A very fun filled Fall.

Hey y’all

How is everyone? So I seem not to have kept my promise of more timely post but on the up side I have lots of interesting things to tell you, this Fall has been a very fun one! 

So I left you with me being reunited in Gainesville with slobber chops, working hard at uni and that being about it. 

Things changed pretty rapidly. Uni has been crazy busy, the semester has flown by, I just handed my last assignment in so now I officially have 1 semester left until I graduate - EEK. 

I’ve managed to spend a very limited amount of time in Gainesville this semester which I must admit has led to a much happier Sam.  

My new place is great, the staff adore Randle, he gets taking into the club house, fed treats and just generally given celebrity status. 

I soon realised it would be impossible to write this blog without confessing that early in the semester I had someone new enter my life, not only is he very nice to me, lots of fun, listens to Punk, loves spicy food and even deals with Randle's slobber but he happens to own a boat so lots of my weekends have been spent out on that, if you are going to live in Florida you may as well do it properly eh? Out on the water is definitely the best place to be in this State. We even took Randle out on it! He loved it, although I probably went a bit overboard (pun-intended) with the life jacket.

 

Early in October we went to Orlando to pretend to be 15 again by going to see New Found Glory at the house of blues. It was LOTS of fun, haven’t moshed in a long time.

After that I had another sunshine hunting visitor from home in the shape of Mr Graham Burns! He was sent over for work and managed to sneak in a few days visiting me first. As usual we had a lot of fun together. Introduced him to his first shot of fireball, we went kayaking at beautiful Rainbow springs and took a day trip to the west coast at lovely little Cedar Key. Florida really does have some beautiful things to see.

 

I got myself some new wheels after being convinced byJoey, that new person I mentioned, who is also a ironman triathlete, that the reason I hate cycling is because my bike was so terrible! I must admit I really do prefer it now, I’m not sure if that’s because the bike is much better or simply because it is just so pretty I want to always be on it.

Basically I’ve gone super hipster apparently and got myself a fixie, although I’ve switched it to a single speed (there aren’t really any hills in Florida so it’s fine) if any of you have ever ridden a fixie you will understand why I switched it!

The end of October saw my 2nd American Halloween, despite missing out on any real parties I still went all out - my costume was too good to waste! What do you think? Joey had bought himself a hover-board and was desperate to incorporate that into his costume so he went as Aladdin with a rug over the hover-board - it was hilarious! Oh and of course Randle got involved - he was a Bull with his very own Cowboy Rider!

In between all this I managed to squeeze in a ride with my faves, Jessie and Bear, which was as always lots of fun :) 

The main thing to report back on is I recently took a trip to Texas…!! I’ve wanted to visit this state since I was about 15 years old! Unfortunately it wasn’t quite what I was expecting but a lot of fun was still had. We went to Austin, the Capitol, it reminded me very much of Birmingham, lots of quirky little independent bars and cafes, vintage stores and good food. A few days before we arrived it experienced flash floods so unfortunately lots of the natural sights we wanted to visit were closed. We spent the first night visiting the Capitol building. It was great being able to see inside it at night, there was basically nobody there! As usual I got Instagram happy. 

We took a day trip to San Antonio which was really pretty, we went full tourist and took a river boat tour. That night as both of us are fans of the show Friday Night Lights we decided it would be criminal to be in Austin and not watch a football game so that's exactly what we did. Unfortunately the Dillon Panthers are a fictional team so we had to settle for the Texas Longhorns instead. 

We left the game early because the reason I was in Austin was to support Joey in an Ironman competition, which we had to get up really early for. The morning of the race it was so cold!! Well…cold to someone well and truly acclimatize to Florida that is, we had to wait a long time for it to start as Joey was in one of the later starting waves. 

It was so cool to see that many swimmers in the water at once! 

His friend Nato had also come to support him so we spent our time trying to catch sight of him in a many spots as possible. We managed quite a few which was nice. He finished in good time although he said it was a tough day. I can't ever imagine doing anything like that! 

After Austin we had a couple of quiet weekends, one of which saw me struck down by Strep Throat AGAIN - I swear Florida is trying to kill me off!

Before I knew it I was off on yet another trip, as well all know, seeing new places is my favourite thing to do and so far I've done pretty well at that this year. So Randle and I had been invited to Helen, Georgia to celebrate our first American Thanksgiving, obviously we jumped at the chance. We were to be staying with Joey and his family in their holiday home up in the mountains near a mock-German/Swiss town. The view from the house was beautiful! 

We spent our time hanging out drinking wine in the hot-tub, eating lots and visiting local towns and waterfalls. 

On the day of Thanksgiving I got to see the Peduto family tradition of deep frying a Turkey

 and I even succumbed to playing a round of golf - obviously I was terrible but I made up for it by bringing some english-ness to the day with rounds of gin and tonics on the golf buggies.