a chara...: Vacations are fun...

But nothing ever beats coming home. Coming home from holidays, coming home from work, coming home from the shops, or from a friend's house, home from yogalates with the wife, etc. Your home is a very important place. Fancy or plain, big or small, in Goleta or Belfast - home is home. And I love my home. I gave my wife the bones of a house and she turned it into a home. She's a good wife, I tell you.

Well I'm home now. Erin is not. She is lifting weights at Jordanstown with our strength and conditioning coach Laura who she is becoming good friends with. I was too ill to go today. I've had a bit of a flu since getting home from Italy. I think it's SDD (sun deficiency disorder). Erin has a busy schedule tonight. She is back out to volleyball practice an hour after she gets home. So I thought I would take a time out with the blog. I'll get to our vacation in a bit. But first, just because I've taken a notion, why don't I try and explain what I do everyday at work. After all, I spend the majority of my waking life doing it!

I work for a company called Bombardier. They make trains and planes. In fact they are the only company to make trains and planes. I don't know much about trains beyond what Thomas taught me at age 4 but I do know a thing or two about planes. I am an engineer as most of you know. But there are all different types of engineers and to say that I am an aeronautical engineer doesn't narrow things down much either.

Designing and building a plane is complex and although all aeronautical engineers are required to understand the fundamentals of flight, once you begin your career you quickly specialise in a certain function. Mine is stress (BORING! I hear you cry from the peanut gallery). You're not alone. That is the reaction of most when they hear this, even engineers. In a nutshell I do analysis to make sure the planes we design don't break up in flight. Why don't other engineers like this? Well:

1) You've got to sign your name to every report you compile and every drawing you authorise. And if something goes boom, there is a nice clean paper trail straight back to you. Stressies make sure things don't go boom.
2) As a result, I check my sums twice and then twice more and never rush to a decision no matter what the demands. This bugs other engineers who need to get planes out the door and really bugs the finance guys.
3) It's a lot of math. More than other engineers.
4) It's overly conservative. We don't push the boundaries. We define them.

As a result people make fun of us:

Allow me to bore you all to tears for just a little longer and then I'll get to the vacation. Be more specific, Niall! Well right now I am working on a new business jet that Bombardier are designing. Warren Buffet's NetJets just bought 275 of them which will cost a cool $10 billion when they are all delivered. Oh why don't I work on commission :( It'll look a little something like this:

Even more specifically what am I doing? I am responsible for the mid-fuselage. Nothing to do with the wings, engine, empennage, or cockpit. Just the bit you see above between the door and the engines. So many factors have to be considered - pressurisation of the cabin (the folks in private jets fly much higher than us paupers. As a result the pressure differential is greater up there), gusts of wind, storms, lightning strikes, even down to the baggage carts at airports banging into the fuselage by accident.

Ok, ok! Nobody wants to hear it. I'm sorry. I'll stop there. If the masses of the blog-o-sphere are interested I will continue this in a future post. Don't worry, my feelings won't be hurt. So, Italy!

The view from Villa Cimbrone in Ravello

The next day Erin and I took a hike to a town called Ravello following a glowing recommendation from Mum and Av. It was a lovely place. Quiet and unassuming. There was a grand Villa perched right on the edge of the cliff that you could pay to enter and the views were amazing from this point.

Funniest part of the day was on the hike back to Amalfi (which is not to be scoffed at! A quad-burningly steep decline for about 5 miles). It's safe to say we took the route less travelled. I never knew my wife was such a scaredy-pants! A couple of times some dogs came up and barked at us from behind a fence or the leaves would rustle above our heads and she would cower like a little girl. She walked half the way like this:

The restaurant Erin spoke about in her post. Can you spot her?

Next stop - POSITANO. This was a cute town. We spent the day there while in transition to Sorrento from Amalfi.

Yep! It's that small. This terrain is crazy!

The hidden gem of a beach Erin's friend helped us find.
This is where we got our burn on all day!

Later that night we trekked back up the hill with our bags and spotted a fantastically located restaurant. Erin had what she thought was the greatest dessert ever there. Coffee ice-cream truffle with dark chocolate on the inside. I had a famous Amalfi coast liqueur - limoncello.