New York.... err, New York

Well, since the last entry the battery on the Laptop went flat. This was when I realized that A) we didn’t have a vehicle to plug it into to charge it up B) we didn’t have a US mains plug for the lappy… D’oh! I asked in one of the dodgey computer shops that lines 7th Avenue and they wanted $60 for a power lead. If you read any of the travel books, they all say to be careful in these shops. Boy, they ain’t wrong! As soon as you walk in, they know you are a tourist and try to flog you stuff you really don’t need or want. I was strong enough to resist the power of the dark side and walked out empty handed :-) We eventually found the lead we needed in a shop called J&R’s for $8.99. So now we can update the blog!
We left Baltimore on Monday and caught the Greyhound bus to New York. This is by far the cheapest way to get around if you don’t have your own vehicle. We got a return ticket each $70 (about £35). Train was over $200 and plane nearly $300. But you can’t be choosy about where you sit, just grab a seat! Jen sat next to a Martin Lawrence look-a-like New Yorker called Shawn. Sounds like he was a bloody nice chap who gave loads of really helpful advise. Me… well, I got some overly camp bloke! He was ok actually, but he was very loud and insisted on shouting “oh my gaaaaad!” everytime I said anything (Shawn and I found it most amusing - Jen).
We are staying at the Milford Plaza on West 45th street (1 block from Times Square and Broadway… it’s not too bad, but the maids aren’t overly good at cleaning… there are bogeys on the bed side table! And the wi-fi internet access is $11/day! But, mustn’t grumble, its cheap, comfy and we have air con (even if it is the loudest in the world!)
So anyway, here we are in New York, with a few days to kill. It’s manic here, think of London on a busy Saturday night, multiply the buzz by 10 and you still ain’t quite there!
We bought sightseeing bus tickets (thanks for the tip Eric! Jen) that included entry into various attractions and headed Downtown. These buses are frequent and you can hop on and off as often as you like so are a great way to get around if you are new in town. The guides on the buses are full of useful local knowledge, not just about the usual attractions, but about things that you probably wouldn’t normally try.
Downtown is the lower half of Manhatten Island, where the twin towers used to be. It’s a really weird feeling being there, kinda hard to describe. I know we never knew anyone there or that was directly affected by 9/11, but we both still left the area with big lumps in our throats!
We then got another bus and did the “Brooklyn loop”. Jen really liked the brown stone houses that typify this area of New York. (but then I would, they sell for over $1million and that’s just the ones in Brooklyn!)
Finally, in the evening we ventured up the Empire State building while it was still light and stayed there until it got dark.
Next day we headed “Uptown”, the area north of Central Park. Checked out the American Museum of Natural History… very cool. Everywhere we go is like walking in a movie set, the Natural History museum from that Tom Hanks Film and in Friends, the subway from various movies, times square, empire state, Ellis Island from Hitch… We then walked back to Time Square via Central Park. Luckily we missed the Steam Pipe explosion on 41st St, only a few blocks from us, apparently there was flames and mud and street flying everywhere! Some impressive pics in the paper and one lady died of a heart attack, but luckily no more deaths.
Today was the day for catching the Circle Line ferry over to Liberty Island and Ellis Island, we started well by walking to the wrong port! 2miles later and we were back in times Square to catch the subway downtown again, still, it was good as it meant I got to ride the subway. Statue of Liberty is bigger than you think! Ellis Island was interesting and again some fabulous old buildings.

Tomorrow we are having a “shopping day” interspersed with Grand Central Station and another visit to the Library – we went on Tuesday, but didn’t get time for a proper look around and it looks excellent! (and is the one in Ghostbusters which is just cool!)… then on Saturday we head back to Baltimore to meet up with Bridget at Dartrans and hopefully get Charlie Camel out of his container. The news here is that the boat maybe ahead of schedule. A last minute hiccup with paperwork not being sent through from Kingstown was sorted (hopefully).
I will be speaking to Dartrans again tomorrow to make sure that everything is tickerty-boo. When we get Charlie back, this is when the proper holiday will start!
Thanks to everyone for the text messeges and posts on the blog :-)

We're here!

Wow, what a day! We were up bright and breezy this morning, Moo gave us a lift to Southampton Parkway railway station. An hour and a bit train ride to Woking and then a coach to Heathrow. Total journey time about from leaving the house to checking in just under 3 hours. With the flight not leaving until 1pm we had some time to kill so splashed out on probably the last full english breakfast of the year!
We boarded the Boing 767 and the flight took off about 15 mins late. I'd forgotten how boring long haul flights can be, but the in-flight entertainment system was quite good despite there being a dodgey headphones connection!
We landed at Baltimore and the cabin crew made an announcement that approximately 100 bags had been left behind at Heathrow. Fortunately for us, ours weren't in amongst that lot :-)
So anyway, I've just switched my phone on and got a text from Brookies Steve (Cheers matey!!)
It's about 32degrees C here, so pretty warm :-)
The light tram system got us from the airport to the hotel in about 20 mins, and here I am in our room, on the 7th floor of the Holiday Inn... WOW!! Its just coming up to midnight back home, 7pm here. Jen is in the shower, and I stink, so I'm going in next. Gonna grab some grub and a beer then I reckon we'll end up getting an early night.

WOW... We're in America!

Farewell Parties, hangovers and cleaning!

Well, 'tis the morning after the night before 08:54 and I'm sat in the garden on the laptop whilst the rest of the house is snoozing :) My habit of recent weeks of waking up at 5:30am after having nightmares about the huge list of things to do was only slightly modified to 6:45am after a 3:30am bedtime...sigh. I think I'll sleep for a week when I get there, but still - I certainly can't complain!

HUGE thanks has to go to Richard and Tracy for being daft enough...er... lovely enough to let us all invade their house last night to save the nightmares of cleaning today (the wonders of owning a dishwasher), I really, really apprieciate all the effort they went to to set the house up/clean out the garage and the huge amount of cleaning Tracy Rhodes did.

The celebration of the going away and Mike's 32nd Birthday also ended up being a celebration of Kev's birthday (although he didn't tell us until 5 minutes before he was leaving) and Crine's birthday (on Sunday) so ALSO and without a doubt we have to thank everyone who turned up :) Dan's Dad and Sister Bab's who travelled down from Colchester, Marky Hankin (git) who surprised us by turning up from Somerset after pretending he had to work (git git), Tim and Lou who didn't turn up until almost midnight after being sat in traffic for 3 hours on their way down from the midlands and Jez/Zuz who travelled down from Basingstoke, which admittedly isn't as far as the others but is still a fantastic effort in a rented van! Thanks also to everyone for the good wishes/cards/pressies and alcohol :) We ended up with a huge assortment from SLRC ladies tops and wind up torches to an excellent mix-CD full of songs about places in America and Russian Vodka (which I think is now going to Billing!). Very cool.



An excellent party ensued; Steve ended up in the hot tub (fully clothed), JU brought much Bubble happiness, Little Dave played with fire, various experiments happened with the Chocolate fountain and the 'boys' spent all night sat in the garage... they feel safe in there. Bless. Pics to follow when Bab's gets up and I get get back in the lounge to get the Camera!

The list of 'things to do today' is still huge... I've tidied the bedroom already and finished packing, so: one more lot of washing, dusting, hoovering, getting tyres on my new Mini Wheels (Mmmm.... white superlite :) so he has a hope of passing the MOT on our return), cleaning, waxing and making sure Mike and Becky know where the keys are then paying cheques in, posting t-shirts to Jules, dropping the HSE back to Moo, picking lots of stuff up from Richard and Tracy after last night, buying pillows for anyone using the house whilst we're away and checking I've got all the paperwork in place... Ah. No worries.

Help.

The waiting game

With not much to do now, other than pack bags and have a going away party, all the stresses and strains of the past couple of months seemed to have been whisped away. I'm sure they will return tho as we still have to get Charlie through customs when we arrive in Baltimore. But for now my mind has started to wander a bit... We have a container on a ship called MSC Christina, operateed by the Mediterranean Shipping Company... What can I find out about that vessel? So armed with the internet I get to work! Anybody who is bored by ships should probably switch off now!!

I initailly used the google image search thingy and turned up a multitude of pictures of people called Christina! Amazingly enough (for me, anyway), google-ing the vessels name turned up a couple of photos from http://www.shipspotting.com/. The Shipspotting website is the nautical equivelent of train spotting. You may mock this sort of stuff, but it can be amazingly useful when you want information. Anyway, thanks to Stan Muller in the Netherlands, I now have 2 photos of the vessel carrying Charlie Camel. And judging by the time they were taken, I'd even go as far as saying that our container is in those pictures somewhere! How cool is that! I would have sent him an email, but his profile on the shipspotting website lacks any sort or contact details.

Having a quick scout around on the MSC website I found out she was built in 1998 and has a gross tonnage of 37,579. I have no idea if thats a lot for a container ship, but I'd guess it would hurt if it ran over your foot!

Rather worryingly, I also stumbled accross this little snippet... It appears that MSC Christina was involved in a fender-bender in May 2005! I hope she has a better driver now!

Oh so quiet...

Since we delivered Charlie Camel to Felixstowe, things have been pretty quiet here. I had news today from the shiping agents that the vessel, MSC Christina will be sailing tonight at 2300hrs. So if anyone fancies running down to wave goodbye...

Without a vehicle to prepare, we have spent the last week sorting out paperwork. The never ending list of things to sort out seems to be, well, never ending!

Bye bye Charlie Camel

Today we loaded Charlie Camel into the container at Felixstowe!

After spending an age cleaning and polishing the car before being shipped, it chucked it down with rain on the way to Felixstowe, so we thought we'd better get him washed again, just to be on the safe side. Then we pulled into the container yard to find that it was covered in muddy puddles!

Our container was delivered by the coolest fork-lift truck type thing that could lift and manouver the containers around with such ease. It was positioned in the yard and I drove Charlie camel into the container. Then we watched as Martin, Kingstowns main man for loading cars, secured Charlie using chocks, rope and some metal poles! Apparently he hasn't lost a car in 40 years of loading then into containers... thats a pretty impressive record I think :-)

We were advised that the container would be delivered to the quayside later today and loading of the ship would start on Thursday ready for the sailing on Sunday. Then if all goes according to plan with Dartrans in Baltimore, we should meet up with Charlie Camel again around about July 24th.... Can't wait!

Thats it, we're outta time!

After a few last minute panics with the new gearbox, and having to change it again last week the tension and stress levels were astronomical. But both Brooklyn 4x4 and Ashcrofts came through and sorted the problems out in plenty of time for the weekend.
Friday night the weather was fair enough and we were able to get out and give Charlie a good wash and polish, both inside and out. Even with all the dents he turns out quite well!
I spent Saturday morning doing a full service of the Landy while Jen sat in the living room sorting out paperwork. I had to let it over to Brookies to get the last few spares that I forgot to get during the week. So by the time I got home the oil was nice and warm and ready to drain. But the weather wasn't so nice over the weekend, and doing the service lying on the ground in the rain ain't much fun... I got a really wet bum! But never fear, a couple of hours later and looking like a drowned rat, Charlie had an oil and filter change, fuel filter and air filter change, and a newly sealed transfer box sump (which keeps leaking for some reason).

Sunday we hoped to put as many miles on the new gearbox as possible to make sure it's ok... we managed about 150... a very poor effort! In the morning we loaded eveything into the car. Then we headede out into the New Forest. Before we knew it, lunchtime had arrived and we were both starving, so a pub lunch later and it was time to head off to see a few people. We took the most indirect routes possible wherever we went.

Then we noticed that we had a slow puncture in one of the rear tyres! So off to Richards house with a bottle of wine to bribe him with (he has a tyre changing machine... it beats tyre leavers any day of the week!).

Some last minute panics this morning as we realised we hadn't packed a load of stuff into the vehicle made me a bit late for work (sorry boss!!). I also noticed that our newly repaired tyre is going flat again!!! ARRGGGHHHHHH!!! Oh well, we can't do anything about it now as we need to be in Colchester tonight to stay the night with my Dad, then up bright and breezy in the morning to get Charlie in his container at Felixstowe. So I'll be putting one of the spares on after work tonight.