OPEN DOOR

EAARL!!!!!!

2010-08-28T17:44:00.004-05:00

This morning's data from the hurricane spaghetti plots and the NHC means that I have only one thing to say...

Icelandic Volcano "Eyjafjallajökull" classified as "dormant" as of 08/24/2010

2010-08-24T08:20:00.003-05:00

I am extremely surprised - given the global pandemonium it caused earlier this year - that virtually no news source is reporting that the Eyjafjallajökull volcano is officially classified as "dormant" as of today, 08/24/2010.

Strangely enough, while composing this post and going back to Google the topic once more - more and more stories have "erupted" to report on the new officially dormant classification. The Daily Mail and Reuters at least seem to be on the ball.

The volcano had to have gone through a three month period of "paused activity" before being classified as dormant - and it entered a pause in it's activity on May 24th, 2010. This is no doubt great news for anybody planning travel by air - and that includes us!

Planespotting KLIT #4 - 08/01/2010, Success at last.

2010-08-02T11:23:00.010-05:00

Long, hot weeks drag into short, hot weekends. By Sunday afternoon, we were hunting for an excuse to get out of the house and out of town before heading back to our jobs on Monday morning - and with my husband sporting a new DSLR camera that needed a thorough testing, we gave in and went planespotting again. I had done some research this past week on my own camera (albeit an EVF and not a DSLR), and discovered that Fuji thought it would be an awesome idea to make high-speed focusing an OPTION that can be turned on or off, as opposed to a standard fixed feature. After some re-arranging and testing on the freeway while en route to the airport, I discovered not only that the high-speed focusing function on my camera was going to make life a LOT easier, but also how exactly my camera auto-focuses. I am rapidly discovering that focusing ability is paramount in planespotting, while following hotly on its heels is shutter speed.

We arrived at KLIT arond 1:15PM, and while on the way to the airport saw no fewer than two Southwest 737s either arriving or taking off in our airspace. Nice! This turned out to be a sign of things to come - as today turned out to be our most successful spotting trip to date - and we succeeded in actually capturing some of the images we were hoping for. The only issue we experienced today that was less than perfect was the weather - we were under an excessive heat warning, and there was nary a cloud in the sky. The sun beat relentlessly down, and this actually caused heat haze distortion on a lot of our close-to-the-ground shots. As successful as today was, we may have to re-think successive planespotting trips until the weather seriously cools off.

N678AE on short final to rwy. 4L gives me my best jet photograph to date! My new camera settings, coupled with the slower pace of arrivals coming in over our heads on 4L make for prime jet photography! This is one of the few jets I have seen since getting involved in plane photography that does NOT have winglets.

Another American Eagle follows closely, coming in on 4L also. This was the first image that showed me we were having heat distortion problems. The white hulls of the AE jets make for maximum UV reflection, great for the PAX - not so great for the sun-dried, oven-baked, white-clad spotters on the gravel below!

Hello, beautiful! N449WN sidles out from the terminal and overjoys us by rolling on down our way. Yes!! We shifted runways between the last image and this one, because we saw that departures were indeed happening on 22L today again.

N449WN thunders down the runway on its takeoff roll. I'm still having issues with framing fast-moving jets in the shot, and in addition to that - my camera decided that it does not like focusing on subjects within the range of between 310deg. and 350deg. from my perspective. This is mildly irritating, to put it lightly.

N449WN at rotation departing 22L. High-speed focusing, 1/1000th shutter speed and ISO 200 allowed me to capture this image, which I am a little proud of.

N449WN raises its landing gear and leaves the hazy, searing runway for cooler climes (at least until they land again). Beautiful!

As much as I hate to mark my posts with this - all images are © Karen E. Politte, 2010, and any unauthorized use is prohibited. Please contact me if you wish to use my images. All images are available.

Beneath the Ridge...

2010-07-31T19:08:00.008-05:00

Sweltering, panting and gasping for air as we wound our way around the crowded streets of downtown Conway, AR on a small photography test, I was crouched by a small fountain across the street from one of the most popular restaurants in town when I heard that familiar sound......

Distantly, above the hot streets and car noise and the wafting smell of expensive, grilled restaurant food, above the 100-degree air and cutting through the atmosphere like a hot knife through butter......that sound of manmade power. Turning my attention from the fountain I was supposed to be concentrating on, I found something imminently more captivating. Who are you, up there? Where are you going? And what do you see when you look down at us?

Planespotting KLIT #3 - 07/25/2010, "The joys of rwy. 22L departures"

2010-07-26T15:43:00.008-05:00

The Arkansas summer was dragging on, and today we were due to be in Little Rock briefly to deliver a birthday gift to a friend. Never one to miss an opportunity, I managed to - once again - persuade the hubby and puppy to accompany me to the airport for an hour or so of spotting.

By early afternoon the atmosphere around KLIT was percolating with cumulus, and by the time we arrived at the airport exit there was a convective shower to our south. As it turns out, this little shower (along with its successive offspring) forced an airport arrivals/departures pattern change - making for a much more interesting and dynamic spotting experience as opposed to our last two lazy excursions. Arrivals were mostly coming in on rwy. 4L from the southwest, and as we sat at our regular gravel parking lot at the end of this runway we were jolted alert by a symphony of jet engines rattling our westward-facing windows. This was certainly a new experience for me, as opposed to having the departures from 4L powering overhead like we are used to! Two other spotters came to roost next to us also, however ten minutes later - after seeing a CRJ climbing out from 22L (the other runway) - our vehicle and theirs were engaged in a scramble towards that runway.

We took ourselves on a detour north past the terminal on Airport Rd., under the taxiway bridges and out to the cargo warehouses to scope the area for any lurking Southwest 737s - and we weren't disappointed! Two big, beautiful 737s sat docked at the terminal while filling up with PAX and luggage. After quenching our Boeing thirst, we followed the first one that pushed off for a 22L departure, although we were too late to see its takeoff roll from that runway's vantage point. The second 737 departed about an hour later but from 4L (go figure), but nonetheless a great spotting afternoon, some new angles for photography and many more tail #s! Enjoy!

N507AE makes our first tail# of the day and a nice little CRJ at that! The holes in the fenceline at the west side of the cargo area make a good spotting opportunity!

Siblings! :-D
N550WN and her sister, N797MX, make two beautiful additions to my tail# list and a stunning sight complete with those oh-so-nice blended winglets! Yess!

After pushing off, N797MX turns on an aircraft-dime and heads out briskly for a 22L departure to Dallas-Love-Field.

N797MX taxiing very quickly by us, and I relish in the hubby's exclamation of how big these things are. Yup.....I'm in love (OK OK - with him first, the plane second!). Metal fences - oh how I hate thee.

We race N797MX down Airport Rd. (obeying the speed limit and all traffic signals present, I might add), but it becomes apparent that the pilot and co-pilot are listening to Rick Ross, and are doing the proverbial turn-out-from-apron-into-immediate-takeoff-roll-hussle! In this shot, they are entering the runway. Bye bye, you beautiful machine!!

An unidentifiable American Eagle whooshes past us in my first at-speed, at-rotation, in front of me shot!

A short time later (with the sky unfortunately becoming very gray and nondescript), we get treated to a lovely arrival at KLIT on 22L. American Eagle tail# N691AE makes our second special-livery jet at this airport in three spotting trips - and I am happy! This jet is painted after the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure movement to find a cure for breast cancer.

United's pretty N785SK is the next to depart our runway. I am really impressed at their nice paint scheme, and really embarrassed at my inexperience at shooting these things at speed! This CRJ didn't rotate until well after the previous AE departure, and so I was somewhat early tripping the shutter.

We have the luck to see a Continental Expressjet Embraer RJ145 depart before we call it a day! N14945 departs 22L, and gives us a lovely view of the type of plane with Continental that we will be flying in less than six weeks time! Additionally - this image is zoomed out further because I was experimenting with a wider angle on the fast-moving jets. I won't do it again - full-zoom is the only way to go!

Planespotting KLIT # 2 - 07/17/2010

2010-07-17T20:02:00.012-05:00

Our second planespotting (which I guess should really be called planephotographing) trip to Little Rock occurred on one of the steamiest, haziest, scorchingly-hot days we've seen so far here in Central AR. Sparse mushy towering cumulus clouds to the west of the metroplex did little but add a rather more interesting backdrop to our excursion - we saw no rain, and felt no outflow. Still - we had a handful of notes with us on which I had scribbled the departure times of all of the Southwest 737s for the day - and we were confident of being able to nail one of these larger jets this time round.

After a very pleasant (as ever) early lunch at Panera, we headed out to our usual location at the airport for some spotting. The afternoon was made that much more interesting by the shard of almond, courtesy of the bear claw pastry I ate, that actually embedded itself in my left tonsil. For the rest of the trip, my husband was regaled by my impressions of a dog eating a caramel toffee.

The trip would have been hugely successful had it not been for my apparent lack of camera knowledge which once again reared its ugly head. My husband is head-and-shoulders above me in photography knowledge, but even when I applied his recommendations for settings to my camera, I still got slightly blurred images. I don't know which particular setting or group of settings were affecting my images, but suffice to say that my hopes for near-crystal-clear shots of the passing jets never were fully realized. I think that shutter speed was a major culprit - probably combined with my less than top-of-the-range equipment, and for sure my amateurish method of following a moving photography subject.

Regardless, enjoy this group of images for what they are - aviation in action!

An extremely fitting fountain that sits outside Panera in Little Rock.

Our first CRJ of the day. This one was taken from a small dirt pull-off on the opposite side of the runway than we generally sit at. I disliked the lighting (facing south on a sunny day), and so we moved to our usual camp.

We were lucky enough to see some private general aviation craft up-close and personal thanks to the fact that they taxied to their hangars right down to our end after landing!

Another American CRJ confirms my beliefs that we were in a much better spot lighting-wise. The sky and clouds today were just beautiful - brings to mind that great techno-style song from a while back......".....little fluffy clouds.....". Nice!

This is not a picture of another CRJ taking off - this actually is a picture of me failing to stop my shutter finger upon takeoff and wait until it's actually parallel with me before shooting. Repeat after the voice in my head: "OMG OMG OMG it's off the ground!!! Take photo take photo take photo!!!'. Sheesh.

Okay now there are several things that transpired for this shot and I want them prefaced by my saying that I am still overjoyed at this image. Okay - firstly, this is the plane we had been waiting on for an hour and a half and the main reason for the trip. Secondly - it was 10 minutes late appearing and we had not seen a single Southwest jet on the premesis during our earlier reconnaisance drive along Airport Rd. Thirdly - the last time we came here for spotting, a Southwest jet took off 10 minutes before we arrived at the airport, and 10 minutes after we left. Fourthly - seemingly out of nowhere, directly behind the CRJ in the photo above, when we thad almost given up seeing this plane - it APPEARS! Sliding into view on the apron at the very opposite end of the runway from us, shiny and purple and burnt orange. Fifthly - due to the occurrence of #4, my hands start shaking like crazy and won't quit.
So.....yeah. A bit blurry, a bit shaky - but she's a beauty!!!!!!!! :-)

Planespotting KLIT #1 - 07/05/2010

2010-07-15T20:27:00.013-05:00

July 5th this year saw me finally realize my new-found passion - aviation and photography. I have become acutely interested in jetplanes and commercial aviation - and with a bit of background in photography, I was itching to try my hand at catching some images of planes arriving and departing our state's largest airport at Little Rock (LIT). Now - admittedly the traffic levels and quality at LIT don't even come near to rivalling that of some of the more major hubs I have had the pleasure of frequenting (EWR and LGW specifically), I find that I am now looking at aviation in a different light. Through enthusiast's eyes, if you will.

And so - the day after Independence Day - my ever-patient hubby and I (along with our ever-tag-along, Kaylee the Jackabee) travelled to LIT airport (via the dog park) so that I could try my hand at my first batch of jet photographs. There is a very nice strip of gravel located off of E. Roosevelt Rd. (close to where Frazier Pike meets E. Roosevelt Rd.), right where the railroad comes its closest to the road, where you can set up just south of the western-most runway (I am still hunting for the names/numbers of LIT's two runways). This gravel "cul-de-sac" provides great viewing for takeoffs, being only slightly south of the takeoff path for aircraft departing LIT on this runway (when they are departing to the south-west, I might add). This will be our haunt for many moons to come, I am sure.

My equipment isn't exactly state-of-the-art, nor is my method for spotting and photographing airplanes. I am still very green and would be considered the newest kind of newbie by any planespotters who've been doing this for more than a couple of weeks - but I'm having fun and learning. That's what counts.

My first attempt at aviation photography provided the following photographs. Enjoy!

LIT provides the beginnings of what was going to be a CRJ-fest. I'm not fussy. In fact, I'm positively euphoric.

This is where I'm supposed to say "hmmmm, yes. This is tail # xxslkjh-308fd taxiing on rwy #30bbt7, headed to PHX, 20 minutes late today".
Yeah. No. Instead - I give you "random CRJ #2 taxiing".

My first ever shot of an airborne jet. Gravy.

Kind of interesting to see the bird in this one - although perspective is probably very flattened.

What I believe to be an American Eagle leaving.

Yup - American. I'm loving today at this point - hanging out of the passenger side window of our minivan with an inverted neck trying to follow jets on TOGA power. Awesome!

Another takeoff...

Ahhhhhh. The cherry on top of the cake. I was growing accustomed enough to the lighting, camera behavior and physical situation that I managed to shoot off this shot of this beautiful little CRJ. My first tail #!! Yeah!
N920EV belonging to Atlantic Southeast (operating as Delta Express) departs LIT in the mid-morning sun. This jet is a one-of-a-kind - being the 100th CRJ to be purchased by ASA, hence the paint scheme. "100 CRJs and climbing!". Just awesome!!

My husband snapped off this shot now that my appetite had been satiated by N920EV.

Would you like some air with that water?

2010-07-14T08:16:00.004-05:00

Currently, it is 83/77oF, with fog. Welcome to Arkansas in July. It's amazing what a few days of torrential rain showers, followed by sunny, clear weather can do. Opening the blinds in the house this morning was interesting - every single window in our (rather aged) house was steamed up on the outside.

As a side note - these past few days' storms have been some of the most electrically charged that it has been my privilege to experience. It never ceases to amaze me how you can never tell what characteristics convective storms are going to have until they happen. Benign-looking on radar, these storms were monsters. Slow-moving, flooding, hurricane-esque monsters with teeth of blue-white bolts. Monday's storms that moved into the Conway area around 5:30PM shattered the mind and strafed the eye with repeated CGs - and they were close. Something got struck in our back yard - and I'm not exaggerating that. It was in our back yard. We were in the kitchen fixing dinner when it occurred - and we had no time to react before the concussion hit us as fast (or slightly faster) than the comparatively-puny flash. It was as though someone had fired cannon in our dining room.

Guess I should just be thankful that our dog really doesn't care about such phenomenon. I think she was the calmest of the lot of us.

24 years....

2010-07-12T10:54:00.002-05:00

Twenty-four years, give or take a few. That's how long it has taken me to realize that long hair is maybe, possibly not worth the effort. Time to change.

Jan. 29th/30th, 2010 Winter Storm - Conway, AR

2010-01-31T19:16:00.006-06:00

I have finally had the chance to do a (very) quick and (very) dirty edit on some of my images from the past couple of days. During the night of January 28th, and through the day on the 29th, Arkansas finally saw it's long-awaited winter storm. While it will have broken no records for snow depth, ice accumulation or anything else for that matter - it sure was nice to finally get some frozen precipiation, and to have the weekend off work to allow us to enjoy it.

I guesstimate we received about 4" of snow on top of about .5" of an ice/sleet mixture - I was too lazy to get out in our yard with my ruler and dig around in the icy slush to find out exactly how much accumulation we had but I'm sure LZK's homepage will have it on there somewhere......still, it made for some beautiful shots in the snow and ice, and allowed me to get my feet wet with photograph again which can't be a bad thing.

Enjoy!

Karen

Case in Point......

2009-12-21T09:05:00.002-06:00

So in the first few months of owning this Blog, I have already displayed the one major reason for my giving up my URL at Stormskies.com. I never use the thing. I guess it is a good sign that my personal and home life is so full that I literally barely have any time to check my email most days let alone sit here and wax lyrically about this, that or the next thing. I remember a time when all I wanted (or had) to do was sit on the computer at home and design my latest grand scheme for my website, or write scores of pages of a new chase account, or upload the latest batch of chase photographs......or in even later years sit on my Blog and post my varied (and sometimes colorful) opinions on current events, personal life issues or something else.

None of that has the remotest interest for me any longer. And I am sure that there is no shortage of people out there (although they have probably long ago stopped checking my Blog for new entries) who would point and cry "AHA!" after learning that my interest in chasing has all but burned up and scattered it's dry ashes in the Arkansas breeze. "Aha! I TOLD you she wasn't in it for life!!!" LOL I can hear them now. As if my life is somehow made lesser by the fact that I have lost interest in chasing. Far from it. A husband, a puppy, a home that we own and it's myriad of maintenance projects......all these things make you realize what's important to you. I daresay we may chase on occasion should the opportunity present itself in central Arkansas (I am sure it will), but by and large chasing is something I did a long time ago when I wasn't so concerned with supporting myself and my family and being responsible.

A lot has transpired in 2009......and quite frankly I am ready for a very, very quiescent 2010. Seems like the past three or four years I have been saying the same exact thing. Life isn't getting any less hectic. I come to wonder sometimes if we do it to ourselves. Should we just be saying "no" to a lot more inquiries to our time? Should we be proactively avoiding certain social gatherings and/or situations? How does one manage one's time in a fashion that suits your desire for having plenty of spare time? The truth of the matter is probably that this is a world-over problem, that life itself is getting more hectic, more stressed and more spread-thin. I think in 2010 it will be my resolution to maintain free time and not rush myself.

This evening is a case in point. I work until 5:30PM (that last half hour between 5PM and 5:30PM sure does make 5:30PM feel like midnight when you don't get to leave the office until then), rush home and let puppy out, wolf down some dinner, crate puppy again and then Jason and I head to a local Planning Commission meeting to fight a proposed permit for the owner of the land directly behind our house to use it to build a restaurant there. Crazy busy.

The one thing I do want to do with this Blog is use it to write more memoirs of Scotland. The past couple of posts that I wrote in this genre were very satisfying to not only write but also read - and I would like to expand on that. I am a little barren as far as ideas for subjects for the next one, so I will have to think on that for a while.

Better get going - there's not much happening here.

Our little girl!

2009-08-31T06:40:00.004-05:00

Kaylee Politte was adopted by us in early July this year. She is a seven-and-a-half-month old Beagle mix puppy, and we love her so much! As you can see in this video......she loves nothing more than to run with new friends at the dog park!

Oh....by the way, I should have mentioned - she is the brown, Beagle-like dog with the red harness on! Not the grey Miniature Schnauzer....

Rest in Peace, Little Ones......

2009-08-30T09:35:00.008-05:00

This morning, we pronounced our two little Dwarf Puffers as having passed away. Newt (the female) was deathly sick and barely moving, and Bupu (the male) was found already dead. They had been sick for a number of days and not eating since last Wednesday. They were estimated to be somewhere between two and three years old - the maximum life span of a Dwarf Puffer.

We got Newt and Bupu around Thanksgiving 2007. They lived their lives in their own dedicated 10g species tank, and were some of the most interactive and sweet fish we have ever owned. Their diet consisted primarily of daily batches of frozen bloodworms - which they always ate with great gusto up until the last few days. Occasionally, we would treat them with a batch of snails from our local PetSmart......and we would take great delight in watching them tackle the small snails and stalk them. They sure loved their snails back in the day.

We suspect an unfortunate combination of old age and some kind of fungal infection - probably brought about by weakened immune systems due to old age. The tank conditions hadn't changed in years, and no fish had been added to the tank in years. There was zero risk for any disease, and the water quality in the tank was perfect.

Rest in Peace, Newt and Bupu......you will be missed.

I remember: Trainrides.

2009-08-27T10:13:00.001-05:00

I haven't been writing as prolifically as I had promised myself about these memories, but with as crazy as life gets sometimes, I think I will let this one slip. Regardless - here's a little reminder about what I am trying to achieve here:

I have realized that there are many memories of my childhood and adulthood in my hometown of Aberfeldy in Scotland that stand precariously close to passing from accurate memory into vague recollection - or worse. In an attempt to stop this - and in trying to figure out the best way to commit these memories to fact - I have decided to open a series of posts here on Open Door which deal with my fond recollections of my lifestyle during childhood, adolescence and adulthood spent in Aberfeldy, deep in the heart of Perthshire, Scotland. These “memoirs”, for want of a less grandiose word, will not come in any strict chronological order or be too stuffy or fact-perfect. Instead - they are to be treated as (what I would like to think would be) enjoyable and fascinating reading for you, and as a memory fail-safe for me. Rather than be grammatically perfect or have forced-fiction-passion, I'll probably just try and let the posts ebb and flow by themselves, capturing more of the feeling of the color and emotions of what I recount rather than strictly how it was.

This second installment is entitled “Trainrides”…
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During the years of 1999-2001, my father and late Stepmother, Rosy, lived away from my hometown of Aberfeldy. My dad got stationed at Royal Brackla Distillery as Manager, which is in Nairnshire on the northern coast of Scotland near Inverness. Royal Brackla Distillery is a subsidiary of John Dewar & Sons, the same whisky-making company that owned and operated Aberfeldy Distillery, where my dad has worked since before I was born. Dad and Rosy hated the thought of moving so far away, but they didn't have a whole lot of choice in the matter with their employers.

Royal Brackla was the first distillery to be awarded the royal warrant, and was established in 1812 by Captain William Fraser. There are a lot of facts about Royal Brackla Distillery on THIS webpage, and here is a small picture of the place:

My dad's stay at Royal Brackla commenced a period of travelling up to visit at every opportunity possible. It was quite exciting for me to have a new area of the country to visit and become acquainted with, but also a little daunting to travel on my own. I drove the distance a few times, got up with my aunts and uncles at least a couple of times, and for the rest of the time I happily stuck myself on a train and let it take me to Inverness, where dad would meet me at the train station and take me out to Brackla with him. One of the times when I got up with my aunt Vanda and uncle Bob it was snowing very heavily towards blizzard proportions - and the A9 northbound is NOT a place you want to be stranded in a snowstorm with the infamous Drumochter Pass at elevation making for a daunting journey in all but the best of weather conditions. Nevertheless we made it up to Inverness, albeit with some frayed-nerves.

I arranged one trip for a long-weekend up at Brackla with Dad and Rosy, and my stepbrother Stuart (Rosy's oldest son). Stuart lived in Dundee at the time, east-northeast of Perth which was to the southeast of Aberfeldy, and we had a grand time planning our weekend trip on email and organizing the train rides. I'm a planning and organizing type of person, and many of my memories of a particular event or point in time are cemented by the organizing that I do for it.
Scotrail, Scotland's National Rail Carrier, have a wonderful network of train transportation options throughout Scotland, and can pretty much get you to any approximate area you want to go to (with the exception of Aberfeldy - but that's another story). A huge and gigantic map of Scotrail's services in Scotland can be found HERE. Please note that this map is not geographically sound - it only illustrates Scotland's rail network. For a good, geographically sound map of Scotland, try Google or go HERE for a start. Note the cities of Dundee, Perth and Inverness, the trainstop of Pitlochry on the way, and my hometown of Aberfeldy which is a little ways to the southwest of Pitlochry.

Based on the above map, my stepbrother Stuart had to board one train in Dundee and take it to Perth. He then changed trains in Perth to board the "Highland Main Line" train to Inverness, stopping at Dunkeld and Birnam, Pitlochry, Blair Atholl, Dalwhinnie, Newtonmore, Kingussie, Aviemore and Carrbridge on it's way to Inverness. I think this train's number may have been 27, but I can't be certain of that.

The particular weekend of recount I remember packing, filled with anticipation like it was Christmas Eve and I was five again. I stuffed as much as I could into a rucksack, along with my walkman for company along the way (usually stocked with cassettes of whatever took my fancy at the time......at this point in time it was probably Alanis Morrisette), and a trusty bottle of Chateauneuf Du Pape as a gift for dad and Rosy. Around 8AM, my uncle Alistair arrived for me to drive me to Pitlochry early on the foggy, crisp Friday morning. I believe it may have been autumn. It was most likely a Bank Holiday, giving us a nice, leisurely long weekend with which to make our trip to visit our parents. I had always had tremendous respect for my big stepbrother Stuart - he was a sterling guy, very sensitive, caring, and a little bit mystic like myself......so it stood to reason that we got on very well.

Uncle Alistair got me to the train station in Pitlochry with plenty of time to spare. Amazingly, there is some kind of Wikipedia page on my beloved train station, located HERE. Pitlochry train station is a characteristically small Highland Perthshire railway station. Here is a picture of it:

The trains usually ran pretty much on time - and I'm not too sure which one it was that I caught at Pitlochry normally. I believe we got into Inverness station around noon or 12.30pm, so it would figure, then, that the train must have departed from Pitlochry around 9AM. I remember telling Alistair as he helped me with my bags to the trackside that I had secreted a bottle of Chianti in the car as a thank-you for taking me over to Pitlochry - to which he was gravely insistent upon the fact that I shouldn't have. But - Uncle Alistair was always gravely insistent upon something - so I didn't take it too much to heart. The train pulled up a few minutes behind schedule and we waited on the opposite side of the tracks (reached by the wrought-iron bridge over the line in the picture above) for the travellers to come meandering out and for the new lot - as northbound as we were - to clamber aboard. We finally spotted Stuart with his curly, longish, prematurely greying hair emerging from one of the doors, and I'll always remember he and Alistair exchanging a solemn shake of the hand as Alistair handed my bag (and me) to Stuart. It struck me as very antiquated, very formal, and very......comforting.

And so we were on our way! Off for another weekend of unknown revelry and late-night philosophy by the fireside with daddy-o and Rosy. Off to visit Brackla House, the distillery, and all of the other strangely unfamiliar placenames to us Perthshire-ites. Pitlochry began to fall away from our windows as I followed Stuart to the car in which he was riding with his own dufflebag. The cars smelled of public transport: old cigarettes long-since banned, musty cloth sofa-chairs, public fingerprints and discarded packets of crisps. And I loved it! The windows would rattle as we rumbled over rough parts of the track, and I settled down to chat with Stuart during the long trainride to Inverness. I think it was at some point during the actual trainride itself that Stuart and I discovered that we had both actually packed a bottle of Chateauneuf Du Pape for dad and Rosy......we laughed at that for quite a while.

The train would stop at Blair Atholl briefly - an even smaller train station than Pitlochry - and then head north and up in elevation to climb out of the valley and onto the barren, stark moors that make up this more northerly stretch of Scottish landscape. The low-clinging heather that clads the treeless hillsides up in these parts had long since turned brown for the winter. It was quite soothing to listen to the rhythm of the traintracks beneath us as we flew through the countryside towards our next stop of Dalwhinnie.

Dalwhinnie is a tiny outpost of civilization amidst areas such as the Drumochter Pass - and is an important stopping point for not only the train but also the motorists on the A9, the road which flanks the railroad all the way from Pitlochry to Inverness and beyond. The town came into being around an inn that from the early 1700s served the needs of Highland cattle drovers en route to the market at Crieff. On a single day in August 1723 over 1200 head of cattle passed through Dalwhinnie, in eight different droves. In 1729, Dalwhinnie was the point at which military road construction teams working south from Inverness via Ruthven Barracks and north from Dunkeld met, completing the predecessor to today's A9. Another road was built to the northwest crossing the high level Corrieyairack pass from Laggan to Fort Augustus, a route abandoned as a road in the 1820s. Dalwhinnie is also home to Scotland's highest distillery. This distillery produces a quite famous Single Malt that has the town's namesake.

The train slides into the tiny station at Dalwhinnie behind some ancient, whitewashed cottages with run-down wooden fences that are probably a half century old (the fences, that is - the cottages I am sure measure their age in centuries). There is a wonderful page on the Dalwhinnie/A9 area on Undiscovered Scotland's website which you really should at least glance at. It is to be found HERE.
Onwards from Dalwhinnie, and not much further along and we begin to see the peaks of the Cairngorms to our east and northeast. I seem to remember, on this particular trip, that they were already dusted with snow despite the early time in the season. The communities of Newtonmore and Kingussie fly past (I can't remember if we stopped here or not), and our next definite stop was Aviemore. Aviemore is the only sizeable settlement to be found between Pitlochry and Inverness - and in it's present form it exists largely because of the tourism industry related to the Cairngorms National Park, which lie on Aviemore's doorstep. A new funicular railway into the Cairngorms was built not too long ago - and this has definitely encouraged the growth of this town.
I know I am digressing about the small and large towns that we find along the way......but they're all part of the memory.

So, I guess eventually we thundered into Inverness train station around noon or sometime in the early afternoon. The bustling platforms were a stark reminder that we were in Pitlochry no more - and Stuart and I worked our way towards the exit doors where we found dad waiting for us - dressed as he usually was in his work clothes. I guess being the manager of a facility has it's advantages - you can take off whenever you need to to go and meet your daughter and stepson at the train station! :razz: We hurried with dad through the high-rise-bordered streets of the old city of Inverness to where he was parked, piled our bags into the car and sped off away from the big city on the main A96 road towards Nairn. The built-up city soon gave way to familiar coastal rolling dunes, the scrubby, brown grass so characteristic of seaside locations, and the big smoke stack from the cement factory loomed just to our north. Culloden Battlefield was somewhere to our southwest, but we didn't pass directly by it this time round. After about twenty minutes of travel on this road, we took the B9090 exit which heads south of the main A96 and parallels it along the coastline. Soon we began to see the patchwork of farmland and the fields of pigs and pigshelters that told us we were getting close to dad and Rosy's home. The small village of Clephanton flew by in the bat of an eyelid, and, later, the larger town of Cawdor (of Shakespearean fame) with it's impressive castle.

A mile or two beyond Cawdor, past some more hedgerows and around a few more corners we uncovered Brackla House, at the entrance of the Royal Brackla Distillery. We were home. It's familiar white-washed walls and the big central-heating oil tank sitting in the paved backyard were comforting after our long journey, and dad left Stuart and I to get unpacked as he returned along the small lane to the distillery to conclude his business for the weekend. Occasionally, dad would take me (his "little girl") around the distillery to meet "the boys" in the facility when I came to visit - but not this time......there was too much unpacking to do, and anyhow - Brackla was no Aberfeldy Distillery. There was no Fast Ed or Stookie or Colin to laugh around with and no jogger ghosts to keep an eye out for. So - Stuart and I contented ourselves with unpacking for the weekend. Once dad and Rosy returned home from work to make dinner, we all congregated in the kitchen and helped set the table. With many chuckles, dad saw both Stuart and I arrive from downstairs - both brandishing a bottle of his favorite Chateauneuf Du Pape for him.

Weekends at Brackla were timeless for want of a better word. We got up late, had a healthy breakfast that usually involved fresh bakery bread and Alpen Swiss Muesli, and found countless other numerous ways to spend time together. Frequently, Rosy would spend time with her son Stuart, and dad and I......well, neither of us would feel much guilt in admitting that we usually ended up either surfing the net, watching tv, or zooming into Nairn (the closest town with supermarkets and facilities) to sift through the local farmer's market and snatch a fresh-off-the-conveyor-belt doughnut! :wink: After morning it was usually time for a spot of lunch - thick, doorstop cheese-and-pickle sandwiches and dark chocolate digestives dipped in hot tea being a good example.

One weekend, I remember distinctly that Rosy and I decided to take a walk on the beach at Nairn. I hadn't taken any of my own flat shoes (being about 19 years old at the time - I guess I didn't have much of a mind for packing flat shoes when going on a weekend away!), and so I borrowed a pair of walking boots from dad. It was a beautiful, warm early afternoon, and to this day walking along that beach with Rosy remains one of my fondest, most insulated memories. There was energetic convection across the whole sky with a few Cbs here and there - and while walking in the strong sunshine I recall us watching lightning from afar. Later that day, we would hear about a house in Nairn that had caught fire from lightning. On our return along the shore, I had a moment of fancy and removed my boots to paddle along the shoreline in the icy waters of the Moray Firth. What a worriless, innocent afternoon!

On other visits, while trying to work up an appetite worthy of the Cawdor Tavern, Rosy, Stuart and I would take a walk directly outside Brackla House and do a small circuit around some of the nearby communities. The drab Blairmore, Broomhill and Piperhill, with their local-authority housing complexes provided a square-shaped walk for us to try and "get hungry". After the hour or so it took us to walk this circuit, we would return home and change, adorn makeup, jewelry, dresses and skirts and head out to The Cawdor Tavern - the nearest good quality restaurant that dad and Rosy frequented. This is a traditional country pub housed in a building that began life as the joiner's workshop for Cawdor Castle. During autumn and winter there were always fires roaring upon entry, and dad had a good friendship with the local landlord who had - as luck would have it - just purchased a juvenile "shmoopoo". Needless to say - dad and I went in to that place drooling......and it wasn't because we were hungry! Although......it has to be said that the Cawdor Tavern's fayre of steaks, game birds, stews, steak pies, sticky toffee puddings and lashings of decadent chocolate desserts ensured that we were hungry!

Frequently, dad would hire us a taxi for the mile-or-so stretch of road home around midnight after we had drunk our wine, sniffed our brandy, downed our Baileys and warmed our toes with some Drambuie. As the evening set into a thick, merry black night, we trundled home and fell into the sofas at Brackla House as dad stirred up the fire and piled on some coal. Frequently - scarily - Stuart and I would be up until 3 or 4AM drinking, talking, philosophizing and, later in the night or earlier in the morning - occasionally falling to studying the finer details in dad and Rosy's wooden carved coasters on the coffee table. Needless to say, hangovers would follow later that morning when we all surfaced!

All too soon, weekends like this would draw to a close. Our return-tickets on the train would begin to burn holes in our pockets, and either one or both of Stuart and I would head home on the Sunday or the Monday following. It was always sad watching Stuart leave, or - of course - leaving dad and Rosy myself from the train station in Inverness. We never quite knew when we would see each other again - and when you are such a close-knit family, that hurts......a lot more deeply than I think a lot of people realize.

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This article and these memories are all deciated to my late stepmother Rosy. To have provided so many people with so many priceless memories is to have lived more fully than you could ever imagine.

I remember: Early work and rainy nights.

2009-08-27T10:07:00.000-05:00

I have realized that there are many memories of my childhood and adulthood in my hometown of Aberfeldy in Scotland that stand precariously close to passing from memory into vague recollection - or worse, myth. In an attempt to stop this - and in trying to figure out the best way to commit these memories to fact - I have decided to open a series of posts here on Open Door which deal with my fond recollections of my lifestyle during childhood, adolescence and adulthood spent in Aberfeldy, deep in the heart of Perthshire, Scotland. These "memoirs", for want of a less gradiose word, will not come in any strict chronological order or be too stuffy or fact-perfect. Instead - they are to be treated as (what I would like to think would be) enjoyable and fascinating reading for you, and as a memory fail-safe for me.
The first is entitled "Early jobs and rainy nights"...
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The Co-Operative is the longest standing grocery store/supermarket in Aberfeldy which has not changed it's name or logo for what could possibly be centuries. It is located on the ground and 1st floors of an old, large, stone building dating back to the mid-1800s and is located on the east side of The Square, which is the central gathering point for commerce and roads in Aberfeldy (population 2,000).

Another interesting fact about "the Co-Op" as it is locally known is that almost every single youngster growing up in Aberfeldy is destined - from a very early age - to do a "stint" in it. This held no less true for me than it has for many other members of my family. I estimate I worked in the Co-Op between August and December, 1998. After quitting a job as an assistant Chef at a nerby restaurant (literally across the street from the Co-Op), I started work at the supermarket in the height of summer. I had no real plan in life - I only knew that I had to make money and, ergo, I had to work. My time spent at the Co-Op immediately preceded the attaining of a somewhat life-changing position at a local Estate Agents and Chartered Surveyor's office in town - but that will come later I am sure.

The Co-op wasn't the most fun place to work at - but then I imagine that no grocery store or supermarket ever is. I was shunted around between various positions - cashier, produce stocker, shelf-straightener, and bakery attendant. Sometimes I even did all of these jobs in one day if the staffing was horrendous. The bakery and cashier's jobs were the most tolerable - I used to cringe when the manager would ask me to begin unloading and unpacking one of the massive crates of goods and products that our deliveries came in. With stanely knife in-hand you would hack and slash and rip and tear at those damned things - and still your fingers would come away in worse shape than the external packaging of the very products you were trying to put on sale.

Mainly I was in control of the bakery and alcohol section of the store (lucky or what? :lol: ) - which, by some cruel twist of building desinger fate, was actually not attached to the main building at this point in time (the internal connection not coming until several years after I had stopped working there). The customers had to access the separate sides of the store via outside entrances - if you were an employee, you could run the gamut of boxes and back alleys and huge ass freezers in the staff section behind everything and eventually find yourself in the main section of the store, LOL. The mornings would start at 7:00AM for me if I was to be on bakery duty. I remember waiting outside in the complete pitch darkness of an October morning in Highland Perthshire - not even the faintest hint of dawn kissing the eastern horizon (which I couldn't see anyways as the huge 5-storey building the Co-Op was in blocked out that part of the sky). Standing, freezing my rear off (I didn't have enough sense at aged 18 to actually dress for the weather!), I would wait by the front doors until the manager or assistant-manager showed up to unlock the steel shutters and open the doors for the first of the staff. Occasioanlly, if we were all immaculately timed, the Bread Lorry would have pulled up in the background in The Square and they would slowly begin to trundle plastic pallets stacked ten and fifteen layers high with loaves of bread out into the street for us.

What ensued after being let into the shop for the morning was a bit chaotic for me. The very first thing that had to be done was fishing the bakery's bread, cakes, rolls and croissants out of the freezers so that they could be thawed and ready to bake according to the pre-set schedule. I used to curse until my tongue was blue with the cold in those huge freezers, clambering around on frozen boxes of baguettes and apricot danishes, trying to find the correct code number of roll I was looking for that particular day. Eventually - with only mild frostbite - I had my huge cart stocked and proceeded to my "kitchen" (which consisted of a HUGE toaster oven and a sink) to begin baking for opening time at 8:00AM. Happy days. :wink: It was quite a feat to keep the bakery stocked throughout the whole of the morning (mornings were the busiest times) I can tell you......I had never had any experience in stock-keeping before and now I found myself having to anticipate which things were going to run out faster than others.

There was a messy staffroom at the Co-Op which was littered with ashtrays, coffee cups, chocolate bar wrappers (morning breaktime was worthless unless infused with a suitably large Cadbury's Dairy Milk or some such goodness), and newspapers which were habitually always left open at the sports and horseracing sections. Across from this room was a stand of lockers for the employees - but I never utilised these on the grounds that I resented paying my employer for the use of a steel compartment in which to keep junk.

Around the corner, past the box compacter and towards the main staff entrance to the major grocery shop floor area was a small, dirty, dark doorway which led out - not into the Abyss as you may imagine - but into a small back alleyway which interposed itself between both of the buildings of the Co-Op (thus creating the aforementioned "split" effect in the shop's floorplan). This alleyway was the home of several huge dumpsters for the store into which they trashed all manner of unspeakable waste, boxes, bottles, broken merchandise and every other item of trash that kind of establishment could produce. This was also "smoker's alley", and it was where those who required a cigarette break congregated to relax. Having been a smoker myself during my stint at the Co-Op, I myself wound up out here on several occasions every day whether it was hot or freezing, pouring with rain or blowing a gale (which didn't affect the alleyway anyways as it was sandwiched between the two buildings), light or pitch dark. If I was lucky, there'd be a crowd or at least someone else out there to stand and moan about work with.

We all pretty much looked after each other, there at the Co-Op. There were the few exceptions (usually in management) - but all of the skivvies and go'fers treated each other well. A young kid by the name of Andy was always out there in the pouring rain with us, smoking, too. He was very personable - his family were originally from England. If you were a "kid" and worked at the Co-Op, you probably ended up at some point or another in Andy's house playing the latest computer games and sheltering from the cold pelting rain and dark nights that so often affected Aberfeldy in the winter.

Testing

2009-08-26T10:55:00.000-05:00

Hello world.