Nick’s Award

Nick’s love of bridges was made a bit more public recently when he won a paper competition run by the Institute of Structural Engineering. The essay prompt was to write in 4 pages why structural engineers should want to design bridges. Since Nick’s career path has been like an after-school special about the kid who dreamed about making bridges ever since he was a little boy, he figured he had to enter. As the competition winner, Nick got to miss a day of work and go down to an IstructE meeting in London to give a presentation on his paper (in a ringing Yankee accent!) and accept his prize. His paper will be published in a future issue of the Institute magazine as well. To whet your whistle, here is the paper’s introduction below.

Bridges: they are a symbol, a metaphor, an icon, a sculpture, a monument, and a way to get from A to B. They are photographed, painted, eulogized, crossed, and climbed. But with bridges meaning many things to many people, what drives their creators? What draws structural engineers of all ages and backgrounds to these ancient and iconic structures? No doubt the drive of each bridge designer is unique, but rarely are structural engineers given more opportunity to overcome complex challenges and meet the needs of a growing society through such daring, elegant, and creative solutions. Because a bridge is not called to offer shelter or habitation like a building, its structural skeleton is not hidden by architectural additions that can distort space and proportion. Bridges are defined not by what is added to the essential load-bearing structure but by the simple purity of that structure itself. Bridge design provides a unique opportunity for structural engineers to prominently exhibit their creative skill in overcoming nature to provide human transport.

If that intro leaves you with an insatiable desire to read more, let Nick know--but remember, he is only human and may not be able to cope with the overwhelming demand =).

Travelogue Catch Up

I've been waiting to post on our late-May trips to Wales and Prague for awhile due to delusions of picture-labelling over-achievement but time is marching on and so is the blog. Better something than nothing. So…our most recent long term trips happened in late May when our friend John came to visit for the week of Memorial Day (coinciding with an uncreatively-named "May Bank Holiday" here).

After a day of the usual visitor acclimation, we hit the road in our borrowed Honda Jazz once again, this time setting out west to the rolling hills and winding roads of Wales. All of the signs in Wales are in both Welsh and English, and so the words "SLOW" and "ARAF" are painted in big letters on the road as you go through towns. We enjoyed telling each other to araf down, and "araf your roll", so, basically you could say we speak Welsh. Our first stop was Devil's bridge, named this because people thought only the Devil himself could have built the original bridge in the 12th century. I was kind of disappointed, and I think the three of us could have done it in 3-4 days with hour lunch breaks. It is pretty interesting thought because now there are 3 bridges stacked on top of each other, plus there is a 90 foot waterfall nearby. After a hike down to the waterfall in the rain, we drove to the coast for lunch (Welsh Rarebit, which has no rabbit in it) and down to Hay-on-Wye, a town with the largest collection of used book stores in England.

Hay-on-Wye was packed with visitor since it was their annual book festival the weekend we were there—called “a Woodstock of the Mind”. After a rainy few hours browsing the musty shelves of many a bookstore and a few purchases, we left the crowds of Hay and headed to Abergavenny where we were staying at the Blacksheep Backpackers Hostel. We had a great dinner at the Bear Hotel on the way (some really good local ale and a Welsh black beef steak) and finally got into Abergavenny long after dark. Driving the streets was straight out of a horror film, with driving rain, no one around, and no sign of our hostel. I managed to understand enough of the thick Welsh accent of a gas station employee to make it in the direction of the hostel. John and I got out of the car in the driving rain to inquire at some pub that might be a hostel, and were met with three grizzled old men smoking cigars and drinking their closing pints on the small porch of the bar. "Yur a bit late for drinks! Closin time!" They managed as we approached. We had to push past them to get in anyway, so I asked if this was the black sheep hostel. They stared at each other long enough in silence that we just started in anyway, and as we were going through the door a light came in the mind of one of them who yelled: "BLACKSHEEP!!" in this hilarious scream of drunken recognition. On our way out to get our stuff they thought we might be their taxi. Thankfully it was the hostel and we locked the door to our room and slept in the safety of being separated from drunken Welshmen. The Welsh people are a merry bunch!

The next day we toured an amazing castle, then spent the afternoon in the Welsh capital of Cardiff before heading home for work the next day. It was a great trip (click here for pictures) and though it rained quite a bit we loved Wales and were impressed with the friendliness and warmth of the Welsh. It's crazy to have this "other country" just an hour west of Birmingham!
After a day back in the office we left Wednesday morning for the capital of the Czech Republic and the "Paris of the east": Prague! Coming into the city on the bus from the airport was really neat, the language is so different and harsh sounding, and it was a very industrial area near the airport, so it felt kind of 'Soviet'—just over 15 years ago this would have been behind the Iron Curtin.

The city was amazing and we couldn't believe how well preserved everything was even after Nazi occupation and 4 decades of communism. Because Prague was sort of between two fronts and not German home soil (thus not bombed by Allies) it was fairly unharmed. Apparently one of the (only) comical events of destruction during Nazi occupation involved statues of composers on top of the main music hall. Nazi soldiers were sent up to destroy the statue of Mendelssohn because of his Jewish background, but the statues were not labelled. Finally they picked the one they thought was him and destroyed it. The statue was actually one of Wagner, Hitler's favorite composer!

We enjoyed some fantastic Czech beer and sausage, took a river boat tour of the city on the Vlatava river, and made a train journey out to the county to see a castle there one day. Prague has some amazing architecture and a very medieval feel, maybe more than anywhere we've been yet. It is a great city for just walking around in, and we could have done that the whole time. Though it is getting more expensive, it's also a very cheap destination (for food and beer especially) and we were amazed how far our British Pounds went there. In no particular order, our pictures are posted here.

After 3 nights there, we drank out last Budvar and flew back to Birmingham, for a final night out with John. It was great to have him here and we had such a good time…and set quite a pace! We were ready for the relaxation of the work week after a holiday at that speed.

Pub Quiz

As a lot of you already know, Aidan (Lauren's brother) is visiting us for six weeks during his summer vacation. He will be a senior in high school next year, so he has a nice, long summer break. We’re already having a great time: we celebrated his 18^th birthday, introduced him to our British ‘mates’, went to see Spamalot in London, going to Paris this weekend ….but we spend most of our time at home playing games in true Horstmania style! Our favorites have been Wii, Apples to Apples, and a book of ‘Pub Quizzes’ that we bought over here. Pub quizzes are quite the phenomenon, and most pubs have at least one Quiz Night a week. Questions cross a range of categories, and lots of the questions in this book are way too English-centric for us to even take an educated guess, like ‘who was the first Cricketer to score 1,000 wickets in international play?’ (I made that one up, but you can imagine!). Every once in a while, though, they ask a question on American-ese that we find hilarious. These include:

• What do American men put in their billfolds?
• Where do Americans put luggage in their cars?
• What do American babies wear on their bottoms?

And our favourite:

• On what day do Americans eat turkey?

Rooftop Transformation

Moving from Pittsburgh where there was no end to the number of landscaping and home improvement projects that friends needed help with to England has been hard for me, with few chances to “get my hands dirty” and build/fix something. For this reason I have been really excited about the coming of nicer weather and the chance to go to work on “Nick’s Project Space” as Lauren calls it: the rooftop right outside a door in our living room. As you can see below, the roof was not much to look at, with 2 power lines running across it and a junk yard (why!?) in what looks like it should be a residential plot next to us.

After some green outdoor carpeting from Ebay, plastic furniture, and a trip to the garden center, we ended up with this:

I am really happy with how it turned out, and am most proud of the tensile structure holding up the bamboo screening. I anchored some steel-core clothesline to the bricks, then using two “masts” made of wood and picnic umbrella stands, I rigged up a system of tight lines that I tightened with a turn buckle till you could play them like a guitar. The bamboo just hangs on these and I left a door that can roll shut or open for access to the uncivilized badlands outside our green paradise.

Our rooftop vegetable garden and scenic junkyard

During the brief periods without rain here we have enjoyed grilling and eating outside, and it’s even possible to forget you’re in the city on a letting agents roof for awhile. A little green (even the plastic kind) goes a long way.

Barbecuin’ in the Beer Garden

Nick has done an ‘absolutely fantastic’ (as we’re learning to call all things awesome here!) job converting the roof of the office beneath us into an outdoor wonderland. He can do a much better job explaining the vision and subsequent engineering feats to achieve said vision, but I can tell you the following things:

• We call it a ‘beer garden’
• There is a grill, table and seating for four, outdoor carpeting and bamboo screening
• Flours and potted herbs line the walls and there is a separate ‘vegetable garden’ outside the screening

It has completely opened up our flat, it’s like having an extra room! Plus, with it not getting dark until about 10 pm(!), we are able to spend the evening outside eating, reading and hanging out with friends.

We put that last one to the test last night with an International BBQ with friends – it was a little cozy, but it turned out well! Nick is friends with a guy from Poland and a guy from Malaysia, who offered to do an international potluck. Lucasz brought sausages back from Poland with him and grilled them, and Chris made us prawn friend noodles. Lucasz even brought us Polish vodka (not for the faint of heart – there is a picture of bison on the cover!), so all we had to provide was space, salad and dessert. Things got a bit tight in our hallway-like kitchen, but the two cooks didn’t mind. We should invite people over to cook with us more often!

Burdette Brother Attack

Nick’s brothers were the next set of visitors, and we had a great time doing the two extremes of England with them: the back-to-nature experience of camping in the Lake District Park, and the sheik urban style of London. When Eddie and Greg flew in, we gave them an hour or two to nap, then drove the 3 hours north to the Lakes, where we stayed in a simple cabin surrounded by sheep in a shepherd’s field our first night. We had a great time away from it all (including showers) and had a couple of great hikes when it wasn’t raining, and plenty of tea.

After a few days of work, we all went down to London for a long weekend and enjoyed doing the tourist thing for the time. We stayed at a great hostel near Hyde Park (I don’t know how the neighbours let a hostel operate there) spent the weekend popping out of tube stations like gophers. We saw the British Museum, the Odeon Cinema, the wax museum, walked the Thames at night, and had a proper full English breakfast before Eddie and Greg went to Scotland to 'ride out' the last leg of their journey.














It was awesome to have brothers here visiting, and we definitely miss their dry humor. Really all we can say is that you have as much love for us as you are showing in the picture below!

3 Cheers for the Blog!

Gulp – Nick has really stepped up the blogging game on me. Conveniently for him, he is leaving tonight on a business trip, and then is going away with work friends for two weekends over the next two months – so I have a bad feeling these ‘post promises’ are going to be filled by the girl whose brother is flying out TOMORROW!

Not that I’m bitter or anything.

Haha, I’m really not at all, and I have no doubt Nick will be pulling his weight with posts on visits from the Burdette Brothers and John, delighting you with tales of our adventures in the Lake District, London, Wales, and beautiful, beautiful Prague. I hope to provide you with a bit more color commentary on the nitty-gritty of homelife.

If there’s anyone who still cares. We don’t blame you if you’re gone for good!

The Blog is dead. Long live the Blog.

I know what you are all thinking (the 1-2 family members who are still reading this thing). Three posts in May? Are they kidding? Do they hope to keep my interest drip feeding a post every 10 days!?

Before you go and find another blog about a funny American couple living in England, hear us out.

April/May has been the season of visitors around here, and we have been high-tailing it all over this island and beyond. We’re both working full time now too, and it’s been a bit of an adjustment trying to keep up with things around the house and balancing our social lives here with work and visitors.

I know what you’re thinking: lame excuses…and you’re right. We’re going to try to pull this thing together, and I’m setting the bold goal of doubling our posts in June. Look for a full 6 posts this month (most of which are needed just to get us back to the present), with potential for July to shoot right through the roof. For now we’ll take it a post at a time.

To start us off, we have a few pictures from trips with our last few visitors to get out there to the masses. After our great trip to Scotland with Lauren’s mom, we headed into northern Wales to check out a strange and wonderful place on the coast created as an experiment by a welsh architect: the Italianate village of Portmerrion. It was a beautiful day, and we had a great time walking and enjoying the beach there. Looking at the pictures now, I realize that was the last nice weekend for a month…Lou Ann sure knows how to bring the right weather.