Food & Drink

Went out for food and drink last night.

Had Habachi japanese food which was good and che chef was very entertaining. I did have the very tedious, but probably worthwhile, chore or picking the chunks of garlic out of the meal using chopsticks though.

The meal was great though.

We then went out for drinks and I was introduced to the drink of "Car Bombs". Basically a half pint of Guinness which you drop a shot glass half full of Baileys and half full of Jamesons into. You then have to down it before it over flows. Tastes ok, but a little different and gets you drunk apparently.

Walks in the park.

I've gone for some more walks in the State Parks of New Jersey this week, which has been fun.

Although there also appear to be some great mountain biking tracks through them which have taken my attention.

Here are some pictures.

Kitattiny State Park

One of the bike trail obstacles. It looks like there's some more funstuff here, but disconcertingly it might be a blue trail. Hmmm....

Here's a picture of some more scenery from the park though. This is one of the Fens/bogs in the park.

I liked the way the water reflected the sky and the trees.







I also went to another part of the Sussex Branch Trail, this also looked like it had some interesting bike trails, but it also had this interesting bit of scenery.

I have no idea how the car door found it's way to the top of this hill, but I'm pretty sure that there was no vahicle driving up there.





Whilst there though I also found this quite striking image, which looked good.

Thanksgiving

Well yesterday was Thanksgiving.

Rachel cooked a lovely meal of Turkey etc, so a bit like a Christmas Dinner but a month early.

Main thing to confuse me was all the adverts for "Black Friday" which means the sales started at 4am the day after! Why would you want to go shopping then?

Post epic driving failure!

Well after the attempt to drive to Maine failed in a pathetic odd spots in vision kind of way I decided to be sensible and abandon the idea until after my exam on wednesday.

I can't really reveal too much about what I got up to yesterday in case I spoil the surprise of something.

I did however fully take advantage of "free" breakfast though! A plate of fry up (American style), followed up by a plate of pancakes and syrup really make you feel a bit ill and not need food for a while. I've had 1 orange since then in about 27 hours.

Driving Failure

I failed in an attempt to drive an aditional 4 hours from Conneticut and ended up in a Hotel in Massachusetts.

Here's my room.

Here is a stream in the woods nearby.
















Here is a Picture of the Jefferson Lake shore line.

Day Three

Went to Lake Jefferson and strolled through some woods and round the lake. It appears you can go mountain biking there, so I might have to try and find a bike from somewhere to use round the State Park.

I have pictures that I will upload tomorrow when I get time.

Other than that, did a bit of shopping & got lost trying to find a shop. I found it just after it closed which sucked.

Now off to Connecticut to visit a friend. Should be interesting as apparently it's freezing outside.

Lake Lenape by night.

Here's a picture of Lake Lenape, NJ, near where I'm staying. Spent some time there tonight taking pics.

Day 3!

Well today started early, as I still seem to have my body trained for getting up early, and in a relaxed manner of mainly reading & getting hassled by cats and a dog until they were fed.

Went for a breakfast/lunch of pancackes with Bluberries in, soaked in maple syrup.

This afternoon I went for a walk in Kittatiny Valley State Park which seems a nice location with a couple of nice lakes and a small airfield. There were some bizarre metal pipes (30' long and about a 4' diameter) which seemed to have been shaped with both ends capped which are odd, so anyone who has an idea what they are feel free to let me know.

Took my friends dog for a walk this evening so I could take some pictures of Lake Lenape at night, unfortunately only a couple of the pictures came out ok, but it was a good excuse to play with some long (30") exposures and different ISO settings on my camera.

It also resulted in some odd looks from passing motorists as I was walking and had a head torch on.

Looks like I'm heading for an early breakfast tomorrow, then going to check out some malls nearby.

Second Day

Was a fairly uneventful day, walked a bit, drove a bit, felt tired a lot.

Did go for dinner at a place called Longhorn and had a nice rack of ribs. They also serve a 20oz serving of Steak though. :)

Start of my Trip

Well I woke up in the morning thanks to a sticky front door, having slept through 3 alarms.

Legged it to the bus station (via taxi) and slept a couple of hours on the bus with "interesting" seats. Someone came up with the idea of some lovely fake leather seats which fired you off each time the bus braked. Not too bad, apart from waking up being garroted by the seat belt.

Arriving at T5 a whole 3 hours (Yes that's right people, I was EARLY), I dumped my bags and headed airside. Discovered that T5 is pretty good as airports go, hung around a bit, made some phone calls and bought tobacco for Plum. Apparently I could have bought 2kg, but figured that was a little excessive.

The flight was ok, managed to get lucky with my seat as I had a completely uncluttered floor in front of me and could stretch fully out without making contact with anything! :)

Arrival at Newark led to an interesting chat with an immigration official though. Who would have thought that a 4 week holiday would sound that suspicious? This led to questions about my employment in the UK and whether I was planning on working over here.

After that it was a short hop to the car hire place to pick up my "compact" which is in fact a 4-door Ford Focus Saloon. The drive started interestingly as my GPS receiver didn't pick up signals, so was navigating by guess work and headed in the vaguely right direction.

After a 5 minute stop in a random town, with slightly dodgy youths walking past, I got my satellite fix and continued my journey (which I'd vaguely followed the correct route on) to Rachel's house. Once more my US driving luck kicked in and I spent an hour plus stuck in a traffic jam on Route 80 at 9pm! Joy!

Got there safely though, at about 10:30, so my nice 24 hour day ended.