Home to Greenbelt

After the wild ride of New York, staying with Hannah's mom and new husband Peter was a pleasant, relaxing change. We spent a restful two weeks, reading, discussing politics (Sarah Palin has been making serious headlines - goshdarnit!) and generally hanging out. We were well protected by Callie, the black lab, who saw off the UPS delivery man with loud, vicious barking every day! Callie also had an incredible ability to get food off shelves, tables and countertops that should be way out of reach for normal dogs! As cross as cleaning up a bag of flour off the kitchen makes you, one look at that labrador face melts it all away!

Callie, the dog!

Jenifer and Peter got married while we were staying with them! They will be having a big celebration in the Spring, but it was great to be able to share this important occasion with them.

Peter and Jenifer!

Hannah and Peter spent some time explaining the major rules of baseball and american football. In my opinion, baseball has a surprising number of similarities to cricket which I'll share with you over a beer sometime. Hannah and I went to go and see the Washington Nationals baseball team play against the Tampa bay rays. The Nationals took a bit of a pounding including a home run off the first ball - ouch! But it was great fun!

I went to the Maryland Bass Pro Shop. I was lucky to meet Harry who works in the fly fishing department once a week. He recently retired from the fire fighting department. He confided to me that the one shift per week at Bass Pro is to secure his employee discount. Harry invited me to go fishing with him for smallmouth bass. Harry organised an extra kayak and I met him at 10am for a day's fishing. Although we didn't catch any monsters, we caught a fair number of small bass and a lot of bluegill. Fishing while floating down the river on a beautiful autumn day is tough to beat!

Hannah and I also played disc golf at a local course. Disc golf you say?! Well, disc golf was invented for frisbee throwers who like to play with themselves! It follows basically the same rules as traditional golf. There is usually an 18 hole course whereby a disc is thrown as few times as possible from the starting tee to the basket. The person with the fewest number of throws wins! There are even different kinds of discs namely drivers, mid range and putters!















The tenth hole. Note the basket at the back and the woodchuck in the front!

Stand back amateurs!

It was a great two weeks, the highlight of which was really being able to spend time with Jenifer and Peter.

Next stop was a wedding in Connecticut!

(Sidenote: I am writing this in the car while Hannah is driving us to Boston. We took a wrong turn and Hannah did a sneaky uturn which all of us do occasionally. Unfortunately, it was a no uturn intersection and we got pulled over by the state police, blue flashing lights and all, "License and registration please!". Although she won't admit it, I think that Hannah got pull over just so I could see what it was like! "Welcome to America! Now please step out the vehicle!!")