Our two week European vacation was a blur and already it was time for Jamie to return back to her school-oriented life in Florida. On our way back to Manchester we stopped in London with just a few hours to follow The Queen's Walk and enjoy the sites. We took the underground to the Palace of Westminster, then walked across Westminster Bridge and downstream along the River Thames as far as Tower Bridge. After a nice dinner along the Thames, we headed back out to the airport for an absurdly early flight to Manchester the following morning.

From Manchester Jamie headed back to St. Augustine, while I continued on my travels, not planning to return to St. Augustine myself until the end of June. In Manchester I stayed a week with a friend and old colleague, Basheer, from Florida. I then flew back to Ireland returning to Ballintoy where I will stay for a few weeks.

We flew into Belfast International Airport and rented a small car, circling the northern half of the island. Driving in Ireland proved to be an adventure, not just because the steering wheel wasn't where I typically expect it, nor just because the traffic flowed in a direction that seemed counter intuitive to me. The windy narrow roads encourage creative driving and a certain amount of faith and good luck, further compounded by the Irish tendency to park anywhere and everywhere that's convenient for the person parking. Having the car did give us the freedom to explore at our rapid pace, always in a bit of a hurry as there was far more we wanted to see than we really had time for.

We followed the coastline through Northern Ireland, then headed down the west coast into the Republic of Ireland through Galway into Doolin from some traditional music. We explored a couple of caves, and got as far south as the Cliffs of Moher, offering a spectacular view. We then cut across the center of the country and headed east into Dublin from where we flew back to England.

My original plans to fly to New Zealand changed, evolving into a trip through Europe visiting friends. Jamie still had a few more weeks off from school, so we planned a quick trip to Ireland via England. We landed in Manchester and stayed a night with one of her friends, then set off on a far-too-rushed train journey to a few locations around England. We whizzed through Stratford-upon-Avon to visit Shakespeare's birthplace and final resting place, then continued down to Salisbury to see the Stonehenge. Finally we headed through London up to Ipswich to visit friends I'd met years ago when working in Florida.

With the current exchange rate of two British Pounds for ever American Dollar, the country proved far more expensive than I'd quasi-planned. In addition, the time required to travel by train was greater than we'd expected, cutting into our time to actually enjoy the destinations. In spite of that, the whirlwind trip proved to be a lot of fun.

I spent the first part of March in New York City meeting "the friend of a friend" whom I'd been emailing off and on for a few months. She and I had each ended a long term relationship at about the same time, and a mutual friend quickly suggested that we were similar people and should get in touch with one another. Our friendship was nothing more than very infrequent emails for many months, growing in regularity as time passed. Jamie is getting her Doctorate in Physical Therapy at the University Of St. Augustine in northern Florida, and with her spring break approaching I suggested that we meet each other somewhere not in Florida. We selected New York City, the reason for my visit to this metropolis.

As our mutual friend had suggested, we very much hit it off. Enough so that I've been very neglectful of other aspects of life, such as work and maintaining KernelTrap. Our three days in New York turned into a little over a week thanks to Jamie doing less than perfectly on a final that earned her an unrequested two month break from school. It was only the beginning of what's proved to be a whirlwind of fun and distraction, and ultimately a new relationship.

After Jamie returned to Florida, I stayed in the city a few more days to catch up with Micah, an old friend and fellow out-the-roader, and his girlfriend Sam. We all stayed up far too late each night talking, laughing, and seeing awful movies. All in all, it was an amazingly fun time.