Highlands tour: 1 bus + 1 boat = 1 day?

Morning cup o' Joe.

I have a really hard time making Blogger post these images in an orderly fashion, so bear with me! I made it to the bus pickup location this morning at 7:30, about 30 minutes before departure time... and I was alone. The bus showed up about 7:55, we loaded and departed. It was pretty easy. The interesting part is that Rabbie's isn't the only bus company that departs from that location. There are at least about 3 other companies that leave from there too. The first stop was about an hour into the bus tour at Loch Lomand (at a cafe a little further down than the lookout at which I stopped with Dr. Rattray). To the right (I hope) is me standing with my morning Joe.

Underexposure!

Over the next several hours, we crossed over into the Highlands. Immediate the landscape was more hilly and had some really amazing views. Unfortunately, the fog was a bit thick, so I had trouble getting my camera to have the same output as my eye was able to do. I got a few laughs from my awkward unfamiliarity with my camera. It's been too long since I went out to take some artsy photos, so the image to the right should be my underexposed image of a small Ben (hill) with added mystery from the strange exposure. I actually am a big fan of underexposing images with the sun in frame. Lens flare is something I actively try to capture. Call me crazy.

My welcome to Glencoe.

As we kept driving, we happened upon a fantastic Monroe (tall peak) guarding Glencoe (valley of the Coe?). I had a little heads up for this shot, since Rakesh had informed me of its presence yesterday at cricket. We kept travelling on and the tour guide/driver told us stories of great battles and massacres that had occured in this very valley. One of which was the massacre of the McDonalds (not the clown). Apparently they did not swear fealty to the King of Scotland who ordered their execution. I can't remember the clan that came down, was offered food and shelter due to terrible weather, and three weeks later killed 27 people in their sleep and left the 300some left to starve or die of exposure. Apparently 3 of those were sisters and it is said that these sisters are represented by three peaks just north of the site of the massacre. Sad story, but AMAZING scenery.

Left: The Three Sisters

Wee beach.

After continuing to drive, we came across many more interesting sights. I don't remember now where this beach was, but it was a nice little snapshot (yay aperture priority mode). We stopped for lunch in Fort Augusta, which had a multistep lock to assist boats in making it all the way through the Great Glen. No boats were going through today, but it was interesting nonetheless I stopped in a pub and ordered a takeaway fish and chips. I’m going to miss fish and chips when I get back to Boston… It was delicious, as fried food tends to be, but the chips still tasted like potatoes instead of the normal mushy fried material that you get at fast food places.

Ahh, lunch.

Actual lunch.

I need to run and eat dinner before all the kitchens close, but here are the last three images that I’ll talk about at a later time. Enjoy!

Across Loch Ness.

Urquhart Castle

Leaving Loch Ness.  Where was Nessie?

In the lab...

So we're having a hard time getting bands out of the primers I designed.  Today I ran a PCR trying to get the primer to work on several samples, but the resulted electrophoresis gel didn't show any bands, save for one of them.  That one showed at least two bands!  Sigh...  Also, the fish don't want to lay eggs these days, so there still isn't a spawn available for me to use.

Data is starting to be produced from the zebrafish trials.  I switched software distributions.  The free one seems to have more plugins and can do what I want it to. :)

I played cricket for the first time today.  Well, it is an adapted form of cricket so that fewer people can play.  My baseball skills came into play, but I kept hitting the ball too hard.  Cricket is more strategy since the ball can be hit literally anyway.  No foul balls?!  Crazy.  I like it a lot though, so I may look for somewhere to play in the US!

Tomorrow is my bus tour through the Highlands.  Look forward to a lot of pictures!

Public transport and Glengoyne

Across the road from Glengoyne

It is amazing to me how far out the public transport will bring passengers.  Perhaps I'm just amazed because I've never taken the MBTA out past Medford, but today I rode a bus through the countryside..  A public transport bus...  It was amazing!  I was fairly amazed at how far out we went when I went for paintball last week, but this seemed to be even farther.  It might be because we had to walk another mile and a half to the paintball place while this bus dropped us off right across the street.

Signage outside Glengoyne

Distillery from the road.

The white buildings are very visible from the road, although there is a sharp turn nearby in the road that makes it harder to see.  This distillery originally had it's own malting floor as well.  I think the tour guide said they don't do it at all anymore, but its quite common in Islay to have a backup supply in case there's bad weather or something and malted barley is hard to get shipped there.

Me with the stills.

The distillery has one large distillation pot for the first wash which brings the alcohol percentage from the 8% fermented wort to 25% forming the "wine", I think.  Or at least something about wine...  This is then split between the two distillers on the right of this image.  The entire production of Glengoyne, therefore, comes from these three stills.  It's pretty amazing, considering they can make 1 million liters per year.  The tour guide did bring up the amazing fact that some grain distilleries can produce 1 million liters in 3 days...  Apparently at Glengoyne , the actual distillation rate is the slowest of any Scotch whiskey.  This should lead to mellow flavors with little or no off-flavors from the malt itself.  The tour guide also said he had tried the pure, unaged stuff and said he was surprised how sweet/alcoholic, but unharsh the flavor was.  It is clear when it comes from the stills, but picks up all its character from the wood in the casks it which it is aged.  You can tell that by looking at whiskeys of different ages.  The oldest being the darkest in color.
Another interesting point is that Glengoyne no longer gets all of its water from this little brook behind the property.  They actually pump water in from a reservoir on the other side of the hill, but still use this water supply for some cooling and final dillution when filling the casks.

Old water source.

The first dram.

I had to get back for a teleconference, so I didn't have time to spend any money in the store, but I had a chance to sample the 17 y/o.  It's fantastic!  If you want a mellow dessert Scotch, this one is great.  Even one of the PhD students who came with me thought the 17 year was good.. and she made a (barely noticeable) horrible face at the 10 year! haha! Sorry Victoria!

A backlog...

Hi everyone!

Sorry I haven't been posting much text lately.  This will be a mondo catch-up session..

Friday, I collected some of the Zebrafish for a 3 dpf measurement.  It is difficult to separate them from their egg envelope, so it took me a little bit to get that all done and the photographs taken.  The rest of the day I spent pretty much finalizing my presentation for the Wednesday seminar.  After work, I got thoroughly engrossed in Ancestry.com.  I mapped out a bunch of my family tree and found out what the surnames of my Scottish relatives were.

On Saturday, I traveled to Edinburgh (pronounced burra*, not like my last name).  There, I visited the Edinburgh castle.  I rented an audio tour thingy and walked around and in every building I could throughout the whole castle.  It's actually much different than I was expecting, I guess.  There are a bunch of independent buildings inside.  What is fascinating to me about this is that the Japanese castles are much more fortified and seem to be more like one structure.  Having only seen those, I was intrigued by the medieval castle design at Edinburgh (see previous posts for photos).  I then had time to tour around Old Edinburgh - saw a really interesting old building that I think is a church?  Really cool little alleyways and shops all over the place.  New town was much different.  Seemed to be more on a grid and seem to be more commercial -- at least in the areas I was walking around in.  I was able to grab a few souvenirs.  Shops started to close pretty early, so I headed back to Glasgow after a quick lunch and a last look around.

Sunday, I went out to paintball with a bunch of PhD students.  Between being pelted by a lot of paintballs and tripping on logs when trying to perform advanced aerial acrobatics for improved positioning, I had a lot of fun!  If it were a little less expensive, I might consider going again haha!  I suppose that's true of any hobby.  I then proceeded to sleep a ton.  Shooting people with paint is hard work, apparently.

Today, I collected the rest of the Zebrafish we started last week and took photos, finalized my powerpoint, prepared the primers for testing for purity and effectiveness.  Tomorrow, we'll run the gels to find out if it works.  We'll also set up another trial with different experimental conditions!  One more day to my talk on Wednesday!  73 slides in 50 minutes.  New world record?

iPod photos: more detail tomorrow

Summit approach to the Cobbler.

Sheep!

Post summit Cobbler.

Glasgow

Edinburgh pub.

Edinburgh photo highlights

 I need to head to bed, but here are some photo highlights from Edinburgh.  Details to come tomorrow!

Long night of noise, long day at the computer.

Well.. apparently there was a party upstairs last night until 4:00am.  It was quite difficult to get up this morning.  So far it's quite silent around here now.  Hopefully they're all partied out for the time being!  Upon arriving to the lab, I ran up to the lab taught by Dr. Rattray.  I met several of the undergraduates who came across to the US.  It was fun to speak with them and learn a bit about how they enjoyed the US.  I also advertised my talk and apparently a bunch of the undergrads are going to come.

For the rest of the day, I worked on my talk, checked on the zebrafish, ate lunch with the other PhD students, got the slide count up to 58, and then went out for a few brews with a big gang of the PhD students to "the Butterfly and the Pig" and had some bangers and mash for dinner.  The pub is supposed to be one of the places to go in Glasgow too.  Wahoo!  Perhaps I'll have some time to go to Edinburgh this weekend?

I also got two of girls did their "American" accent.  Which was basically Valley Girl, hahahaha..  It was awesome.