Tuesday, September 13, 2011
London, England
Jan and I up a bit late after a wonderful full-nights-sleep. Tara off to work soon after. I went off this morning by train and tube to The City, exiting the tube at Monument. My mission was to use the Garmin GPS that we will take with us to Europe and see how it works as a guide to walking in the city. And along the way, test the battery life. As a test, it was a bit of a failure. In the tall canyons of The City, and perhaps coupled with my slow travel compared to car traffic, the poor thing could not find its satellites about half the time. In the middle of wide intersections I was good and could see all the surrounding streets on the screen, but in the narrow streets I could see my 'footprints' off in the middle of the white space of the office buildings. I had dropped the car avatar in favor a two running shoes when I switched from automobile to pedestrian mode in the GPS. So it took me forty minutes to get to Leanne at Moorgate rather than the fifteen or twenty it should have taken, but thats the price of progress. The good news is the batteries still charge up very well and have lots of life in them.
Then off to a late lunch with Leanne at 'Bangers', a chat about the world of business, and then a walk to Tara's office aided (or thwarted perhaps) by the GPS again. Visited with Tara, sat at one of the office desks and watched the market for a while until we left at about 5:30pm, then walked to the bus, bussed to the local Tesco, shopped, then home to make grilled chicken and greek salad for dinner. Just the two of us, Jonathan on his way to Turks and Caicos Island, and Jan off with Leanne this evening. We played some Rugby 2011 video game Jonathan had just bought, then switched to some kids games on the Wii, then Jan came home at about 8:30pm.
Jan had gone to see our neice Alison for lunch, then to Leanne's office at around 4:00pm, then to Leanne and David's flat for dinner with her. They had a good visit, did a few chores around the flat, and Jan cabbed home from Balham. An earlyish night for all of us.