[Ex Finn.]

I'm both surprised and yet unsurprised that England isn't in that list.

Surprised, because every coffee shop I've been into in the UK - even in my town, which isn't an economically prosperous area - is always busy, selling coffees priced at around twice what the average home-cooked meal costs.

But unsurprised because tea still remains our national drink. Strong tea with milk, that is... the right way to drink it

Brits like their tea.

[Racer X 69]

While I applaud your efforts to keep a lady "happy", there's too much stuff in your coffee!

How To Make The Perfect Espresso - YouTube

I'm generally a purist when it comes to coffee, though I typically prefer a little milk in mine (I'll happily drink it black too, of course). Initially I recoiled at your drink recipe... but I can see how that might be awesome. Maybe not with my favourite beans, but a darker, oilier roast... Hmmm. Those aren't all store-cupboard items for me. I have the Bailey's (for my Mum), and chocolate syrup (for ice-cream... not my thing, but my Mum and Dad like it). No whipped cream or Kahlua in da house, though. Still, easy enough to obtain...

I have never been averse to having coffee, or tea, straight up.

Or with a splash of skim milk.

Or a bit of sugar (I prefer dark brown sugar, it has a better more molasses flavor, brings out the richness of coffee and black teas).

But the drink I describe is all about the rich thickness, the warmth, the mixture if the aromas as the steam brings them to the nasal palate. Sip or slurp it, again, savoring the heavy vapours across the roof of the mouth, feel the alcohol warm the throat. The milky smoothness coats the palate with yet more delicious mocha flavour.

Very nice on a frosty February morning.

Our Daytona parties are generally breakfast and brunch themed, because the time difference has the race starting midmorning for us. Everyone brings stuff like pigs in blankets, pigs in blankets wrapped in bacon, fruit and soft cheeses, crackers of many grains and varieties, jalapeño jelly, bagels, cream cheese and lox, pastries, quiche, and many early day drinks, bloody mary, the coffee drink I mentioned, other concoctions.

After a couple of the coffee drinks everyone is feeling fine.

[Racer X 69]

I found a photographer from (I think) Finland who shoots realistic scenes juxtaposing everyday life we all recognize with kids toys and models of interstellar space ships.

This one caught my eye.

[Racer X 69]

Another one.

[dbs]

Hi Racer

Race 1.......Mustang won..

Race 2.......Mustang on pole

Delayed start you can find some drives hiding in mobile refridgerators


Dave

[eddie1960]

Another one.

some cool work thanks

[tim60]

Ruck.
Had to Google that one.

Ruck, you would have found is a term from the football played by those here fortunate enough to have chosen the right grandparents. The game that taught the officers ready for WWI methods. It is a method of going forward when the forwards of the opposition decide to contest that intent.

[tim60]

I would never sell my freedom for some losers, just to earn a buck.

Nor would I, and I was not suggesting you actually would, but rather that that would explain the scanning effort of the border guards. And they may have had information that someone was going to try that day, or been put on a drill to do that search.

[tim60]

Me neither. I can handle being in a crowd, but I never enjoy it. Weird, considering I lived most of my adult life in or near London, and worked there every day.

I mostly like solitude, but with a little social interaction in the mix (the kind where I can pick and choose). Some of my favourite vacations were on Lundy, a tiny island in the Bristol Channel, facing out to the Atlantic. Days spent walking, with barely another person in sight. Then, in the evening, a couple of hours in the tavern for dinner and a few drinks, before retiring to my accommodation to sit and read. No cell-phone signal for the most part. Phones, tablets and computers banned in the tavern.

I'd love to go there again, but since I moved back home to the North East, getting there is a pain... 400 miles to the heli-port or ferry terminal from where I live. I could do that for the outgoing journey, due to excitement alone... but coming back would be a hassle. That kind of drive at the end of the vacation, when all the fun's been had, isn't something to look forward to... Still, I don't know. I'm kind of tempted...

Lundy Island | The Landmark Trust

400 miles, why worry about that. Just yesterday some people did that just to watch their favourite soccer team LOSE. And then they had to go home.

[CharLac]

Border crossings can be interesting. I'll share a few experiences.

Before everything was on computer, things always seemed to be interesting when travelling on two passports. I arrive in South Africa, where, being a South African citizen, I am by law required to enter the country on my South African passport.
At border control, I hand over my passport. Border Control official pages through passport from from front to back, and again from back to front. Says to me: "Where did you fly from today?" I say: Perth, Australia. He goes: "There's no stamp in your passport from Australia." I reply: "Yes, I'm a dual citizen. I left Australia on my New Zealand passport." Supervisor gets called and after some discussions between to two of them, I'm sent on my merry way.

Some years ago, I'm sightseeing at Niagara Falls. Drove up there from New York City. Do all the usual sightseeing stuff and decide to walk over to the Canadian side as well. Got waved through the border post without so much as a second glance.
Come back across the bridge, again, get waved through, no issue. A few months later, I fly into Toronto from Tampa. "Good morning sir. Have you been to Canada before?" "Yes, some months back I visited Niagara Falls." And had to explain, many times, why there was no stamp in my passport.

And in Australia, I don't know why, but the drug sniffing dogs never fail to sniff me from all sides. Followed by the being dragged off for a swab test. Never fails.

Bacon

Actually, that happened to my Mrs ChaLac one time as she had bacon in her pocket she had been saving for her dog but forgot it was there. The customs folks has a good chuckle when their dogs showed a keen interest in her.

[CharLac]

Nah... I can just see it now... they run the swab and the alarm goes off, with "FINE WINES!!" flashing in red on the machine...

LYCRA! He's smuggling LYCRA!

[CharLac]

I thought about that, as I like lots of stuff in my coffee {flavoured} drinks. A thick double shot of very dark and oily espresso, a double shot of Bailey's Irish cream, Two shots of Kahlua, double mocha (two big squirts of chocolate syrup), with whipped cream on top.

Served steaming hot, so the vapours are inhaled as part of the taste of the coffee.

Mmmmmm . . . . . . . tasty!

My neighbor's wife like them very much when we had the annual neighbourhood Daytona party. She said it gave her a "chocolategasm".

Always happy to oblige a lady I made them for her as often as she asked.

:devilish:

Your are such a slut Racer ;-)

[CharLac]

No bacon at a decent price at the grocery store today, but the Girl Scouts caught me for three boxes of cookies! Then prime rib at the local café, with another 20oz slab to cut in half so there is both lunch and breakfast with some eggs.. MMM! Prime rib!

Speaking of good deals and eating birds, defrosting a chicken purchased a month ago at a really great price...friends coming over for dinner so roasted squab it is!

[CharLac]

The only border I have ever crossed is the US/Canada line.

I have crossed it more times than I can remember.

But there are some that are etched in my grey matter, like words chiseled in ancient granite at those touristy places turons flock to.

They are all Rupert™ stories.

I was refused entry to Canada once, while riding with a friend. It was late Saturday evening sometime around 1976, when he said, "Hey! My dad is getting married to his second wife tomorrow, wanna go to the wedding?"

I'm like, "Uh, sure man, where is it?"

And he says, "Aldergrove, we would need to go now and spend the night. We can take my camper, and crash there. People are coming from all over, gonna be music, lots of people, food, good times."

I said, "Cool, let's roll."

About halfway to the border I asked where Aldergrove was. He said Canada.

OK.

No problem.

Haven't been there since I was a kid. I liked it then, it has to be the same cool place.

We roll up to the booth, the nice Canada Customs Officer asks for ID, we fork it over and the usual questions.

Any alcohol, tobacco, firearms or drugs?

My friend says, "A six pack in the cooler, in the camper, looks like, um . . . . . . . (he picks up the partial carton of smokes from the dash of his pickup and peers in) . . . . . . three packs of smokes, and my rifle is on the rack (gesturing with his thumb to the rifle on the rack in the back window of the cab that every redneck had in their pickup back then). Oh, and no drugs man."

Suddenly we found ourselves staring down the barrels of numerous guns. A nice Canada Customs Officer raps on my window, politely directing me to slowly roll it down, and then carefully pass him the rifle. Next we are asked to get out, get on our knees with our hands in the air. I felt like it was some weird religious ceremony.

Then they got the dogs out, and removed everything from the pickup and camper.

Let me repeat that.

Then they got the dogs out, and removed everything from the pickup and camper.

Food.

Clothing.

Supplies.

Tools. (One guy asks, "What are you guys, gypsies trying to make money fixing people's cars?" What an ass.)

Medicine. (You guys got some funny looking aspirin here. Hey, they are the ones with controlled substances in their aspirin!)

The gun.

A Ruger Mini 14 Ranch Rifle. (OK, the dual 50 round banana magazines duct taped together, both full (none in the chamber of course) did look a bit odd)

The dogs didn't alert on anything, not even the gun.

Then they took us inside, into separate rooms, and made us take off our clothes.

All our clothes.

Perverts.

Bend over, crack a smile, lift the boys, make sure you aren't smuggling anything there. Show them the bottoms of our feet to be sure we aren't smuggling $1,000 bills taped to our soles.

Really?

$1,000 bills?

Finally, after many hours of very humiliating treatment, we are given back the gun, and the two fully loaded magazines, admonished severely for trying to bring a perfectly legal hunting rifle across an international border, and told to pick up out stuff and go back to the US.

So we load up our tools, bedding, clothes, food, medicine, the gun and the ammo, and start the pickup. We back out of the parking spot, pull forward and turn left, onto the return to USA road.

Didja get that?

The return to USA road.

Even though we were refused entry to Canada, they actually let us enter, well, a few hundred feet anyway.

So now we find ourselves at US Customs.

Since I have a very low opinion if the US Customs And Border Patrol, I won't attempt to pretend to like them, or give them the benefit of the doubt.

So the guy asks for our ID and asks all the annoying and probing questions.

My buddy ignores his silly drivel and briefly tries to explain the drama of our last two or three hours. When he gets to the part about the gun again we are staring down gun barrels. Again, I get to had the gun to a jerk who is itching to kill someone.

After another humiliating couple of hours where everything was disgorged to the ground around the pickup (they didn't have the decency to move up to a parking spot, they ran us through the search right there at the gate. No strip search, just a pat down that was at least as humiliating as the strip search the Canucks gave us.

Here we get another lecture about transportation of firearms across international borders, but just before they cut us loose they tell us about an incident a few nights earlier where some bad guys robbed a bank in Vancouver, and came through that very lane, killed tow border guards and crashed the gate. The Washington State Patrol and the US Customs cops chased them down and later caught them after another shootout.

So they were trying to qualify their poor treatment of us by using their recent loss as a reason to be jerks.

And of course we missed the wedding.

Without trying to give them any credit, the did let us back into our own country. After being jerks of course.

Let me guess, you never tried to cross the border with a gun again.

[CharLac]

I found a photographer from (I think) Finland who shoots realistic scenes juxtaposing everyday life we all recognize with kids toys and models of interstellar space ships.

This one caught my eye.

That is a rucking awesome picture