(Sunday)
Yesterday was fucking silly. I ate one meal. Paid for one more night at the hostel because I knew I wouldn't be able to do shit today. I almost got into a random party with Camile (aflter walking up the wrong set of steps). Now it seems I lost my passport. I'm a dumbass. Too fucking stupid for my own good. Having my camera on me was probably a good idea. I have some random pictures of stuff I don't remeber doing. I did fall off a statue, or something, which has left amark on my face. The beard covers the mark though. It seems I didn't lose my passport, it simply wasn't in my pocket as it should have been.

Apparently I bought 24 beers after the game, I found the receipt today.

Expecting Something Taller -- A good book.

(Saturday morning)
Last Night, I was going to do a floodlight walk of town. However, while waiting for it to get dark (it takes a while) I decided to hit the high St. Hostel for some 'net access. Since I was there I checked in the basement for the Royal Mile hostel folks. I found them, Brie, Edmonton girl, was a bit wasted, so was Nath, one of the aussie boys. So a beer from Toby and a few games of pool, Heather came back and Jonathon (Toronto -> Europe -> Vancouver), Heather (Moncton -> UNB) and Camilla (the Norwegian girl) decided to try to hit the Fiscal, no long the Fiscal and Firkin. The place was packed and the place was eating up the live band. We decided it was a bit too packed, so we headed to 'The Mitre' where Heather and her friend had been before. Again it was full, but we could get drinks and the band was really good. I met an English couple there. and shot the shit. So much for the floodlight walk. Maybe tnoght, not if the FA Cup is on.

The Edinburgh Castle is massive, it took me over 2 hours to see everything. It's nice, Edinburgh has stuff about Scottish royalty before James IV. The War mueseum probably took the most time. There is a lot of interesting stuff including written orders, and recruiting Scots/Highlanders into the British military.

Biking to Edinburgh wasn't hard but a bit of a pain in the ass, dealing with downtown traffic despite having cycle lanes in the city centre. I can understand why James (in Tarbert) said the buses and taxi's are a problem for cyclists in Edinburgh. Yesterday, I walked around the Royal Mile looking for Kilts. I've decided to get one full get up and another Kilt. One ancient red and one modern green.

The Hostel here seems to be full of Canadians with some Aussies thrown in for good measure. It's amazing anyone who I think has no accent is very much a Canadian. Last night was a drunken night at 'the globe' a local backpackers bar. The Kareoke was fun, I did 'Riders on the Storm' and 'Thank God, I'm a Country Boy'. After the bar we went to the other MacBackpackers Hostels and hung out with those folks. 2 small hostels make for an interesting atmosphere. At the pub there was a giant connect 4 board, 15cm diameter pieces.

The better the night, the less writing. Yesterday, the plan was to do a nice 45 mile trip to Stirling. I think I did about 50 miles, about 20 of which was on a cycle path from Killin to Callander. Unfortunately along that path I took at least one wrong turn and went up a big logging road. Going down was fun, but half of the down was backtracking. The Stirling hostel is even more institutional, the class of about grade 6 students doesn't help. I did meet a family from Saskatoon though and played crazy eights with one of them. The class of kids sat down for breakfast did not sit themselves in any mixed gender tables.

Doune Castle was a lot of fun. I arrived around 1315, and hour or so after I had wanted to, but still with lots of time to explore the castle and get to Stirling. Doune was fun to explore as there was very little blocked off and a bit of history to it. When I went in there was a sign saying the guardian was on the grounds, so have a walk around ans pay on the way out. So I explored for about an hour, then went to pay where the woman convinced me to buy and explorer pass which gets me into lots of places for 3 out of 5 days. So, I also spent 2 hours walking around Stirling Castle once I had arrived in Stirling before 1530. After playing crazy eights in the lounge I had my beer in the dining room and decided on todays plan: Argyll's Lodge, library, cycle shop, Wallace Monument, Campbell Castle. I think I got some midge bits while eatin lunch yesterday. Anyway, I was cleaning up my pint glass when an Aussie girl, Brenda, came in and started cooking. We ended up talking until about midnight. Which included eating, walking around town and spinning on a tire like thing until we were both very queasy. She mentioned sleeping naked a fair bit. However, the lowest temperature ever recorded in her home town was 17 Celcious. It's usually above 300K.

Anyway, today, I took a look around Stirling, saw Argyll's Lodge, William Wallace's Monument and then a nice flat ride out to Dollar, a walk threw Dollar Glen then a quick tour of Castle Campbell. There isn't much special about the place, but the monument curator lives at the castle.

Argyll's lodging had the more interesting bits blocked off, but the furniture was awesome to see. Brenda doesn't seem to around tonight so I don't have much to do and there is an extra class load of kids around. I did meet a couple from Peterborough, On.

Nestle is the cerial brand here instead of General Mills, i.e. Nestle Cheerios in a white box.

The Fort Willy Backpackers Hostel is an awesome place, I've stayed an extra two days. Well, I had the time to stay, so I did. I really haven't written since thrusday at lunch, so here is the attempted brain dump.

Thursday a large number of us sat around the outside fire, chatted and enjoyed ourselves. It felt like most people at the fire had been around the hostel for a while, but besides the 5 staff, the rest had been here only a night or two. I think there is a large large to make it look as if there is always people here and thus encourage people to stay as Victor stayed an extra 3 days, Owl has stayed more, Joey and Ned have stayed an extra 2 days, Simon has spent at least 2 extra days, and I have spent an extra two days here. Those have been the guests for the last few days with various other people coming and going. Caroline has also been here for the time. The staff are Macca, Christian and Mel doing reception with Fiona (Fee) and Bree cleaning.

Friday, I finally got on the internet again and had a good look around town. One of the strange things in Fort Willy is a cemetary under health and safety notice beside the old folks home, so there is a sign for elderly people crossing at the cemetary. Firday afternoon was mostly a walk around cow hill where I cam across a guy playing 'Teddy Bears' Picnic' on the recorder in the woodland. It was friday after the concert and cooking, I sat in the lounge for a bit where Joey and Ned, the boys from Minnesota, were talking to an aussie girl and a kiwi girl and one of those two had worked on the Isle of man.

Before cow hill though, I went to Inverlochy to buy a ticket to see the Peatbog Faeries. Once I had my ticket, from the BA Club, which has no sign indicating it is the BA Club, nor do I know what BA stands for. Anyway, it was time to look around Inverlochy caster, which was a 13 century castle. The ruins are in pretty good shape, but there hasn't been any word done besides stopping the ruins from getting any worse. Exploring the castle was fun, Owl and Victor where exploring it at the same time, so I was able to get up to the Parapet once Owl had found a way up.

The main event of friday was the concert at the B.A. Club. The opening band, the Billipops were decent, sort of countryish. The Peatbog Faeries were awesome though. They mixed the pipes/chanter and fiddle into over 8 different styles of music. All of it was easily danceable. Carloine was the first one up, I quickly followed, then everyone but Simon was up dancing. We bounced for a couple of hours. I was extremely tired. Mel and Bree were mostly able to keep up with me. At the end of the night one woman came up and complimented me on my energy. Another, older woman, gave me a kiss and a big hug outside. Her husband had to drag her away. Evan as they were driving away she was waving at me. I was quite soaked of sweat from dacing all might, my hat even ended up with salt stains. After the concert we got back to the hostel, around 0145, the kitchen was closed, but Owl decided he was going to cook a full meal which caused Macca to explode, partially at Owl and partially at Mel. It turns out Owl (Todd) doesn't remember cooking that meal.

Saturday I decided to do Ben Nveis since I was in Fort Willy. It was a nice long walk. I took about 2.5 hours to go up. I didn't stop. All I had with me was my Nalgene bottle. It was enough for the way up. The views all the way up were simply awesome. I'm glad I had looked around on the way up as looking around on the way down would have meant falling and hurting myself.

[ A crow attacked a seagull. It was a natural dog fight. Evntually, the seagul got away by going too high for the grow ]

The top of Ben Nevis was all snow covered with awesome views in all directions. There is a memorial and the remains of a meterogical station and lots of people. Ben Nevis is the big tourist attraction for Fort Willy. At least most of the people were going up to the top, 1334m, so it wasn't as bad as Eilean Dorean (highlander castle). The trip down took 2 hours and was painful. It was very rough and jaggity. I did see Audrey while I was on my way down. She took a lot longer to go up and down than I did, but 30 minutes of sunbathing on top of the mountain was enough for me. Out to the northeast of Ben Nevis there is a mountain range with one peak that looked very pointy /\ - I can even draw what it looked like.

I lost 1 pound somewhere on the mountain, I'm not sure if I lost thh 2 50p pieces at the top or on one of my breaks on the way down. My half-filled water bottle, filled with tasty Ben Nevis snow, wasn't enough for that much work. At least it was warm enough to walk down the Ben topless. It seems while I was on the mountain, a party had developed at the hostel. Fortunately, the party continued after I got back. So I bough some beers (3 Old Jocks, a Caladonian IPA) and enjoyed the company of the folks here around the fire until after it got dark where we went inside. I chatted with an old man in French, tried to answer some trivial pursuit questions, then passed out in the middel of a conversation. It seems that no lunch, a mountain climb, 5 500ml beers (3 6.7% ones) was toomuch for my body to take. I woke up at 0630 on the couch in the lounge. Now today, Sunday, has been a nice beautiful sunny day, 7thh in a row, to sit write things down and read the paper. Too bad those for those in Uzbekistan. Between the militant religious fanatics and the dictatorial government, the people that will get hurt are those that actually want a better place to live.

Every sink here has a hot top and a cold tap, usually the cold is on the right, but not always. My beard is getting lighter since I have been in the sun so long.

Right near the top of Ben Nevis there is a steep snow section. There were already some slide tracks down and a group to my right were trying unsuccessfully to slide down on one of the guys coat. I decided head first down a previous track would be the way. The slide was a lot of fun, but I got snow in all my pockets and my belt. I ended up a bit wet from the slide as snow is water. I was dry by the end of the walk down, so there was no problem. After I went down, the guy trying to slide on his coat on his butt, went head first with his coat on backwards down my track with great success.

Boozy is a word, great points when hitting a tripped word score.

Postal Service (the band) sounds a lot like Broken Social Scene.

There must be some sort of airshow coming soon as yesterday I saw two Brittish fighter jets flying over Invergerry. Today, I saw those jets again, as well as two spit fires. The ride to Fort William was nice, I did some forest riding, big up, big down around Invergerry then took the high road/path from Invergerry to Benavie. Finding the backpackers hostel wasn't too hard, it is even near the top of a steep circular road, so getting out should be fun.