Walking in the Lake District

Red Screes to the East
Originally uploaded by zacshepherd

I have just returned from another trip north to Lancaster, which included a few nights of partying with Sarah's friends and a few days of walking in the lakes. We also went walking a few times on a first trip, including the trip up Red Screes where I took this shot. I put a few more photos from England, plus some of the end of my time in Gambia up on the flickr site.

Besides going to Lancaster, I've been busy with odd projects, plus a bit of going around and meeting Sarah's people. We've managed to see a couple of friends from The Gambia, plus a lot of her family. We are staying in a tent in the garden of her sister Rachel's house. At least there is running water inside the house.

I've also been getting back into geek mode - I spent a bunch of time last week re-installing operating systems and getting broadband working at Rachel's, which makes it possible for me to geek out just that much more. Something tells me I should think about doing this professionally again, even if just to get restarted in our wonderful money economy.

I'm flying to the US on September 20th, so I hope to be able to catch up with people after that.

While I'm in England

Here I am in Lancaster, enjoying the cold weather and rain - to be honest it's barely rained in three days, but I've seen plenty - and the wonderful variety of food. I miss many things about Gambia, and I know I will be for a long time, but one thing I am loving in particular is getting back in touch with the wonderful thing that broadband internet access is. Ah, to surf again.

And while I'm surfing, and generally catching up with the vast and varied media of our society, I've been paying attention to one of my favorite sporting events, the Tour de France. And, for the second year in a row, it's fallen badly under the shadow of doping, performance enhancers and generally unclean behavior. And while I hate that it's happening the way that it is, and can't wait for it to be a clean sport, I just saw an article that put it into perspective a bit. Jemele Hill writes about how American sports could never survive the scrutiny that professional cyclists undergo. I love the NFL, but...

The newest way I know I'm not in Africa anymore: I'm surfing both the internet and the t.v. channels at the same time. And I still have the attention span of a juvenile gnat.