Tarantula

Pulling into the drive of a colleague’s house in Dallas, I saw something huge run for cover. Could it be? Yes, it was a tarantula. I thought they were confined to South America but apparently not. I’ve now educated myself and can confirm that pretty much anywhere south of the Pyrenees in the world, you could encounter a tarantula. Bummer.

Ken had a bit of a play with this one. As I started recording this video, I was just able to capture it trying to run up Ken’s trouser leg. Now, that would have been a video!

Texas Rain

Of course, they say that everything’s bigger in Texas. I’m not sure that I noticed much difference in the size of things. I was still as short as ever…

But it did rain fairly monstrously one day I was there, as these two videos show. There were tornadoes just a few miles away too.

A day with the Amish

While we were in Cleveland, Ohio, our friends took us out for the day to see something of the nearby Amish communities. You can find out more than you need to know about the Amish on wikipedia etc so I’m not going to bore you with those details here.

We enjoyed our day out. The weather was gorgeous and the countryside was beautiful too. The Amish keep their communities beautifully and it was lovely to see washing hanging out to dry. Even in Dallas, where it is stinking hot much of the year, people use clothes dryers bizarrely. None of that for the Amish who had some of the biggest washing lines I think we’ve ever seen.

We visited a cheese dairy, saw how it was made and ate plenty of samples. We had lunch in what was supposed to be an Amish restaurant but was just run of the mill fare it turned out. Then we walked what we were told was “half a mile” down a hill to a place that sold ice cream. We’ve since coined the phrase “an Amish half mile” to describe something which you initially think is a good idea but turns out to be much more effort than you anticipate. The ice creams were more than welcome when we got them!