Getting Board

Another week gone, everything’s blending into one right now especially as I’m working seven days a week. Check out the photo’s below took them about 6 o-clock one night, just looking out my office door, great sunset, just seems a bit surreal with blokes walking around in hard hats and toe-tectors.
Nothing much happened again this week just no time to do anything, had people from Rolls Royce here all week, they’ve gone back to the UK now that’s a relief in it’s self.
It looks like I’ll be staying here a bit longer though, maybe just for a couple of weeks. Have to leave the country though, could fly back to the UK but need to be back here as soon as I can, so may just fly to Mexico for a couple of days, going to see what’s available on the Internet in the way of flight or short breaks, not sure yet but that’s probably what I’ll do.
Only thing that’s happened this week is I’ve had to move out of my apartment, someone else had booked it months ago. Got a new apartment, or condo as they call them here just round the corner from the old one and still on Diamond head, overlooking the 19th hole of the golf course.
Came home from work Saturday and stopped at the local bar for a beer, didn’t get there till about 9pm, as I went over to Wal-Mart in Slidell, really living it up as you can tell.
Anyway got to the bar, Jackie’Os and there was a Halloween party going on, ended up staying there until about 2 the next morning , was going to work the next luckily it was just me so no one to rush in for.
Will try and post in the next couple of days in the mean time here is the new apartment, or Condo as they call it here. The layout inside is just the same as the last one just a different view outside, from the front i can see the car park, at the back there;s a view of the 19th hole on the golf course.

Cheap Or Not

Haven’t posted for a while, not been doing anything, working 7 days a week at the moments so have not been anywhere or done anything and not had much time. Am getting a little frustrated with the way people work over here, the pace is really slow, don’t know if that is because of the hot weather or it’s just a southern thing, but pretty much every foreign national I speak to here says the same, that’s all I’m going to say on the subject.
America has some good things going for it, theres plenty of space so you can either buy or build a house pretty cheaply, relative to UK prices that is you’re not living on top of each other either. The only places I think are expensive to buy house’s are in some of the bigger cities or areas where everyone wants to live, like in LA or Seattle places like that, if you live in middle America or in the county land/houses are cheapish. There’s lot’s of other good things to, prices are cheap generally for pretty much everything, a dollar here pretty much buys you what a pound does over in the UK, roads and cars are good and on the whole everyone is friendly. Every thing is not great though, people always harp on about the service, yes is pretty good, but that’s only because you’re tipping people, stop tipping and see what happens.
Everyone here in any kind of service industry expects a tip, for instance if you go for a beer, just one beer, let’s say a Bud light, around three dollars (£1.50) not bad you might think. It’s less than half a pint for a start they also expect a tip, which is not a problem but it’s every time you go anywhere, so the $3 Bud ends up costing you $4 same price as in the UK so not that cheap really, and if you don’t tip try getting another one. This scenario is pretty much the same for everything and everyone expects it and to be honest it gets a bit frustrating, personally I would rather pay $4 and the staff get a decent wage and not have to worry about tipping. Same thing when you’re eating the staff are really nice, a bit sickly sometimes, you know from the start it is all put on just because they want a good tip, especially as they don’t know you, all in all am not that impressed with the service.
The other thing that frustrates me a bit is that everywhere is so spread out, there is no way you could live in America without a car, possibly in down town Detroit or New York or some of the other city’s but where I am absolutely impossible. There are also no little shop where you can just go and get a pint of milk, a paper or a sandwich, they just don’t exist out around where I am at, maybe in a city. Talking about a pint of milk, about the minimum you can buy is a quart (two pint) and that is hard to find, mostly everything is in bulk, minimum 4 pints lot’s of times 8 pints, same for coke, burgers, almost anything you name it big pack, no small shops you see.
Did have to go to New Orleans again though a couple of weeks ago had to extend my rental, in fact I changed the Jeep, got a Dodge Avenger, it’s pretty nice and does a lot more MPG, it does have a big crack in the windscreen which has been growing ever since I picked the care up, it’s now nearly half way across the screen. Went to the beach earlier today after i got back from work, had a bit of a walk along it and dipped my toes in the sea, leas now i can say been in the gulf of Mexico, even though it's October the water was like luke warm bath water. It's cooling down a bit here though on the way to work this morning 6.30am it was 52F, everybody here is wearing padded shirts. About two hours later though it was in the high 70's and later in the afternoon mid 80's.

Anyway here's the new car, and a picture of the sunset from Shaggy's bar, walked along the beach and stopped for a beer. Must have been something on the lens though, will try and get a

better one later.

Cruisin The Coast

Last Sunday went to Gulfport, had heard about a car meet going on and thought I would go an check it out for a bit.. Gulf port is about 30 mile or so from where I am so not that far to go, weather was really good as well, probably around 90 degrees.
In fact the weather here has been pretty good since I got here about two months ago, which seems to have flown past, not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing as I’ll be a year older before I know it and that’s not good.
As I say weather has been pretty good since I got her, it’s rained but nothing heavier than you would expect in England, we’ve had to baton down for two tropical storms come hurricanes that were supposed to move in but didn’t materialise, so that was a bit of an anti climax.
Would quite like to see a storm and a bit of heavy rain, am told that when it rains heavy here it’s I torrential and you can hardly see in front of your face.
Anyway I digress got to the car meet some time in the afternoon, it turned out to be sort of a hot rod/custom car meeting http://www.cruisinthecoast.com/ The idea I think is to meet up then go cruising along the coast with you mates, a few cars at a time, just as it says. Weather here is great for that and the road runs right along the coast for miles.
It was a big meet with lots of cars and people, tents hot dogs, burgers, beer, live band later things like that. The meet is on for a week they meet at what they call cruise central which is where I went, they cruise a different part of the coast everyday.
There was even a raffle for a car, a 1932 Ford which they called a Rat Rod worth about 20 grand I think.

Check this one out the last thing i expected to see was a Morris 1000, when i first saw it thought it was a VW Beatle then i realised it was painted with a Union Jack. Thought process went something like this, why has a VW Beatle got a British flag on it, then the light came on.

Below is the 1932 Rat Rod that was up for raffle, did not take this photo myself but this is the car.





Overall impression is that everyone is really into cars and spends a lot of time working on them, and a proud of the results. I asked one guy how long it took to restore his car, it was a Caddy, he said two years, think about that.

Shaggy's Bar

Well, that’s another week over, am late posting as this is for last weekend and the next weekend is almost here, it’s getting so everything blends into one. It’s getting pretty hard to keep up with this blog as well, don’t have Email access at work so the only chance I get is either at the weekend or at night when I get back from, don’t really feel like it then
Didn’t do much last weekend, thought I would just to take it easy and stay relatively local to where I’m living, decided to go down to the beach and top up my tan, not really just though I would have a look down and around the beach front and see what turned up.
Saturday had a bit of a walk along the beach near the sea, the sand is nice and white but the water seems pretty dirty and there is quite a bit of oil knocking around, guess from all the wells out in the gulf.. I’d been told before I got down here that the beaches were nicer further down the cost towards the Florida panhandle, am planning on checking this out one weekend.
It’s a few hours drive so will probably barmean an overnight stay, just need to find the time to do it.

Did find a nice little beach front or marina front bar though, the only one around that i could see, Shaggy's Harbour Bar and Grill Shack, stopped to have a couple of beers, got talking to a couple of the locals who were pretty friendly, there was a live band on at the bar later on as well.
Few photos below of the bar, and the view from it.

Sunday tomorrow, have heard about a car meeting in Gulfport which i went to check out.

The Alligator That Liked Chicken

Nearly forgot to post this one, about a week and a half ago me Mike and Keith went to see the alligator up the road,
Keith was going home and Mike wanted to see the alligator do a death roll, as if.
Anyway the day before they had been to Wal-Mart to buy a chicken, a whole one that is, am just surprised they did not get a frozen one, could have knocked it out with that.
The idea was throw it in and see Al do a death roll, not sure if alligators do death rolls or is it only crocodiles, will have to Google that.
So there we were with a chicken about to throw it to an alligator, there’s Keith unwrapping it, me and Mike taking photos, to any one watching must have looked funny.
Al came straight out of the water when he saw us, he’s used to people feeding him. Anyway in went the chicken, Al grabbed it, problem is it was nearly as big as him and he didn’t seem to know what to do with it.
No death roll he just got it and went back in the water and lay there with it in his mouth, we got fed up after a bit and went for lunch. We were sort of thinking that we may come back and find him belly up in the pond with a chicken stuck in his throat.

Guess we should have tied a rope round the chicken’s leg before throwing it in and had a tug of war with an alligator, maybe next time, our luck and he would have pulled one of us in, try explaining that to NASA.

Probably he prefers KFC or Poppies chicken anyway and not raw meat, don't think we thought this one through properly