Weathering the storm

T minus two weeks...

Nearly eight hours sleep! All eyes are on old Monsieur Gustav as he lumbers towards the Louisiana coastline. Here we have the rainy component of a hurricane - for two days solid. I tell a lie, the sun has just made its first appearance in three days. Meanwhile in Rock Springs, Wyoming, a potential opponent informed me snow had been forecast for today. On September 1st! However, I also spoke to a man in Evanston, in the same state, and he said it was supposed to return to the 70s the following weekend!? This extreme variation can be explained by the facts that Evanston is (a) 800 miles from the sea and (b) at an elevation of 6,749 feet. The highest I’ve ever cycled in the UK is about 1,600 feet. It’s 80 miles from Salt Lake City (at 4,226 feet) and I was planning on doing that in a day. It looks so easy on a map…

So, my article appeared in the Scottish Sunday Express. Half a page with a full colour photo… On page 51. Apologies for the quality. The gist of it is accurate, but the quotes are almost entirely made up and I never mentioned drinking wine.

I’ve started playing a new game of online Scrabble with my brothers, Anthony and Neil, and the first seven letters allocated to me were the rather good RADIOST, which contains a bingo (seven letter word). Neil had his go first and Anthony second. Anthony played a bingo himself, ending with an S atop the mid-right triple word square. I was able to play a nine-timer (straddling two triple-word squares for a total of 140). I admit I looked up the word, as we play “cheaty” Scrabble online. I’d be interested to know if anyone can work out what the word is without cheating. So, I have the letters RADIOST and I want to play an eight-letter word around an S as the seventh letter.