Stupidest people in America?

So I did something to my back again and have been hobbling about. I don't know how I do this stuff but it probably does not take much given my vast age. We went for a 20 mile ride on Saturday and it made my back even worse - so I have been taking it easy.

We had a cursory examination of Georgia yesterday and she appears to be missing some teeth. I am sure she is healthy - and its just that she chews stones. This makes a terrifying noise when she does it and I am sure it does her teeth no good whatsoever.

So I am going to take her to the vet soon that he can tell me what’s wrong - or more accurately - if anything can be done. Now this is America so I am sure his brother will be a dog dental implant specialist and can give George a full set of gleaming white teeth made of kryptonite for about $50,000. 

I rather think Georgia may have to struggle along with the teeth she has left because even if she got new ones I am sure she would still eat stones. 

I have been watching videos about how to trim Georgia’s nails. Normally the nails are trimmed when she goes to stay with Rusty or has a grooming session - but at the moment she has nails like Freddy Krueger and causes nasty lacerations when she jumps on me - as she does frequently. 

I know what to do but it does require a modicum of cooperation from the dog and she is not willing to participate. I have managed to do one or two nails but then she loses interest big time and goes off in a huff. 

I started writing this before the Presidential debate and have since see it and absorbed the results. Hillary pretty much destroyed Donald - with a lot of his help - but I am not sure it will make much difference. 

Large numbers of Trump supporters seem to be trying out for the ‘stupidest person in America’ contest - and there is a lot of competition for this particular title.

You have not seen my linen cupboard

Told her that Trump might be president

So I have sort of started my new fitness regime. 

This is supposed to involve lots of exercise but this has been hampered by the fact that I fell down the porch steps and hurt my wrist and then damaged my back doing stuff in the garden. Fortunately my head took most of the impact so there is no lasting damage. 

Cate has not let me go out of the house for days lest I frighten small children. 

But I am just about back to normal and we will be cycling this weekend. 

I am now mainly living during the day on fruit smoothies for breakfast and fruit and yoghurt for lunch. I suppose I will get accustomed to this but it may take a while. I still allow myself to have a cup of Bushells tea for breakfast and then coffee during the day. 

Georgia still has vegemite toast for breakfast and I am very envious when I put it in her bowl. I occasionally sneak a piece for two when she is not looking. 

I have a whole heap of house chores planned for winter - until it gets too cold to go outside. We are having the fence moved - again - to give Georgia more grass on which to play. Yesterday was the fence man’s fifth visit to us but he just takes it in his stride. So I have lots more fence to paint. 

In the meantime I am trying to learn some new skills. One of these is folding fitted sheets and I have studied videos online assiduously. When you watch the videos it does not seem to be that difficult but it seems that my sheets are much more obstreperous than the ones in the video. I have had no success so far so I still eventually end up scrunching the sheets into a ball and hurling them into the linen cupboard. 

You probably think this is not a problem but then you have not seen my linen cupboard. 

A high degree of mankyness

We all demonstrated quite effectively in Scotland that we are superbly unfit. We are all seized with renewed vigor in our quest to lose weight and become muscle machines. 

The cycling we did in Indy in summer did nothing to prepare us for the hills in Scotland. 

Now these were not large hills - more like undulations - but we had to walk up the higher ones - and if we did manage to cycle up the smaller ones we arrived at the top gasping and panting and needing a ten minute break to recover. I did not - unlike PK - have to lie on the road but I did flop over my bike on more than one occasion.

The bikes they gave us were very strange. They had no stands - so that when we stopped we had to lay them on the ground. They had no odometers - so the instructions saying ‘turn left in 1.2 kilometers’ were totally superfluous. We are stupendously good at getting lost. If it was an olympic sport we would be certain medalists. 

On our first day - at our first intersection - we turned right instead of left. Then we descended for miles over an enormous pile of rubble with boulders the size of small cars - and arrived somewhere we had no knowledge of. It took us ages to get to where we should have been. 

Worst of all they had no mudguards. It was always raining and often muddy so we finished every day covered head to toe in mud. When we picked them up the guy gave us pannier covers so that they did not get ‘mankey’. This was a new word for me - but I found out what it meant. He did not give us covers for ourselves and we got very mankey indeed. 

The degree of our mankyness worried the proprietors of our B and Bs so we had to disrobe and de-shoe ourselves outside.

So we are starting our fitness regime. Cate has to start training for her walk next year. I think she is going too walk across the Gobi desert dragging a VW Kombi. I am going to train with her but my arthritis is such that I will have to cycle. We will go somewhere to find hills. 

To start this process were are going to New Orleans in a  couple of weeks to drink far too much and listen to music while eating mountains of cajun food. 

The eggs were much nicer

Should read BEDROOMS AWFUL

Well we confirmed that Scotland is very hilly and very wet. The cycling was the hardest we have ever done but it was just fabulous. We have stronger legs after four days vigorous cycling.

Well it was supposed to be six days but the last two days looked to be tougher than the previous ones - and it was still raining - so we hired a car and drove around for two days. We saw quite a bit because PK drove like the hounds of hell were after him.

We had trouble hiring a car because there was only one hire car place in Pitlochry and the owner was a ghastly, rude, misogynistic turd. He rebuffed PK immediately because of age. He asked the girls if they could drive and what type of cars they drove. Then he said he had one car which was available for one day but it was a  minimum two day hire - so we would have to pay for two days to hire it for one day. 

Cate had had enough by this time so tore the turd’s head off and stuffed it up his bum. Then she went back to our B and B and wrote a withering review for Trip Advisor - with venom dripping from her fangs while she typed. 

We ended up going to the next town to get a car. I did not event attempt to get involved in driving duties because I frighten Cate. She also frightens me but I don't make as much noise as she does and tend to muffle my shrieks of fear. 

We found some good restaurants - and two really bad ones. The worst one was in a pub  near loch Ness. This area should be avoided at all costs as it is excruciatingly naff and has places like ‘Nessies’ with wall to wall pictures of what the loch Ness monster may look like if it in fact existed. I managed to avoid buying a Nessie tea towel. 

Our accommodation was adequate. We did  not stay in any rat infested hovels except for one place which had apparently been abandoned by the rats who were looking for better digs. 

In one place they cooked Cate’s breakfast eggs badly so we had to move and found a much nicer place with really good eggs.