The Adventures of Lorie and Brian Groth

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We are back in Seattle after our big summer holiday. The trip started in Chicago to visit friends and family, then on to the lake cabin in Minnesota to see family and to do some kayaking, sailing, wakeboarding, knee-boarding, and bicycle riding. Plus a quick visit in Berkeley to visit family and over-eat (that’s sorta an inside joke). There are quite few highlights from the Thailand and Vietnam portions of the trip, which can also be seen in the photos. After 9 airports and far too many flights, we are ready for some rest and relaxation!

Thailand highlights (click to see the photos)

• Body surfing on the west side of Railay beach, which is mostly what I did in Thailand when not relaxing.
• Our friend’s wedding on the deck of a house near the beach, with the party at a pool next to the beach.
• Hiking up to the top of the island (more of a technical scramble up the cliff in the jungle) to get a great view of the island.
• Having locals cook a great Thai meal at our Railay Beach house for about 20 of us. We could see monkeys in the daytime from the deck of our house and bats at night.

Vietnam highlights (click to see the photos)

• Seeing a new country and watching the locals get around, visiting local markets, and seeing just how many electrical and phone lines can be suspended between poles. It didn’t take us long to learn how to cross the street in Hanoi, which is certainly an experience. Watch this video to see what it is like to cross the street in Hanoi.
• Getting a communist view (slightly skewed and missing a few details) of various Vietnamese wars with the French and the US. We saw this at the Hao Lo Prison (aka, the Hanoi Hilton) and at Ho Chi Minh’s tomb and museum in Hanoi.
• Kayaking, swimming and exploring caves by foot and by kayak in Halong Bay. We stayed on a junk run by Indochina Sails. Nobody joined me when jumping off the roof of the boat, but at least others swam with me and none of us got stung by the gigantic jellyfish – we only saw 2 of them while on the boat.
• Having a “James Bond martini” at the Metropole hotel. Roger Moore used to stay there and since he played James Bond from 1973 to 1985, they named their classic (shaken, not stirred gin martini) after him.

Near our place in Seattle is a Jones Soda office, so we walk past it quite often. I recently learned that you can upload your own photos and they might get printed on the labels on their bottles. I recently uploaded the one of Milo overlooking the Houses of Parliament (click on that to vote for it). Also check out Milo’s typical look when running at Bishop’s Park.

Maybe one day, you will be in a grocery store in the US and you’ll see Milo on a bottle! 

Milo and I are still having problems walking on the other/right-hand side of the sidewalk (aka, “pavement” to you English folks). I am also regularly being asked for directions from strangers when we’re out walking. Other than those two things, I guess we’re settling into Seattle life and life in the loft, which are both very nice with all the sunny weather we’ve had. I keep adding to the Milo on the iconic tour of Seattle photo album and just added ones with Milo and a parking-meter car, another with the Space Needle, Ride The Ducks, the Seattle Streetcar, and a view from Kerry Park on Queen Anne hill. 

Bob and Sylvia, neighbours from our old houseboat days, now have an electric boat. A Duffy 18 foot electric boat, to be specific, which is perfect for Lake Union. Fremont is at the North end of the lake so they boated on down to South Lake Union (our new ‘hood) and picked us up. We had dinner at Dukes (fish taco… mmmm) then cruised around looking at the houseboats. New ones have gone up since we moved off of the lake a few years ago. They’re even more expensive now, but I’d still like to live on one again some day.

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Now that Milo is a Seattleite, I have begun his iconic tour of Seattle, since he already had his iconic tour of London. I will add to it as we meander Seattle. Local experts will notice the Fremont Troll and many other iconic representations of Seattle are missing. There must be some! We’ll eventually add numerous odd photos of Milo so you too can feel like you’re busy walking him around the city. 

On my first day back in Seattle for the summer, I took Milo on an early morning walk to the Olympic Sculpture Park (about a 25 minute walk from our loft). As you can see in the picture, I had Milo do a bit of agility training. After I got him off of the top of the bench, a guy walking past us said “that was a great shot”. I’m not sure if he took a picture of Milo or if he was referring to the picture I took. Either way, it is a nice park that I suspect I’ll be walking Milo to quite often.  

I will be living and working in Seattle over the summer (Lorie & Milo are already there) and I fly out from London on Friday. To celebrate and say goodbye for the summer, I went out with some of my closest friends in London. These are also the friends who have graciously been letting me couch surf for the last couple of weeks, so you could say I owed them too.   

We decided to try L’autre, the Polish & Mexican restaurant, which is amongst a few good restaurants in Shepherds Market. I think we were all pleasantly surprised that both the Polish and the Mexican dishes were good. I think we all wanted to see some weird combination of the two types of food, but we were all relieved that we didn’t have to select something like a chicken & sauerkraut taco.

The band Chicago has a song called “Saturday in the park” and the lyrics start off with “Saturday in the park, I think it was the 4th of July.” I can now say I’ve been there and done that, since a few of us hung out in Hyde Park for the 4th of July this year, which was on a Saturday. There were no fireworks, but watching other people in the park was good entertainment. At various times, we had people around us playing cricket, football (soccer), and frisbee. We didn’t do any of that though, since we were just hanging out and relaxing.

The band Chicago has a song called “Saturday in the park” and the lyrics start off with “Saturday in the park, I think it was the 4th of July.” I can now say I’ve been there and done that, since a few of us hung out in Hyde Park for the 4th of July this year, which was on a Saturday. There were no fireworks, but watching other people in the park was good entertainment. At various times, we had people around us playing cricket, football (soccer), and frisbee. We didn’t do any of that though, since we were just hanging out and relaxing.

On Sunday, we went to Hyde Park for music again, but this time we sat outside the concert walls and listened to some Dave Mathews and Bruce Springsteen, who opened his set with London Calling originally by The Clash. However, Dave Mathews played All Along The Watchtower which was pretty cool too.

I met Megan and Alan there (with Daisy, as you can see) and they brought some Pimm’s and fresh cookies, so the evening was perfect. Lorie is in Seattle right now, so she missed out on the relaxing Sunday in the park with live music.

But about the organized crime… Before I met up with them though, I was sitting on a park bench near the entrance watching the ticket scalpers when one of them came and sat next to me. He only did that because he was frustrated that the cops were around, who were hurting his business (scalping tickets is illegal). He never did tell me where he got the tickets from, so I’m not even sure if they would get you into the concert or not. After a while though, someone sat next to him and bought some tickets, so he was able to still work even with the cops standing nearby. And the guy had a good wad of tickets. He also gave everyone his phone number (or someone’s), which was odd. There was a whole group of these guys with one “ring leader”, so it was all pretty organized. Therefore, I am considering this my brush with organized crime in London…. ticket scalpers in Hyde Park.