The Goodosier visit!

About a week after the Moy's left us, Amy, Kevin, and Wyatt arrived. So exciting! They had flown into Dublin and toured ROI first. They drove from the Galway area to Belfast on Saturday, arriving in time for dinner. Sunday was a gorgeous day, weather-wise so we thought about driving to the country to see Bob and Kath and go to Castle Espie. Alas, we couldn't get our rental car a day early. So, instead, we took the double-decker bus to City Centre, showed them City Hall, the view from the top of the dome at Victoria Centre (Amy was a bit leery of that!), wandered by the leaning clock and the big fish, crossed the Lagan, and went to W5 (Science Center described in Moy post). Again, this place was a hit with the kids and sapped all energy from the adults. Favorites this time around were the kitchen (J), the electric harp (J&W), and the Easter egg race (W&W). Of course, the bounce house and cars in the Odessey were also a fav. 

During the Moy visit, and again for the Gooderosiers, I made a new creamy chicken mushroom soup recipe I found online - http://www.foodnetwork.co.uk/recipes/creamy-chicken-mushroom-soup-ru342824.html. Yum! Then, on Monday, Jubin picked up our rental car, he and Kevin picked up picnic supplies at Sainsbury, and we headed north. We followed the same general route that we did with the Moys, but did some different stops. First off was the amazing playground in Carrickfergus. This time, I brought my camera!

Next up, we had our picnic lunch at a rest stop along A2 where there was a playground, picnic tables, and a nice rocky beach (might have been sandy if the tide was out!). I'm not completely sure where this was, but I think that it was just south of the town of  Glenarm. The Gooderosiers are big into beaches and rock hunting! I made a map of the spots we visited here: http://goo.gl/maps/EOvMm.

Next stop was near Ballintoy to hike out to the Carrick-A-Rede Rope Bridge (more info in Moy post). This time around, the island was open. Very cool, but also very steep cliffs down to the water with no railing around most of it. Wow. Luckily, Watson was in a much better hiking mood this day then he was during the Moy visit. You'll notice pix of he and Wyatt racing along the path, wrestling in the grasses, etc...

Amy and Wyatt did MUCH better than they expected on the bridge!

Another beautiful day at the bridge!

After the last trip, we got a new pack for Jamie off Gumtree (UK version of Craigslist).
Still not quite right though...Might have to keep looking!

There was a bit of grumbling from both boys on the walk back to the cars...
nothing that a snack at the tea room couldn't overcome though!

Next we went to our rental cottage. This time, we stayed south of Portrush a bit, in a complex called Ashlea Cottages. We had rented one 3 bedroom cottage that we thought would work well because the complex included a game room (pool, ping pong), a playground, a trampoline, and mini golf. All of these extras were very much appreciated by the boys! And, the location was better in terms of getting to the sites in the area. However, the cottage itself was only so-so. The beds were pretty poor, the stairs a bit treacherous, and the unit was very echo-ey loud. Plus, the bedrooms were on 2 floors, so Wyatt didn't feel comfortable sleeping in the kid room with Watson, a floor away from his parents. So, we probably wouldn't make a point of going back there, but it had its advantages. That night we went into Portrush to eat, thinking we would go to either Ramore's Wine Bar or Harbour Bar, but over an hour wait at each...so, we wandered a bit through town and eventually ended up at a place called 55 Degrees North.  The food was ok; nothing special really, but the setting was amazing...right on the Sea with waves crashing and glorious views, and the waitresses were very good with Jamieson.

Tuesday, Jamieson and I stayed in during the morning so that he could get a good nap in. Meanwhile the rest of the crew went to Giant's Causeway (see Moy post for more info). Another great visit, although Watson didn't feel like hiking much again...

Jamie and I met up with the rest of the crew in time for a picnic lunch at White Park Bay (after a little confusion about time and place to meet - it is hard up there with no cell phone service!), after which we enjoyed the beach and explored the caves that Jubin had spotted on our last visit. So cool!

The mound of dirt at the mouth of the cave had 100s of
knapping flakes from people making stone tools. Outside
the caves, there were nodules of chert too. Cool!

Jamie had such a love-hate thing going with the water that day!
He wanted to play in the water, but cried every time he went in it b/c it was too cold...

Next up? Dunluce Castle! I didn't get to do the scavenger hunt with Watson, but it was still pretty cool!

I cannot tell you how long I spent hanging around the bridge while Jamie played
with the audioguide and looked through the bars... but, it was LONG!

So, the ASL for flower is like you hold a flower to each
side of your nose and smell it. This is Jamie's version. :)

After touring the Castle, we had dinner at the Bushmill's Inn (http://www.bushmillsinn.com/restaurant.aspx). We found the food solid (not amazing), but mainly enjoyed this experience for the atmosphere - the building is really old, there are all sorts of little sitting rooms, an old-style pub, and they burn peat in the open-hearth fireplace. Very fun! That night, Kevin, Jubin, and the boys drive into Portrush to go to the arcade. Kevin won Wyatt another stuffed animal (he was collecting them on the trip - think that win brought him up to 5) and Watson got a piggy bank. Back at the cottage, after the kids were in bed, we adults attempted to stay up for a while to visit...Amy and Kevin shared their impressions of the sites they saw in ROI and we chatted for a little while, but we all faded quite quickly. Alas, we do not have the energy we did 15 years ago when we first became friends!

Wednesday morning, while the boys played, first Amy and Kevin and then Jubin and I drove to Bushmills to do the Old Bushmills Distillary Tour (http://www.bushmills.com/). It was really interesting! They have been making whiskey there for over 400 years. Unfortunately, Diageo Beverage Company bought Bushmills during 2005 (the tour guide called it D-Day). Anyway, they take you through the in-use factory, teaching you about whiskey and showing you each step of the process from the very beginning all the way through bottling and boxing. We learned a lot! At the very end, you can taste some whiskey (our favorite was the Irish Honey) or have a hot toddy - I did the latter and we both really liked it. We even bought the hot toddy spices, which comes with the recipe. On our way out of town, we all stopped in Bushmills to check out the gift shops and grab a quick lunch. The Goodosiers had some not great fish and chips from a take-away, but then we found some AMAZING bread, olives, and cheese at a French bakery (the French Rooms) that we demolished (and then went back and got a second loaf for Belfast). 

We drove home the inland route, and on the way we drove through the Dark Hedges near Balleymoney (http://www.discovernorthernireland.com/Dark-Hedges-Armoy-Ballymoney-P27502). Of course, my pic doesn't look anything like the ones in the movies, but it was pretty cool. 

The gorse in full bloom - it smells like coconut! 

Back in Belfast, the boys played outside with the neighborhood gang, we showed our guests our little neighborhood strip of shops, we cooked sausages, potatoes, and veg, did laundry, and visited.. readying ourselves for the morning goodbyes. Too short of a visit! We are SO glad that the Goodosiers spent their 10-year anniversary vacation in ROI/NI!

Uncle Kevin is soooo silly! He taught Jamie to 'high-5' too!

Another paper published - this time with data you might have collected!

I'm a co-author on a cool new CSI limnology (http://www.csilimnology.org/) paper published during April in the online, open access journal PLoS One. This research examines long-term water clarity trends in Midwestern US lakes. There are not enough researchers or government agency staff to collect data on lakes every week, let alone every month, or even every year! But, citizens living on lakes can collect these data, and many do. In fact, my own parents and grandfather collected water clarity data for years on Quacumquasit Lake in MA and Elk Lake in MI! 

My colleague, Noah Lottig, led a team of CSI researchers to compile data from some of the more long-running citizen science programs in the Midwest, including MN, IA, MO, WI, IL, IN, MI and OH. Check out our paper to see the results: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0095769! The University of Wisconsin, Penn State University, and the National Science Foundation all wrote wrote stories about this paper. Check them out here:

1) http://news.wisc.edu/22805

2) http://news.psu.edu/story/314178/2014/04/30/research/citizen-scientists-provide-clarity-lake-researchers-questions

3) http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=131238&org=NSF

Very fun!

Photo: Katherine Webster

All of this research is thanks in part to the dedicated citizens who have spent years sampling their lakes, agency personnel who help train them and sometimes maintain the databases, and also to Father Pietro Angelo Secchi, a papal astronomer, who invented the Secchi disk well over a century ago. The picture to the right shows a monument to him in the Villa Borghese Park in Rome that some CSI members STUMBLED upon while strolling in Rome one day about a decade ago. The black and white pattern on the statue attracted the attention of the limnologists, and they paid homage to this important limnological historical figure. Meanwhile, observers walking by the photographer (our very own Katherine Webster) were heard saying, “tourists will take pictures of ANYTHING in Rome”.  Ha!

CSI Limnology continues to build our large, geospatial database, LAGOS, by integrating limnological data such as these citizen datasets with data from: state and federal government agencies, tribal agencies, and university researchers, with large numbers of geographic data sources to address further basic and applied science questions across broad spatial and temporal scales. More to come! A big thanks to Ed Bissell for database support and guidance for this effort and to Pat Soranno for her contributions to this post. 

A week of sport in Belfast

I dubbed the week of May 5 'the week of sport' here in Belfast. On Monday, May 5 (May Day, national holiday), Belfast had its annual marathon. The Sunday paper said that 17,000 runners would participate. I'd take a guess at more like 7,000 runners... But, it was still a great crowd. My U.S. ex-pat running buddies, Pauline and Lauren, picked me up at home and we walked to City Centre, and then the 3 of us were 'bandits' for the first 10k of the race. Being a rule-follower, I never in my life thought that I would run a race as a bandit (someone who doesn't register or pay to run in the race), and I was nervous to jump into the race, but I rationalized the experience this way - I didn't cross the start or finish line, I was only doing a small part of the whole race, I didn't take any race resources (didn't take water at any aid stations), and I stayed out of all of the runners' ways. Hee, hee...

Anyway, it was fun! I ended up running most of the 10k on my own because Pauline and Lauren ran slower than normal, but there were plenty of racers around me. I think I did the 10k in about 52 minutes, but I didn't have a watch on and there weren't race clocks on the course, so I'm not positive. I wasn't really pushing myself for time, but I wasn't running easy either (sorta tempo pace). At the 10k mark, there was a relay exchange station - what a mess that was! I was so glad that I wasn't a marathon runner- that would have driven me crazy! All of the relay runners picked up their paces at ~8k and then got in the way at 10k while trying to find their relay partners. Was a big mess. I pulled off and found Pauline and Lauren (not easy in the crowd!), along with my 2 Belfast running buddies who had run the first leg of the relay legitimately (Jane and Karen).

We all walked back to City Center, grabbed breakfast at Harlem Cafe (http://www.harlembelfast.com/), and then walked back home. Unfortunately,  it began to rain and the temps had fallen by about 10 degrees F while we were eating - yikes. Poor marathoners... I took some pix of the event and my friends with Watty's little camera, but I cannot seem to locate the cord to download them, so hopefully sometime in the future I'll be able to add a few shots. Here's a link to a newspaper article about the marathon: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/belfast-marathon-2014-every-single-athlete-and-runner-caught-on-video-plus-gallery-and-full-results-belfastmarathon-30244479.html, as well as the link to the route map: http://www.belfastcitymarathon.com/download/images/2014MMAP.jpg.

Then, on Friday May 9, an amazing cycling race started in Belfast: the Giro D'Italia (http://www.gazzetta.it/Giroditalia/2014/en/). Friday was a team time trial that started and ended in City Centre and went right by our neighborhood - the racers turned right at the Stranmillis traffic circle! It was soooo fun to watch! The racers are amazingly fit and strong and flew by at super-fast speeds. Here are some pix:

Of course, you might notice that the 1st couple of pix do not include umbrellas and that the last one does...of course, true to Belfast, it started raining during the time trial! And, the turn that they had to make at the traffic circle was pretty tight. So, the racers had to slow way down there, right before heading up a huge hill. The racer from Ireland who had a shot at the podium fell and broke his collar bone, poor man. The Canadian team Orica won the stage (http://velonews.competitor.com/2014/05/news/tuft-dons-pink-orica-wins-stage-1-giro-ditalia_326920). We only watched and cheered for about an hour, but it was very fun.

On Saturday, the Giro raced 219km from Belfast City Centre up to the Antrim Coast taking the inland route north and then came back south on the coastal route. They started around 11am, were in Bushmills around 1pm, and got back to Belfast mid-afternoon. Marcel Kittel (team Giant-Shimano) won this stage (http://velonews.competitor.com/2014/05/news/marcel-kittel-wins-stage-2-giro-ditalia_327085). Of course, we were supposed to be driving up to the Antrim Coast that day with my folks...so, we waited until 12:30pm and then followed the racers on their route. We didn't see much evidence of the race until we got close to Bushmills, and then we saw volunteers still on the course, cones marking the road, and trash waiting to be cleaned up.  Cool! 

On Sunday, the Giro went south, biking 187km from Armagh in Northern Ireland to Dublin, the capital of the Irish Republic. Marcel Kittel (team Giant-Shimano) took this stage too (good island for him!): http://velonews.competitor.com/2014/05/news/marcel-kittel-wins-stage-3-giro-ditalia_327244. From there, the racers had a travel day to get to Italy to continue the race. This was the first time that the Giro was in NI/ROI and it was a really big deal for the Island. The race will go on all month, with the finish in Trieste on June 1 (http://www.cyclingnews.com/giro-ditalia/stages). So glad that we got to be part of it. After all of the years of us watching the Tour de France on tv, this was the first time we got to see a competition like this in person. It was really neat.