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This time last year in the Search Travel Online offices, we were looking at our calendars and predicting a sales lull around the time of June and July 2008. Why? Because of the European Championship in Switzerland and Austria. It was a foregone conclusion that England would take their rightful place amongst the final 16 teams – after all, England had an easy looking group with the likes of Russia, Croatia and Israel. It would take a major slip up for England not to make the finals, and as we currently don’t sell holidays to Switzerland or Austria we expected little business with everyone staying home and helping pub landlords around the country make a tidy profit.

Fast forward 12 months, and the picture has turned on its head. England faltered in their group, failing to make the impression they should have done and being all but out in November, relying on Israel to beat Russia to give them a chance of qualifying. Israel did the impossible and beat Russia, only for England to throw it away by losing to Croatia. This led to Steve McClaren being sacked, and England once again looking for a new manager. Alongside this, Scotland just lost out to giants Italy and France in their group, despite beating the latter twice, Wales failed to battle their way out of their group and Northern Ireland didn’t quite have the quality in the end, despite breaking the record for goals scored by a single player – David Healy with 13.

So, this leaves none of the UK’s football fans with any strong commitments come June next year, so what’s the alternative to bitterly watching the other nations compete in the European Championship? Well, one option we’ve seen selling well in the office is cheap holidays to Tenerife. A Tenerife holiday package has everything you could hope for when looking to escape England – while we were suffering floods this year, Tenerife holiday makers were enjoying the glorious sunshine, and while nobody expects a repeat of the unusual weather that dogged Britain last year, it’s nice to go somewhere where sunshine and good times are guaranteed!

In fact, in many ways a cheap holiday to Tenerife highlights the futility of watching the big summer sporting event – just take a look at the following contrasts:

1) European Championships: Annoying mascots and endless opening ceremony “entertainment”

The over-the-top opening ceremonies at international football tournaments are uniformly dull, and the irritating country mascots don’t help to brighten proceedings, despite their shamelessly attention seeking antics.
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With any type of swimming pool, whether it’s above ground or below ground, you’ll need to make sure that safety is enforced. Swimming pool safety is essential with children especially, along with those who can’t swim. With accidental drowning rates on the rise, you should always make sure that you know a lot about safety – to protect those who swim at your pool.

The most important area of safety with a swimming pool is to make sure that children can’t get into the pool if you aren’t around. The easiest way to do this is to put a fence around your swimming pool, and make sure that the gate is locked at all times. Little kids may be drawn to the water, and they can easily fall in and drowned if they aren’t watched. Hundreds of little kids die in the United States alone by drowning, simply because they had access to a swimming pool. Most of these deaths could have easily been avoided if the swimming pool owner used a fence around his pool.

When you open your pool up for the summer, you should also make sure that you have plenty of safety equipment nearby. If you have little kids of your own that you know can’t swim, you should always keep them within an arm’s length of you. If you are going to be taking them into the water, you should use a waist belt or safety jacket with them, to ensure that they stay afloat. Those of you who have an in ground pool probably have a kiddie area where the water isn’t deep. This is perfect for teaching little kids to swim, as they can stay in this area until they get comfortable in the water.
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I managed to keep a straight face while replying, No, there are a few colors in between. The naiveté amused me. Yet in fairness, this group of 25 newly-minted yellow belts had been promoted in record time—just six weeks. It had been a special summer program for kids just out of juvenile hall, or expelled from district schools. An experiment.

So, I could see how they might think the whole process would be collapsed. On the other hand, I’d worked them two solid hours a day, four days a week, hour-for-hour at least the equivalent of a traditional program’s three one-hour classes a week for 3-6 months. There was no gimme to it. This kid had conveniently forgotten all the hard work they’d done, although some of the kids around him—still sore, stiff, and blistered—burst into laughter at his question.
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If the gun fails to fire in that situation, you probably won’t live to regret it anyway. Neither will your family. (Of course, you can hide in your room and wait for your local overworked and understaffed police force to come to your rescue. But that’s another subject.) Clean Your Gun!

Cleaning Tips

Use a bronze wire brush for normal bore cleaning. When removing copper, heavy lead fouling, or plastic shotgun wad fouling use a nylon brush with Shooters Choice or similar bore cleaner. (Shooters Choice is a powerful bore cleaner, will eat bronze brushes.)
Run the bronze brush through the bore once for every round fired. (I prefer Hoppes #9 solvent for light cleaning.)
If you are serious about the care of your gun invest in a coated steel or brass cleaning rod. Aluminum rods are soft. They collect grit and particles that can scratch the bore.
Wipe the rod off after every pass through the bore.
Use a brass jag to push patches through the bore. Dragging a dirty patch in a slotted tip back through the bore is not what I call cleaning.
Use a bore guide or brass “bumper” to protect the chamber or muzzle crown from damage.

Clean the action with a blast of pressurized solvent such as Gun Scrubber by Birchwood Casey. It cleans without leaving a residue.
Oil Lightly! Oil attracts dirt! If you can see oil, you probably oiled too much!
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