1,180 miles later...

Sorry for the massively overdue blog post - internet access has been very limited up until recently!

I did forget to mention in the last blog post that I actually got the $500 off of Ellen for the work I did on her website!

Tara & Jims
Anyway, from where I left off last time, we were at Tara and Jims - WWOOFing. We continued to work doing jobs around the farm, which included building a fence, driving the tractor and mucking out the horses. Sarah even gave some of the horses a haircut!


Near Efland is a massive lake called Jordan Lake. We went there on one of the days to go swimming and take a break. Everything about the lake was really nice, but it was quite funny to read the "Emergency Evacuation" signs dotted around. I began to read one...

"If you see orange flares or hear warning sirens, evacuate the area immediately".

I pondered what that could mean for a while, when Tara noticed my puzzled look and told us that there's a nuclear power plant on the other side of the lake, and the signs are just incase they have a Chernobyl incident. "That's good to know" I thought to myself, and we continued with our picnic. We had a couple of Newcastle Brown Ales, a bit of a swim and headed back.

Sarah's Birthday
We had the day off for Sarah's birthday, but with little money and no ideas what to do, we decided we'd go to one of the local wineries :). We set off and had to get petrol first, because I thought I'd try and clear some of the rubbish in the engine by filling up with the premium petrol last time. All this did was burn up much quicker than the regular petrol. Along the way, Roger decided the shift down gears himself, making for a real jerky ride with a backing tune of noisy revs. Sarah looked at the petrol gague, and we were almost out.

We arrived at the petrol station just in time, where we had to wait for a free space. We pulled up behind this black car, and Roger just stalled. Phew! We got to the petrol station just as we ran out! So here we are, without petrol, burning up in a hot van waiting for this black car to move. Eventually two guys came out of the petrol station and began to push this black car. It had also broken down!

We rolled into the space next to the pump and filled up. Hoping that the problem was purely to do with the lack of petrol we had, we started the van. He started fine which was a relief, so we continued onto the winery.

We got to taste about 13 wines here which were all produced by this little winery. They were all pretty damn good too, bar the dessert wine. We bought a glass each and went and sat down at their lake to relax.

A few days later, we had a real nice thunderstorm which I'm sure you'll all agree that Clare would have loved. I tried to get some pictures, but I was just too slow :(.

Back to Ellens
At the end of our time there, we contacted Ellen to see if we could pop back there for a week before we started heading South towards Florida. She was more than happy to have us back again, but there was something new this time. She had another WWOOFer there called Yvonne from Melbourne, Australia!

When we arrived at Ellens, she was outside with Yvonne cutting the horses hoofs. Yvonne is a criminal defense lawyer, who works for Legal Aid. She's just on a break from work and has been to the Middle East and now America. We also met Larry again that evening with his son Jason and family friend, Alan. We had a nice massive dinner with burgers, salad, fresh bread etc..., at which we said grace - still seems funny to me :-\.

Larry and Ellen headed to bed, so me, Sarah and Yvonne played Jason and Alan at Pictionary. Commonwealth vs. America. Not meaning to blow our own trumpets, but we kicked their butts. I think they got about 11 spaces around the board by the time we won! Some of these pictures that were being drawn were hilarious. Alan left that night as he had to get back to his place where he was staying.


Work the next day was similar to what we had done before, I was working on the website for Ellen, whilst Sarah worked in the nursery - this time with a new friend Yvonne. Most of Sarah & Yvonne's work was to transplant the Juncus (name of this fancy grass) into new containers.


Canoe / Hint of Line Dancing!!
The next day after work we all decided to go for a canoe up the lake to this half-developed estate that's been abandoned for the moment. When I say "we all" I mean me, Sarah, Yvonne and Jason. We decided to buy some wine for the occasion, and off we paddled. We got to this abandoned estate which had a really weird feel about it. It's all brand new, there's a few new houses, lots of empty plots, lush green patches of grass but there's no one there. It was like a ghost town. We sat and had a chat for a while, before heading back to Ellens as we were supposed to be going (wait for it...) LINE DANCING that evening. Oh dear.

We left Ellen's, with Ellen, in search of this church where they do the line dancing. After finding the church, it's thankfully completely desserted and there was definately no line dancers in sight! A bit saddened by the fact that we couldn't do it, Ellen took us to see the Edenton Sound, and said that they do it on Fridays at some other placed called "Dave's Red Barn".

Thunderstorm
I felt safe for now, I had until Friday to work out a plan to escape the line dancing. Wednesday night came and Ellen stayed at Larry's for the night. We had an awesome thunderstorm that night, so we decided to sit out on the dock with wine, watching the thunderstorm.


We could see it slowly getting closer, which was when Yvonne started saying "Shouldn't we head back up to the house now and watch from there", to which I replied "Well, when it hits that tower over there (points at tower) we should move". Continuing to get closer, it didn't hit the tower but the rain was just about starting, so we headed up to the house to sit on the decking and watch from there. As soon as we got to the house, the heavens opened. Really opened. We've never seen rain like this before. Chatting away and BOOM! goes a crash of thunder hitting about 50 yards away. Whilst that seemed to stun us for a moment there was another BOOM! shortly afterwards, equally as close! Chatting away, the thunder seems to have passed over us, but the rain was still chucking it down. A little tipsy, I piped up with "How much will someone give me to go and do a dance in the rain?". After some fierce negotiating with Yvonne, we agreed on the whopping sum of $2. Sounding great at the time, I ran out into the rain, did a dance and ran back onto the decking. In the 15 seconds I was out there, I was soaked right through. Still I won $2 though!

The next night, we had made plans to go out with Tracy who works on Ellens nursery. We arrived at her house where we met her friend (forgot her name), and as soon as we walked through the door, I noticed a rolled up dollar bill next to some white powder on the table. Without wanting to feel awkward, I decided not to say anything. We had some wine here, had a tour of the house and just before we left for downtown Edenton, Tracy piped up and said to her friend: "Damn! It didn't work, they didn't notice!". Their little setup with the dollar bill and white powder (which turned out to be baking soda) was a joke that was wasted on us.

We ate some lovely food at a place called Seans, and went to another bar for some more drinks. We didn't stay out massively late, judged by the fact none of us had hangovers in the morning. That evening was line dancing, which I hadn't managed to squeeze my way out of!

Walk-Dancing
Ok, so we pull up to "Dave's Red Barn" which was housing the line dancing that evening. We went in and saw a band with more members than Slipknot on stage, and lots of people going about their line dancing on the big dance floor. I'm not too sure how to describe line dancing, but it seems a bit "ritual" in some ways. When a song begins, a few people will stand up and start their line dance (there's a finite number of line dances apparently, all with set moves - it's not like they're just making it up on the spot). Once they have started, people will gather behind them and proceed to copy the "starters" steps.

The song ended and everybody sat down - that's a point, after every song the stage is clear, then the next song will start and most of the same people will get back up. Seems pointless sitting down to me :-\. There was a young girl who had just had a line dance, and sat on a big empty table in front of where we were standing. She said we could sit there, and it didn't take long until I asked if she could show us how to do some line dancing, turns out she teaches it on Mondays.

We waited for a suitable song, and when one came up she said "I'll start this one, follow my steps". With that we (me, Sarah, Yvonne and Ellen) shot up to the empty dance floor. We got into position and copied the girl (forgot her name... in fact, I don't even think we asked her name!). This "dance" was about 10 steps in total, and took about 2 repeats of the entire "procedure" for me to get it. It kinda went like this (starting with both feet together):

• Right Foot Forward (then back to start position)
• Left Foot Forward (then back to start position)
• Right Foot Forward
• Right Foot Right
• Right Foot Back (then back to start position)
• Right Foot Right
• Left Foot Right (behind and to the right of the right foot, so you do a 180 turn)
• Right Foot Left (in front and to the left of the left foot, so you do a mini side-shuffle)
• Left Foot to Starting Position

(REPEAT THIS FOR THE ENTIRE BLOODY SONG)


Yep that's it. You basically walk to a song, and walk in the same way for the entire song. After about 25 loops of this "dance", I looked behind me and no word of a lie, it seemed like a scene from Night of the Living Dead. Hordes of old country folk were copying our dance (like they're supposed to do) but it just seemed completely odd. Many of the people just looked bored, but still wanted to do the walk-dancing as I've just decided to call it. Along with the bored looking walk-dancers you also get serious hardcore walk-dancers that love starting the walk-dances at the beginning of the song. If someone starts a walk-dance before them, they go off and start their own walk-dance in another part of the dance floor with their mini walk-dance clan. To top it all off, "Dave's Red Barn" is a dry building where they don't allow alcohol. We're glad we went line dancing, but I doubt it's something we'll jump at in the future.


The next day (Saturday) we headed downtown Edenton to watch their festival they had on, then we went back to Ellens for another canoe up the river. Sarah and Yvonne decided they'd swim, so I took the one man canoe, wine, towels, clothes, camera, corkscrew, beers, water and the kitchen sink to that deserted place we found the other day. The current was really against Sarah and Yvonne (and me), and it was about a mile away. We eventually arrived, had some beer / wine and headed back. Sarah and Yvonne were knackered so yeah, I took them back in the one man canoe. Almost sinking, and with the feeling that I was paddling in quick-drying concrete I was surprised it only took about 20mins to get back!

Fishing
On Sunday we were taken fishing with Richard who owns the farm just north of Elizabeth City. We dropped one net and headed a bit further out (in his boat) to fish with rods. After about 20-25mins of just nibbles on our lines, Sarah gets a bite! After reeling in, she's actually caught quite a nice catfish!


Myself and Yvonne didn't do too good, I caught a small "croaker" as they call them, Yvonne had the smallest though.

Leaving Ellens



We left Ellen's on the Monday, heading towards Asheville, North Carolina. We decided to help Yvonne out by taking her there, plus we wanted to see it too as it is at the other end of the Blue Ridge Parkway which we've seen before. 6hrs 30mins later we arrive and check into a Motel. We had quick showers and headed downtown Asheville with a couple of travelers each (for those that don't know, they're beers to drink on the way!).


Asheville is really nice, it's quite high in the Appalachian mountains, and has even higher mountains as the backdrop. There were plenty of pubs to choose from here, we even heard about a town called Brevard which we visited the next day.

Brevard is similar to Asheville in the way it looks. However, they had a state park next to it where they had this sliding rock. It only cost $1 to get in :). We didn't spend too long here as we had to get back to Asheville so Yvonne could catch her Greyhound bus to Nashville, Tennessee. Once Yvonne was on her coach, we headed to our Flying J, about 400 miles away.

To Florida
Halfway through the journey, we switched drivers and Sarah decided to get some sleep in the back. 5 minutes later, the lorry's tire in front of me just blew up! I swerved slightly (not much traffic around) and he pulled over. It's so common to see blown tires here because of the varying heats apparently. Tires that cool down and heat up too much are prone to blowing and littering the interstates. I think locals call the blown tires on the side of the road 'Alligators'. We arrive at the Flying J, and get some sleep.

The next day we decided to go straight to Florida to meet up with Steve, Kerry and the kids in Orlando. We finally arrived at the resort, which is a gated community with huge, really nice houses (pics to follow). We got to their house and pulled onto the drive, stinky, sweaty and tired! We were greeted with smiles, hugs and handshakes despite warning of our disgustingness!

They showed us to our room and have let us stay with them which is a massive help seeing as we just had to get two new tires for Roger! Since we've been here we've been swimming in the pool, met some friends at one of the bars here, relaxed lots and have been to a town called "Celebration" where I had fish and chips :D! We're currently planning our route from here to our next destination, but we'll post a full blog update of this place with pictures in the next blog which I hope won't be as long a delay as this blog was!

We hope everyone's ok!

Missing everyone lots!

Love Ed & Sarah xxx


P.S. Here's a final thought for anyone on the road (you get this everywhere!)

WWOOFing, Making $500 and MUCH More!

Right... I may as well set the scene for this one as you'll need to be sitting comfortably because it's gonna be a long one!

We're currently sat in a nice country house (pics below) in the middle of nowhere, with no TV or Internet (smart arses - I'll be uploading this blog post tomorrow, just writing it now), so apologies those that think we've disappeared off the face of the earth! It's 19:50, still pretty hot outside, despite the sun setting on the lake out the back of the house. Sarah's sat opposite me reading a Danielle Steel book (H.R.H. I think, she said it's not very good, but we only paid $1 in a second hand book store!). We've got country radio on, and we're alone in the house, as we were yesterday too.

Ok, scene set ...kinda. I think the last blog post was saying that we were just about to leave for the WWOOFing place so I'll start from there. I can't remember if I explained what WWOOFing is, but it's basically World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. You go to work on the farms you apply for, and in return you get a roof over your head and food. There's a website which you can go to, sign up ($20) and search for farms you like the sound of. When you find one, just send them an email and hope they say yes.

Well, we applied for a few farms, some we completely avoided as they were clearly not farms, but recruitment agencies for pagans / witches (I'm not actually joking, they even said that applicants must join them in going into towns to preach their verbal diahorrea). Within less than 24 hours we had a few replies, mostly saying "Yes, we'd love to have you". The first positive reply we accepted, but we couldnt start for a week as they were away. Luckily, our second positive response from a woman named Ellen said we could just stay for the week, as she will be away on the weekend. This was great as we could work for the first week, then move to the other farm the following week.

We showered, got ready and headed for Ellen's place. It was about 130 miles from where we were in a place called Edenton, North Carolina. We had to stop on the way to check the emails as we hadn't actually agreed a time to arrive at Ellens, we just had the email saying "Yes, you can arrive Monday or Tuesday and work the week". We stopped at a McDonalds as most of them have Wi-Fi, NOT free, but we paid the $2 to use it. We didn't have any emails from Ellen, and by now we were about 30 miles away and it was around 6pm.

We sat in the van, deciding what we should do. We had two options really, either:

- turn up unannounced and just hope for the best
- stay in a motel somewhere near (no Flying J's around here) and arrive on the Tuesday.

We decided to just continue to Ellens, and hope that she would be ok with it! As we got closer to our destination, we noticed that the area had become massively more and more rural, at which point we arrived at our final left-turn onto Conners Drive. We turned onto it to be greeted with two signs: Private Road and No Hunting. Hoping we were on the right road, we continued on down the dirt track - after all the house number is 6037, it not like there won't be loads of house around right? Wrong. I haven't quite grasped the house number thing, but it seems like they pluck a number out of the air that they like!

About a mile and a half down this road, we come to a three-directional fork. Left to 6025 (or something), right to 6072 (or something) and straight on to Ellens. We continue on, now through a farily thick wooded area. I stop the van for a moment and check with Sarah that we should carry on - I mean we don't want to startle a little old lady (which she isn't by the way, we just assumed that she might be!) that's not exactly expecting us. We decided to just go on, may as well, we were here now after all! We come to a clearing to be greeted by a massive country house, parking for about 12 cars and a couple of horses in the front garden area. Sarah jumps out to approach the house (I haven't had time to shave properly, and my beard would probably scare people off!).

With that, Ellen appears on the front porch with a guy named Larry. I jump out, and by that time Ellen had already established that we were the WWOOFers and is really pleased to see us! We go inside, have a drink and a chat about our travels so far. Ellen is a really nice lady that probably wouldn't even say "Boo" to a ghost and Larry is an exact copy of Dave (Ed's mum's Dave) and Garry in New York. We get talking about Roger, and as it turns out, Larry is pretty handy with cars so we pop outside and adjust the brakes (as they were really loose!). After sorting the brakes out and chatting some more, Ellen insisted that we stay that night rather than find a B&B, then start properly from the following day.

We were shown to our room, or should I say "living quarters" where we have a bedroom and attached bathroom. Larry recommended that we take the van to the workshop where he works the following evening just to check the van over, and with that he left (he's Ellen's "boyfriend" for want of a better word). Ellen goes to bed pretty early, around 20:30, so we kinda followed and sat in the bedroom for a bit with Sarah reading her book and me playing on the DS. We popped outside on the upstairs veranda to be greeted with an awesome looking night sky, absolute silence and best of all - fireflies! I'm not sure how many of you have seen a firefly before but they're amazing. They're basically cool-looking flies with LED's attached to their bums that flash every second or so! We sat out there for a short while before getting into bed ready for our early 5:30am start the next day.


We rose at 5:30 sharp and headed for the nursery which is owned by Ellen. We met some of the other people that work there and began working immediately. The first task was "pulling plants". Before I carry on, Ellen runs a plant nursery for plants that have massive beneficial environmental effects, such as plants that remove pollutants from water, and prevent against mosquitoes. They're not the fancy plants that look pretty and do bugger all!

Anyway we start by pulling out some Wool Grass for an order. After we finished this, I was swiftly taken away to have a look at the website that Ellen runs, more importantly the calculator she wanted on the website to calculate the number of plants the end user would need within various sections of a planting project (i.e. the number of deep water plants, shallow water plants and shallow land plants). Sarah was taken care of by another of the workers at the nursery, given jobs here and there to do.

It transpired that Ellen has wanted this online calculator for a long time, and has been quoted a ridiculous amount of money ($20,000) for what is essentially a basic JavaScript calculator written in a bespoke manner. I tell her that I'd do it and have it completed in the time we're here to which she was ecstatic! I also vowed to give her website a nice overhaul and update it to bring it into the 21st century hehe. So with that agreed, I worked in the office and Sarah worked out in the nursery clipping grass, pulling more plants and weeding etc...

We finished work at around 14:30 and as we were leaving, we met one of Ellens friends called Lannie (I think that's how you spell it, and yes it's a bit similar to Larry). He invited us to the Steamers baseball game on Thursday, which we accepted. We then headed back to Ellen's.

After having a wash (it's so hot, we need to wash often!), Ellen asked if we'd like to go out on the Kayaks. Naturally we replied "Yes please!" with beaming smiles! We got the kayaks out of her garage and took them down to the water front where I jumped straight in and moved away from the dock so Sarah could get into hers. Ellen checked that we were ok with swimming and if we had capsised before etc... I said I was fine, but Sarah briefly said that she hadn't capsised, but would be ok.

Picture this - I'm loving it, just messing around going back and forth around the little dock waiting for Sarah to get in, giving her words of confidence like "You're gonna capsise" and "Don't lean too much!". Anyway she gets in her kayak and within about 4 seconds she's over and in the water!!! Probably feeling a bit embarrased around Ellen (who's sat on the dock helping Sarah and giving advice about Kayaking in the lake) Sarah climbs back in - this time keeping herself upright.


We paddle off and Ellen goes back into the house. We go about 20 meters down the lake and Sarah's capsised again! Unable to get back in the kayak (it did look pretty difficult to be honest) we decided to bring it to the dock so Sarah could get back in. Sarah swam most of the way, whilst I zig-zagged my way back. We got there, and we didn't have much time left as we had to take Roger to Larry's workshop that evening. I jumped out, and managed to gouge a nice piece of flesh out of my right foot just under my achilles tendon somehow on the boat. I stood on the dock and Sarah climed onto the dock and we pulled the boat up. Sarah kayak still in the water next to the dock. I said I cut my foot pretty bad and could she get me a plaster, "Oh, what the hell? You mean I have to walk all the way to the van to get you a plaster?!" said Sarah. Umm, yes please my foot's bleeding loads and I don't want to get crap in it. Ah, that reminds me - I'll pause the story for a moment to explain about the wildlife here - especially ticks.

The wildlife here is unlike anything we've ever seen back home. We've seen bullfrogs - massive frogs, giant beetles, some snakes, giant bees (forgot the name but they're huge, something like "bull wasp"), all sorts of spiders - even Black Widows and yes we've seen one at the nursery where I was pulling plants. Apparently they're not as dangerous as people make out. What are dangerous, though, are ticks. You probably all know what ticks are, those little buggers that somehow get on you (and I can't understand how they do, but they do), they completely dig their head into your body and drink your blood. That's fine. What's not fine is that they carry all sorts of diseases, mainly Lymes disease which can kill easy.

We were cleaning Roger today and I felt something on my leg, looked down and it's a tick. I tried to knock it, but it was in my body and not budging. Sarah had a go, and it just kinda side-stepped a bit and continued to suck my blood. All of a sudden it released so Sarah got it off and I stomped on it. You can't just rip these bad boys off unfortunately, because the toxins will release onto your body if you do - giving you all sorts of nasty diseases. We've been told to have a good "tick check" once a night in the shower or before we get into bed - and yes, check everywhere.

Anyway, so I needed a plaster for my foot that was bleeding all over the dock at this point. Sarah eventually got me one which, to be honest, didn't do much as the cut was too deep. I decided to just let it bleed out a bit and hopefully clot, as Sarah jumped back in the kayak to have another paddle around. I sat on the dock just watching. The time came when we really did have to head back into the house and head off to Larry's workshop, so Sarah finished up and we went inside. Ellen noticed my foot and helped clean it up. We even found a better plaster, or "Band-Aid" as they call them.

Sarah followed Ellen to Larry's workshop, which is about 40 miles away, past a prison too which is kinda cool in a weird way. All the inmates were in the exercise yard, with "screws" sat in their towers with rifles just looking on by. We arrived at the workshop, which is part of a massive farm that Larry works on. Larry arrived just after us, with the owner of the farm - Richard.

Richard offered us a tour of the farm, whilst Larry gave Roger the once over. We jumped in Richards pickup and headed off throughout the farm. He mainly grows wheat, and it's just like in the movies when you see cars driving down the roads next to tall wheat fields! I think he owns something like 4,000 acres, which is insane! After the tour we quickly popped into his house and met his wife who is just as lovely as he is!


When we arrived back at the workshop, Larry had some bad news - the brake adjuster on the drivers side wheel had broken. That explained the noise we had been hearing. He put the working parts back inside the brake "shoe" and Richard said we could leave it at the farm and order the parts we needed. Me being me, I didn't want to leave the van because we have alot of our personal possessions in it, so I said that we'd take it back to Ellens and order the parts from her nursery (where she has internet access). With that, Richard asked "Do you need any help with anything? Do you need money?", to which we replied "No, don't be so silly!". With that he popped home and I put the wheels back on Roger.

Richard came back with two jars of jam that his wife has home-made, and an envelope. I knew there was money in that envelope so I refused to take it and carried on putting the wheels on. Sarah reluctantly took it and without opening it, we said thank you very much to him, and Larry for helping with the van, and we followed Ellen back to hers.

On the way, we opened the envelope and inside it was $80. For what did we deserve $80?! We think that Richard wanted to help us pay for the brake adjuster, and in doing so he gave us this money! Very kind! Also, my laptop charger decided to not work anymore so it helped fund a new one.

Thursday came, I ordered a brake adjuster and new laptop charger, then Lannie's partner - Erica came to Ellens to pick us up (as we were going to watch the baseball game that evening) after we had finished working. She took us around Edenton to see their history and how they came about, which was suprisingly interesting! They have so many nice-looking big houses out there, and best of all - amazing ice cream which Erica treated us to! We then went back to her house where Lannie was - had a beer and a cheese board, then left for the baseball game. As soon as we arrived, there were about 10-15 school kids on the pitch reciting the pledge of allegiance - which was cute but I really do disagree with the "one nation under God" part. As soon as that was over, the game began.


Between each "innings" (which lasts around 20 mins) they had little games and quirky things, such as human-wheelbarrow races, 7th heaven stretch, where you stretch to a song before the 7th innings, and even a chicken dance towards the end. I did buy a hot dog there, which I intended to take a picture of for our facebook challenge - but me being me, I forgot to take a pic and ate it before we had a chance :). What I particularly liked about the game (and I'm sure Joe would too) is the umpire. When there's a "strike" he does a funny "STRIKE" gesture thing, and at the very end some guy from the opposing team went for a home run, but was *just* out and the umpire did a funky pose when he said "OUT".

On the way home, Lannie and Erica invited us to tea on the Friday night (the following night) which we, being poor and hungry travellers, accepted! I finished Ellen's website during the day on Friday, whilst Sarah continued to burn her not-so-pale-anymore-infact-blistering-red skin working in the nursery. After work, the laptop charger and brake adjuster arrived and we went to Lannie and Erica's house and had tuna steak skewers with cod fillets and it tasted amazing! Somehow we keep managing to find us discussing the topics we agreed not to, which are religion, 911 consipracies and Obama. Luckily, the people we have chatted to about it don't seem to mind!

On the Saturday, Ellen left for New Jersey to go any visit her family, so we had the house to ourselves for the weekend! We decided to go and see Larry (about 40 miles away) at his garage again as we needed to put the new brake adjuster on. We spent a few hours there, then headed back to Ellen's - stopping to get some food on the way. We wanted to go out on the boats again, but couldn't really as it was getting on a bit in the afternoon and Sarah would have melted, so we played Trivial Pursuit and went to bed.

On Sunday, we went out in the two man canoe which was fun. We actually went pretty far down the lake, which we found out as we attempted to paddle back upstream. No injuries or capsising this time! When we got back, we decided to get some food from anywhere in town. This was a bad move. We arrived at a steak house, named "Kathy's Steakhouse". "Great!" we thought, as we both love steak.

So we go in, park our bums down and a not-pleased-to-see-anyone server comes over and takes our order. Simple enough - 2 bottles of beer, one BBQ ribs starter to share, two medium-rare steaks, and a salad for 99 cents. Our beer was given to us by a completely different server, then we waited. During our wait, a family arrived and sat near us. Our server went over to them, took their order, flirted with the "dad" of the family (you could see the "mum" was getting a bit peeved!), and even got them some bread rolls to have whilst they wait! She then disappeared and reappeared with their meals shorly after! Still waiting for our starter, and 20 minutes later our food arrived all at once (starter and main). She mumbled something about the kitchen doing the food together - no apology.

I wasn't too bothered by this point as we were starving, even though my steak looked burnt. I took a bite of my steak, it was cold and rare. I thought "this is weird, I'll try some from the other end that looks more burnt", and with that I had a cold, but well done steak. I'm really not sure what happened but I seemed to have a steak that went through all the styles of cooking, rare to well done, but it was cold. Sarah's was much the same. I had a go on the BBQ ribs and burnt myself in their lava coated BBQ sauce. I think that what happened was they forgot the starter, so just left the "cooked" food on the side and quickly did the starter. Either way, Kathy's STEAKhouse must clearly be renowned for something other than steak, as they were pretty busy!

That evening, we decided to play Scrabble, and Sarah beat me! For those that know Sarah, that's quite an achievement! I'm blaming myself for holding onto the word JOKER for about 8 rounds, as it scored high, but I had nowhere to place it :(.

The next day we had to head to our next WWOOFing place in Efland, about 180 miles away. I decided to adjust the brakes again as they weren't done properly when we were at Larry's garage, infact they felt worse! To make the adjusting get done faster, I decided to take the brake shoe off WITH the trye still attached, and if you know anything about 1969 Ford Clubwagons, the tryes are big and bloody heavy especially with the brake shoe which seems to be made out of plutonium (the heaviest natural metal on Earth). In doing so, we were delayed by about 1.5 hours and I was caked in oil and grease :). By the way - yes you can adjust the brakes without taking the tyres off, but the new adjuster arm was jamming.


Anyway we arrived at our new WWOOFing place and met Tara and Jim. Just so you know, I'm writing this part of the blog from this new place, no longer in the scene I set at the beginning! Tara runs this farm, which mainly houses horses (there's about 10 I think, including a giant donkey taller than me!), and she breeds British Bulldogs! They also have a couple of cats and two parrots! Jim is uncannily like myself. He has a real nice drum kit, he loves Linux, he programs in PHP & MySQL oh and he's also receeding :).

We have our own quarters again, like we did at Ellen's. Our jobs are massively varied, but include mowing, planting, feeding the horses / dogs, driving the 6-wheeler around the farm, construction and loads more. We like the vareity here, as when we wake up we don't quite know what we'll be doing! Mum, Joe, Sam and Lenka will be suprised to know that they USED to have an African Grey parrot, which one day just flew off AND one of their two parrots that they have now is called BooBoo! How weird!

As at Ellen's, it's very relaxed here. We start work early, around 7/8 and finish around 1/2 or when it gets too hot. Today, for example, I was mowing all along the front of the farm next to the road and it's a very long way. I felt like passing out towards the end!!! Ooooh yes, whilst I was mowing today, about halfway through, I saw a few flourescant waistcoat style jackets up ahead on the other side of the road (no pavements here, just grass verges outside the farm). As they got closer I noticed there was a guy at the front and a guy at the back in black tops, whilst the rest had white t-shirts on (under their flourescant tops) and bin liners in their hands. They were prisoners. Litterpicking!

I wasn't sure if I was supposed to continue mowing as they got closer, but I did. As the front guard got closer, I noticed his very long gun. He waved to me to say hello, then lined up the prisoners whilst the guard at the back kept a close eye on them. and stayed at the back. They continued to walk past, and I made eye contact with a few which did that kinda nod which can look a little un-nerving. I did think to myself, there's about 15 feet between me and them, if one of them wanted, they could jump out and grab me to use me as some kinda hostage. They soon passed and the mowing continued. About 20 minutes later, I noticed them coming back down the road, on my side this time. I checked with Tara if I'd be ok to carry on but she said it'd be best to move out of the way and let them pass. Same nods and stuff as before and they passed.

How random is that though! I don't think I've ever seen that in England before! Anyway I'm getting a bit tired now, so I'll finish up here and blog again soon with more details about our stay here!

Hope everyone is ok! How's Ollie?

Love to everyone, missing you all lots!

Ed & Sarah.