some of those people in the 2nd photo lineup were WOMEN??????

btw Petty if you click on that link you just get to watch Dunoon highstreet in real time, I watched some people getting money from the cashpoint of the Bank of Scotland, if you go over there now and then moon on the corner of the Street I would much appreciate it. btw its raining so take a coat.

dude, some of those people in the 2nd photo lineup were WOMEN?????- Mrs Figg


And you definitely dont want to spill their pint!  

btw Petty if you click on that link you just get to watch Dunoon highstreet in real time- Mrs Figg

Yes but if you'd clicked on it yesterday you would have been able to watch the march past in real time.  (You know there's a weird optical illusion with that camera- the road going off to the left is a steep uphill that takes you above the main street, but it looks like a downhill on that cam   )

"if you go over there now and then moon on the corner of the Street I would much appreciate it. "

Well I do need to go out.....

  just give me a time and I will be ready with my magnifying glass. that lampost is a bit Narnia just pretend you are Mr Tumnus he was half naked too. at least its stopped raining.

Not my fault if you missed it yesterday - I nearly got arrested for trying to start a one man arse-wave (like a mexican-wave but with more arse)- you'll just have to hold out for Hogmanay now as that Jubilee Light is the main public gathering point for the Bells.

the Bells? as in Quasimodo Bells or festive tinkling bells, or Bells whisky Bells.  

Well that last one is close- The Hogmanay Midnight Bells. People gather round that lamppost, well I say gather, stagger out the surrounding pubs, for the Bells. There's a piper, and someone with a tray of shortbread, and a dancer or two and lots of buckie and then the local paper takes an embarrassing (its always embarrassing) photo of a bunch of celebrating pissed folk in tartan.  

  sounds very sweet

Some more from the games- the Massed bands playing at the end of the days competitions-



The March Past



And the winning band on the day- Field Marshall Montgomery- give an impromptu performance on the ferry-



More bands marching



And some fireworks to round things off-

Tales from visiting my grandparents over labor day weekend. My parents, who are also here, are watching fox news in the living room. My father takes it upon himself to make his opinion known at all times. Cousins have just stopped over, it may be safe to emerge from the bedroom. Send help. Send pizzas.

  I know the feeling, I would send pizza but it might be cold before it gets to you.

I browse the BBC site every morning for news and today something jumped out at me cause it's local, which obviously I don't see very much on the BBC. Apparently the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Maryland is considered one of the ten scariest bridges in the world, to the point that companies offer to drive people across the bridge if they're too scared to do it themselves.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23887805



We used to drive across this bridge multiple times a year when I was younger and still do fairly often. For context: the Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States and nearly bisects the state of Maryland. Aside from a narrow strip of land just north of the bay and just south of the border with Pennsylvania, the bay divides the Eastern Shore from the rest of the state. This used to mean that to cross you had to take a ferry or make the very long trip up and around the bay, which resulted in the Eastern Shore developing a distinct identity and feeling almost like a different state at times. This is not as true anymore since the bay was spanned by the Bay Bridge, and for most people in Maryland the quickest way to the Ocean (or anywhere else on the Eastern Shore) is over this bridge. It's also the way for people on the Eastern Shore to visit the cities of Baltimore, Washington, and Annapolis (the capital of Maryland), so it gets quite a bit of traffic going the other way, too. I guess it's not surprising that some people are scared of it, but for me as a kid I was fascinated by the bridge and I still enjoy driving over it, as well as other bridges.

That's about 1300 feet longer than our Astoria-Megler Bridge across the Columbia River.  In the middle you're two miles from shore, driving on a narrow two-lane road with no divider between the oncoming lane, and very low guard rails.  It feels like driving on a small ribbon across the ocean. 
(It always made me a little bit white-knuckled as a kid, though I tried not to admit it.  )

nothing is as annyoing as a fucking long fjord and u wanna go to the other side but it takes u fucking all day but u can see you destination all the fucking way...  
map reference:

we're playing this in the orchestra. i am playing viola. viola solo O_O and a proper melody.. and so fast..

challenge accepted.

I can certainly see how it's frightening but that bridge looks really cool, Dave.

how can a bridge be frightening? unless it looks like it's gonna fall down?
like this one, this is a frightening bridge. 

We've started working on this:


And this:

Norc wrote:how can a bridge be frightening? unless it looks like it's gonna fall down?

Well, the weather can have a lot to do with it. This bridge is 6545 meters long so when it's raining you often can't see either bank, and in a storm the ocean spray is blowing onto the bridge so you can't see the center line and your wipers can't keep your windshield clear.  Also the wind blows you around on a narrow road with water on both sides. And you can't turn around and go back if you don't like it. Sometimes there are head-on collisions in the middle, and it closes the bridge for hours.

It's not as bad as this one though, just north of here. It was from 70 years ago but it's still famous.

A couple pictures of the Astoria Megler Bridge in bad weather. It gets really windy sometimes and vehicles can go flying, especially trucks!




It's still a little bit white-knuckle for me in that kind of weather.

Edit: another wreck. It really is a bridge that can bite you.