Idiomatic Expression

Ohio.

Katherine and I headed to Ohio for Labor Day to visit with my Mom’s side of the family. While we were there we stumbled upon some of the best doughnuts I have ever eaten at Norman’s in Millersburg, OH. We had fun and have the pictures to show for it. We bought some quilts from MinMar (Minerva Martin) also in Millersburg.

Make sure you check out the gallery for the Amish buggies parked at wal-mart and what appears to be some Amish or Mennonite themed romance novels. UPDATE My mom let me know that this is a novel about Amish life to let non Amish know how they live and why they do not use technology etc. That certainly makes more sense than a romance novel, but the cover is certainly confusing.

It has taken me a bit to get the pictures up as we headed to Vancouver the next weekend to visit with Katherine’s Grandmother and our friends in the area. I have uploaded some pictures from that trip as well.

A week on vacation and still too busy relaxing to write anything here.

Portland was beautiful, one of my favorite cities in the US. Most of the pictures from Portland are here, but none from Seattle yet. It looks like the week in Vancouver, BC will have a bit of rain so maybe a bit more time to write about the trip and get more pictures up.

Time for lunch!

The traffic in Shanghai is chaotic, but somehow works for the most part. Every driver is doing his best to pilot his car to its destination quickly as possible. Regardless of pedestrians crossing, cars in the space the driver wishes to occupy, or the accidents caused in the driver’s wake. The only consideration is whether the driver’s car gets damaged. One popular tactic is to straddle lanes to allow easy access to whichever lane turns out to be faster. Left hand turns are a game of chicken with oncoming traffic.

On the positive side there are some great traffic control technologies in use, including freeway billboards that use colored LEDs to indicate traffic conditions near your location and stop lights that show how much longer the green or red light will last.

I don’t have any pictures or videos to do this justice, but this YouTube Video is a good start.

XiHu or West Lake has been a tourist attraction in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province since around 900 A.D. and is the site of many Chinese legends. Over time a number of man-made improvements have been made to the lake. Including dredging to obtain the material to build small islands and causeways across the lake.

We took a hand rowed tour around the lake, which is where the majority of the pictures in this gallery were taken. My favorite is the picture of our gondolier texting and rowing at the same time. We ended the morning row with lunch at the over 100 year old Louwailou (Tower beyond tower) Restaurant featuring some regional dishes with a beautiful view of the lake.

XiHu is crowded with Chinese and foreign tourists all year long, and the road from Hangzhou city is a constant traffic jam. The human powered boats are slower than some of the larger powered boats, but it is one of the few ways to get a little space to yourself and still see the beauty of the lake. If you are in Shanghai and have a free day or two this is a must see area, but then the other 7-8 million people that visit here every year know that too.

Pictures of Shanghai and the surrounding area are now uploaded. I am going to try and write something about each album starting from the back.

I am currently in a van outside of Shanghai on the way to the next stop on the trip. I was able to upload the first set of pictures, but I still need to work on captions.

I have upgraded to Gallery 2. I still need to figure out how to get some links back to my main page.

TaiPei pictures from our trip in November are up.

Wouldn’t you know it, I end up in Bermuda for work and forget my camera.

It is beautiful here. And in the 70’s during the day.

Made it home safely more after sleep.

We are heading to TaiPei soon, and for once I have not had time to do my research for fun activities and places to eat while we are there. Other than my planned visit to the observation deck of Taipei 101 does anyone have any suggestions?