Wimpole Estate

Wimpole Hall and Grace
Originally uploaded by msclan.

Yesterday, in celebration of Pride and Prejudice season Grace and I visited Wimpole Estate, reputedly the grandest stately home in Cambridgeshire. We really wanted to see one of these homes after watching the series - you see that these homes and grounds were the primary settings for most of the events of their lives. They spent a huge part of their time (especially if they were women I suspect) in either their estate or someone else's estate. Anyway, Wimpole is only eight miles south of Cambridge so we would be fools to miss it!

God, what an ordeal to get there though. There was one bus that went there - it dropped you off a mile away from the estate at 9:30 and 1:30 and picked up two miles from the estate at 4:45. And that was after a 1 hour ride. Initially we were going to go on Saturday but the weather was terrible and projected to be beautiful on Sunday, so we delayed. The bus doesn't even run on Sundays, so we thought we would bike there. Unfortunately, my bike has a broken spoke so I needed to get it repaired in town first. But no one could do it till Monday so we were out of luck there. We could take a train to Royston, the closest station, and then take a taxi. But it would cost 16 pounds each way, plus train tickets. Probably over 40 pounds to get there and back, plus the 12 pound entrance fee. Not good enough.

In the end I took a bus into town and rented a bike from a cycle hire store and we were able to bike. The road was unpleasant with cars frequently whizzing by and no shoulder for half the way but (after an hour of biking) we arrived. We were a bit worn out - it had taken two hours of buses and bikes to get here. But after lunch we perked up and went on a tour of the estate.

There were no photos allowed in the estate, but you can see what it looked like by watching any number of Victorian era movies, especially either Pride and Prejudice movie. It really was just like they are presented in those movies - a statement of wealth, a holding place for the accumulated treasures of the generations, a place to hold enormous parties, a place with enough variety to keep the inhabitants from getting cabin fever. There was a long room that could be used for walking when the weather made going to the garden impractical. There was a gigantic pool/bath. A breakfast room and dining room. A book room with more books than many local libraries. In addition to the book room there was a library proper which was undergoing restoration, so we couldn't enter. There was a chapel. Saloons, sitting rooms, rooms for every purpose.

In the basement there were servant quarters. A pantry with enormous trunks labelled things like cumin and hyacinth(?). Drawers labelled cinnamon. Walls of china, walls of linen. We wondered how many people it would take to run a house. Grace thought 40, but I thought a lot less. I figured you would need some gardners, some cooks, some maids, some butlers, but what else? Of course there was also an enormous farm on the grounds, and that could easily employ many more people. And there was a giant walled in garden where, presumably, the family grew all the fruits and vegetables it ate.

In a house like that the bored rich could easiliy divert themselves their whole life I think (and that's what they had to do, right? They didn't really work). You could go to the library one day, the pool/bath the next, visit the farm, the gardens, the grounds, play the piano-forte, have a party, go to a party, etc. Apparently there used to be a beautiful glass conservatory and another wing. I'm not sure what hapened to them.

After the estate we went over to the farm to see the famous baby lambs. There were a million families here today for the event. For a few weeks out of the year all the sheep give birth and you can see it happen. Apparently this absolutely disgusting process is a hit with the kids.

Anyway, this is a working farm and there are tons of cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens, roosters, goats etc. I don't know if these cows and pigs are special or if I just haven't been on a farm in a long time but I was amazed at the size of these animals. The pigs seemed like cows and the cows seemed like hippos or something. They had torsos like tree trunks!

Onto the sheep though. First we saw baby lambs. They were cute, as you might imagine. Then we saw younger lambs, with umbilical cords still hanging from their stomachs as they walked around. Not so cute. Then we went to a new building which was really crowded. This was where sheep gave birth. We battled for a spot to watch and the horrifying event commenced. I'll describe the process in graphic detail so you can imagine it nicely.

There were two sheep that were about to go. One had this enormous disgusting bag of yellow fluid hanging out of her, like a giant water balloon made of wet cellophane half filled with urine. The sheep didn't seem that concerned. She kept wandering in circles but she wasn't bleating as if in pain. She turned around. She turned back and the back had burst, so now it just looked like a foot of wet cellophane hanging out beneath her tail. She started licking up something wet on the ground.

The same thing happened with the other sheep. Enormous cellophane urine balloon hanging out of the sheeps nether regions. Probably about a liter or two of fluid. Hanging about a foot. Dozens of kids pressed against the fence watching this happen. Not horrified, but excited.

Anyway the second sheep sat down, sat up, walked around. Now the bag was burst. Suddenly this black thing poked out. It was the lamb's head. I knew for sure when it started looking around. At this point Grace was blown away and dazed. The rest of the lamb wasn't coming out though. The two headed sheep just walked in circles. Then she sat down, presumably on her baby's head. The audience was worried.

But then she stood up and before long something happened. In a split second the rest of the lamb squirted out and Grace burst into hysterics. She couldn't stop laughing, loudly. No one else was laughing, but there were some gasps. One kid tried to get some applause going but the people weren't having it. Anyway, the baby lamb was on the ground and the mom started licking all the wet off it and one of the farm workers came in and pulled the lamb away from the fence. We decided we had seen enough and didn't wait for the other sheep to give birth.

That was the highlight of the day for us I think. A little dazed we went on and took a walk around the extensive grounds. We went out to the ruins of a gothic church, but there was a fence around it, so we couldn't climb all over it or anything. After an hour of exploring we pulled up our bikes and journeyed home. Though the wind was in our face this time the trip went by quickly.

Photos from the day are on the Flickr Website. I think clicking on the picture will take you there. If not, go here.

Odds and Ends

-There's a sign for a lecture posted up at the entrance to the economics library. It just has the date, the time, the speaker's name and then the title of the lecture in huge, accusatory, letters: SEVERE DEPRESSION IS INDESCRIBABLE
That's pretty intense.
-I was biking to the economics library and there was this tiny little thing scampering along the edge of the sidewalk. I had never seen anything like it. From a distance it looked like a scampering brown hairy turd. It was long narrow and extrememly close to the ground. It must have had legs about 1 cm high. And they were moving really fast because I biked after the wierd thing to try and get a closer look and I actually had to bike pretty hard. And then, of course it dashed off into the undergrowth. Grace says it must have been a muskrat (the picture to the right is a muskrat I found on the internet - originally I had this picture, but I decided it was too disgusting).
-There's an article on the BBC website about how Americans think the British accent is a signal of high education and class. The Brits seem baffled by this, but I'm not surprised.

Additional Note: My British friends obviously have British accents and I've grown used to them, so that I no longer have any illusion that they are smarter than they are just because of their accent. But sometimes, as a joke, they try to imitate my accent and I'm always struck by immediately how much dumber they seem when they imitate my American accent. They sound like high school drop out thugs or something. I can't stand when they do it.

Holiday

Two eight week terms and now I have learned all I'm expected to learn. I'm on my five week break before the final term, officially called Easter Term, unofficially called Exam term. I've two essays to write while on this break and next term we have a small number of review classes before the three exams commence in June. So I'm trying to work hard now.

The weather has so turned sour in the last week. Last week was sunny, clear and warm. This week it's sunny and clear, but also cold and windy. And violent sleet showers pop up once or twice a day to hammer those outdoors for twenty minutes or so.

Some of my classmates were undergraduates at Cambridge and have said this term is actually the best. There's the stress of exams but the weather turns nice and it becomes time to punt. As I was told, you can't be expected to study all day and punting is the perfect way to unwind. It's cheap (something like 2 pounds an hour divided amongst four people) and alcohol is practically required.

Right now it's Pride and Prejudice season at the Clancy-Thommandru household. It seems like each March Grace gets a hankering to rewatch the BBC miniseries and the film adaptations. I've noticed some important similarities between me and Mr. Darcy, the lead love interest.

Studied at Cambridge?
Darcy: Yes
Clancy: Yes

Fitzwilliam?
Darcy: That's his first name.
Clancy: Studying at Fitzwilliam College.

Has a sister ten years younger?
Darcy: Yes
Clancy: Yes

Tall?
Darcy: Yes
Clancy: Yes

Name with "a" as the first vowel, followed by a consonant and ending in "cy?"
Darcy: Yes
Clancy: Yes

Sideburns?
Darcy: Massive
Clancy: Sometimes

This is almost as spooky as the Kennedy/Lincoln assasination coincidences!

An update on our world ending

A while back we reported that our world was falling apart and now here is an update on that situation:

--Our friend who left Cambridge is loving his life again now that he has time to actually have a life. We are very happy for him but still miss him a great deal. We hope to see him one of these weekends during Matt's holiday.
--My job has been extended another month, so job security is fairly secure for now. Also, I will be getting paid a nice little retention bonus, most of which will go to pay our April rent, with enough left over for a trip or two into the wilds of the Lake District or Snowdonia National Park in Wales.
--Matt's tuition is NOT going to go up. The Dip students organized a massive effort to write a letter defending their position to the Econ Dept and the Econ Dept agreed that they shouldn't have their tuition raised. We will continue to pay the usual overseas student rate and the Brits will continue to pay roughly 1/12th of that rate.
--Matt did the dishes that were piled up in the sink. However they quickly piled up again; this will mostly likely continue in this heartbreaking cycle indefinately.
--The couple whose Oxford blog we had been following are still separated. We don't hear from the lady anymore but the guy is still making posts. We fear, he has gone a little religioso in his grief. Understandable. But we hope he'll move past it.
--Al Qaeda continues to gain strength and hold terrorist training camps on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border.

More Wild Weather

I went into town around 4 o'clock today while the sun was shining and white puffy clouds floated across the clear blue sky. I should have taken the warning from earlier that such skies mean nothing. An hour later I saw the horizon had turned gray and menacing. And I had to bike that way to get home.

Wind started to howl. Somebody's kite in the park went crazy, flipping end over end and I saw the guy with the string forced to give ground. The chalboard menus in front of pubs blew over. It started to rain and from there sleet and from there snow/rain. I now know such phenomenon is called a sleet shower.

Naturally I didn't have a hat or gloves. We've been having wonderful weather the last week - most days I wouldn't have even worn my coat. It was after five on a Sunday so every shop was closed and I had no more reason to stay in town. I biked home and the weather intensified. Snow filled the air and when I looked up I saw the wind driving it at me. My hands went numb on the handlebars. When I got out in the open, outside of the town center, the wind picked way up. I literally had to stand on my pedals on every stroke to make any progress. My hands were bright red and painful and I began to wonder if it was possible to get frostbite in a mere ten minutes of exposure.

When I arrived at the apartment I reached into my pocket to get the keys and found my hands really were numb in every sense of the word - I had no sense of touch! My jeans were soaked and I walked into the apartment. After twenty minutes the storm was over.

Crazy English Weather

It's a beautiful day outside. Puffy white clouds are floating across a clear blue sky.

Suddenly rain starts to fall hard. The sun is still shining. We look out the window and gape amazed as a dark grey cloud roars into view bringing with it howling wind and pouring rain. And not just rain. We look closer. After the first sheet of rain passes we see that snow is falling. Outside two poor souls have just started the walk into town and someone is struggling up the path on bike. They are both drenched now.

We look and see the end of this dark grey cloud! Blue skies and puffy white clouds are just over the shoulder of this intruding snow storm and are still visible in front of its advance. Outside our window snow is whipping around. And centered in our vision is a tall dark cloud. But we can still see the shining sun and puffy clouds on either side of it!

Within two minute the snow storm has passed and once again we see puffy white clouds floating across a clear blue sky. Only the wet concrete remains as proof of the storm's passing.

Paris Photos

Crepes and the Eiffel Tower
Originally uploaded by msclan.

There's a new set of photos up, of Paris. It's pretty small, just 10 pictures. Go here to see them.

Pari$

Firstly, sorry this is coming up late. I've just been wrapping up Lent term here and had to take care of some business. And also, blogger is giving me a hard time with uploading photos. So you'll have to find them on FlickR. But yes, Grace and I went to Paris last weekend with the economics team.

Saturday

We weren't sure we could afford this trip so we cut the trip from three days to two days so we could get better priced train tickets and pay for one day less hotel and city expenses. Anyway, most of team economics went down on Friday (evidence continues to mount that money is not a major concern for most the people in my course) and we got up early on Saturday to take the 6:45 train to London. That was great. While in the train station Grace decided she wanted to read Emma by Jane Austen, and we looked through the three or four WHSmith bookshops in the London station to no avail. Too specific a desire. We got on the train with no trouble and sat across from five middle aged American women who spent literally half of the trip talking about Disneyland. They go a lot with their kids, but one of them thinks it's fun and she's been with her friend more than with her kids. Of course you have to get a fast pass. But even with one you still have to wait in line during the crowded season, so don't go then. And book early to go to Chef Mickey. But it's worth it. Avoid breakfast with Mickey. They talked loudly, but they were American.

In Paris we found our way to our hostel via the metro. We were in a pretty grimey part of the city with lots of graffiti and dirt, but it was sunny, there weren't sirens going off and the people out were regular blokes. Our hostel was sort of like three houses with one shower and one bathroom per building. We were on the top floor with a window looking out into a very little courtyard with little trees. It was a real nice touch as the weather was wonderful. We had the window open.

But the shared toilet was a turkish toilet, or drop toilet, or more accurately, poreclain hole in the ground that you squat over. I'm not sure if there's some historical reason why it's called a turkish toilet or if it's just called a turkish toilet because it's a sucky toilet and everyone hates Turkey in the EU. The latter seems more likely. One of classmates is Greek (to learn more about Greece and Turkey's feud look up the hate videos they make about each other on YouTube) and she said there's a Greek expression, that says something like, "When you get really really angry, you get like a Turk." One of our classmates is from Turkey and she's really sweet.

Anyway, we had a porcelain hole in the ground. It did flush (though the water spilled a little bit out onto where your feet are squatting). I thought it worked pretty well to be honest. It actually seemed cleaner than my toilet at ISU. It's nice that you don't touch any part of it, except maybe with your shoes. Grace doesn't share this assessment.

We texted everyone that we were here and ventured out to get what we came for - French food. Chocolate crepes, Bertillion ice cream, yogurt. Can't get enough of it while in Paris. The crepes are thick and delicious. Bertillion ice cream is still the best I've ever had. The vanilla isn't tasteless, it's really vanilla. It's not even white, it's light brown. And they make an extra bitter chocolate that is like the darkest chocolate transformed into ice cream. And the yogurt comes in little clay pots, instead of plastic ones and it's really, really thick. Delicious.

We spent most of the afternoon wandering around the Pompidou museum and the Marais district. The Pompidou is a modern art museum but there are always three or four groups of street performers in its big courtyard. We watched break dancers and spray paint artists. There are tons of street performers around Paris. And they're not depressing, like the ones we get at Cambridge (homeless people badly strumming a guitar while sitting). There's guitar players, of course, and drumming circles, but also jugglers, clowns, acrobats and comedians. I really like the atmoesphere and the next day I mentioned it to some of the economics people. Was there just some kind of culture of perfomance in Paris? They had a different explanation: high unemployment and the 35 hour work week. That's what you get when you talk to economists.

At 7 we left to go meet the economics people for dinner.

One nice thing about going to Paris with team economics is several of them have lived in Paris. One of them actually had a French passport. Anyway, he took us out to a classic French bistro and we squeezed around a long table. There was tons of wine, as might be expected and I thought it (the wine) was great. As a vegetarian I get a lot of cheese in France (it's all they know how to make for vegetarians besides omelets). Grace had duck. Someone else had a bone marrow meal. The guy next to me had a gigantic hunk of steak that seemed appetizing to me (first time that's happened with meat in a few years). We arrived around 8:30 and stayed past midnight (the meal was expensive - I don't want to talk about it). England has a strange puritanical rule that pubs must close at 11, but no such law exists in Paris. We went out for a pint after this at a French bar.

There's not the tradition of the pub in France, like in England, so this was really a bar, like you would see in America. Beer was expensive too. Around 2 in the morning Grace and I split with the group and went home. Apparently they all went to a heavy metal club and danced the night away.

Sunday

The next day Grace and I got up late and had breakfast/lunch at a little cafe around the corner. I realized here that I have surpassed Grace's skill with French! The waitress came over and said something French to which I replied, "Petit Dejeuner." That means breakfast! Grace said chocolate, for her drink, but she had to ask me what Petit Dejeuner means. Ha! I like French breakfasts - croissants, richly buttered baguette, orange juice and hot chocolate! Actually, I eat croissant every morning for breakfast now. It'll be a shame when we return to America and I won't be able to get nice ones at the supermarket anymore. Anyway, the weather was so nice we sat outside.

Today we were hoping to find the Haviland China store to look for a gift for Grace's mom. No such luck. We looked the address up in an internet cafe and went there only to find some other store there. Some other closed store. Now we had nothing to do. We walked through the gardens in front of the Louvre and Grace bought an enormous piece of cotton candy. It was a bit of a boring situation. We didn't really have much money or interest for going to battle the tourists at a musuem. And all the stores were closed. At times like this I wish I was taking a vacation in the country where you know what you're going to do - hike. Anyway, we walked down by the Seine which was nice. All the students were sunbathing, or studying, or picnicing along the sunny shores of the river. Most of the book vendors along the edge of the river were open and selling interesting old things. We went down to get some more ice cream.

Along the way we passed the entrance to St. Chappelle's, which I always wanted to see, but never have. We decided to spend the money on this and went in. It's a pretty interesting place. It's like if someone took all the stained glass windows in a gigantic cathedral and then brought them down to form the walls of a much, much smaller space. It's like a church of colored glass. Unfortunately they were doing work on one of the windows so we didn't get the whole effect - there was a big brown curtain blocking two of the windows at the end, above the alter, so it looked more like a hall of windows rather than a church made of stained glass windows. Apparently it was built to house the crown of thorns and other relics (not there anymore). The company working on the windows stuck a little placard on the end advertising their services, in case you need some stained glass window work.

We still had to get the ice cream and when we did Grace got cheated. She asked for her absolute favorite, strawberry and vanilla but the women gave her strawberry and peanut butter (also brown) and contined to insist it was vanilla. We would have put up more of a fight, but we didn't speak the language. Grace was pissed.

We wandered around the Latin quarter for an hour or more before going over to the Champs Elysees to watch the Enland/France rugby match with the economics team. We went to an English style pub for this - the British have a strong tradition of drinking while watching sports and they've built a wonderful institution up around it. So the majority of the people there were French. As one of my classmates said, it's one of the few things the British can be proud of exporting. We had to pay €8 to get in, and there was standing room only, but there was pint of Newcastle included in the cover, so sweet! I haven't had Newcastle from a tap in a long time.

The match was fine, and England won so everyone was happy. There were no commercials except maybe at half time. Wouldn't be able to get away with that in America. The pub also had a Starship Troopers pinball machine, which I didn't get a chance to play, but still.

With team economics partially reunited (some people didn't want to watch the game and and went to the Pompidou instead) we went for a long walk down to the Eiffel tower. Grace and I had more crepes while we all watched the tower sparkle from across the Seine. It's a nice view from there, you can see the whole thing, unobstructed. After this people had to use the bathrooms and there was nowhere close so we went down to the Eiffel tower, even as I remarked a half hour before that this would be my first time in Paris that I didn't go to the Eiffel tower. You just can't escape it. It draws tourists to it, slowly, but inexorably.

We took the RER train into the latin quarter from there where the full economics team was reunited. We took a long stroll to a further metro station and then out to a district with lots of African food for dinner at a Moroccan restaurant. The restaurant had a dog, which I thought was awesome. Grace really wants a dog (actually four, she has their names all picked out). But the apartment won't let us have any at the moment. At times like that, or when I want to buy a framed print or something, I wish we lived in our own house, so we could do as we pleased. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening for awhile.

Anyway, Grace and I had couscous meals which were fantastic. We stayed at this place just as late as the other and when the bill arrived it was quite reasonable, though by now our budget was blown. After the meal team economics split in two. Everyone but us was leaving on the 7:15 train, so they had to get up later. We were leaving on a later train so we stayed out with the people who didn't care about their future discomfort.

Another pint at another bar, this one wonderfully, stereotypically French. It looked like a cafe trying to be a bar. But it worked. And we stayed out for another hour or so before walking home. Paris is wonderful in the sense that you can walk home a long way in a grimey neighborhood with grafitti and feel totally safe. Everyone you see is just folks. There are even parents wheeling sleeping kids along in strollers (what are these Parisiens doing with their tottlers out on the town at 2 in the morning?!). We had to leave on the 11 o'clock train the next day (more on that below) so we set our alarms for 8 and went to bed.

Monday

Monday is a trajedy which makes me angry, frustrated, but mostly sad. We woke up at 8 and promptly went back to bed. We didn't have to be to the rail station till 10 so we reset our alarms and woke up after nine. While packing up I got our tickets out and my head realized, before my heart, that we had missed our train. I had misread the time of our trains departure. We arrived in London at 11, but departed from Paris at 9, which was already passed.

We dropped all plans of going to a French wine store before leaving and went straight to the station. The whole way was torture because I didn't know what to expect. Our budget was busted and we had paid the absolute economy rate for our tickets which meant they were non-changeable, non-refundable, non-anything. In my head I feared that we would have to purchase same day departure tickets as if we had just walked into the station. A plane ticket like that could cost over a £1000. Maybe we could take a bus for cheaper I thought.

When we arrived at the ticket window we explained the situation and were given new tickets for £75 each, which is about what we paid for our tickets originally. I don't think we could have gotten back to England any cheaper. We had to put them on the credit card, since, like I said, there's not much money. Anyway, it turns out we were right when we said we couldn't afford the trip to Paris. This event cast a cloud over the rest of the day and we gloomily returned to London and then Cambridge. Now we are here, being careful to eat noodles and pack our lunches for a few weeks.

Originally we were going to take a vacation this week, but we don't have the money for one now. But it turns out that's OK, because Grace's work has just extended her another month, so now she can take that. And apparently she has some holiday wracked up so we'll take a long weekend sometime soon to visit people in England.

I'll put the pictures up on FlickR soon.

Burned!

In class, talking about our homework which was to calculate if there was a change in the USA gender gap in the 70s. Turns out the gender gap decreased by about 26% in the time frame we studied. The professor explained that during this time period there was a real push for equality in the states. He went on to say that there was even an equal rights amendment that would have made it illegal to discriminate in any way based on gender, but, amazingly, it was not ratified.

I'm the only American in the class of 16. And America #1, so I pipe up:

"Yeah, it was because of abortion."

The professor stares at me with a blank expression. I continue:

"There was something about abortion in the amendment that nobody could agree on."

He immediately retorts, "No, it was passed in congress, but it ran into trouble with the states. Not enough states would ratify it because they didn't think it was necessary or good to enshrine gender equality in the constitution. They didn't believe it was necessary."

Burned! A British professor knew more about recent American history than me!

I looked it up on wikipedia and basically he's right. It didn't get the requisite 38 states to ratify it because of the issue he pointed out, but also over concerns about the selective service and other issues. Later he offered an olive branch to me on a different question, saying I was probably better to ask about American Union law than he was (which is, unfortunately, not true).

But I swear, there was something in that era that got derailed by a disagreement about abortion. Maybe something with the universal declaration of human rights? An Equal Rights Act? Can anyone help me out here?

One person from my class pointed out that there's an episode of the west wing that seems to be close to what I'm thinking. I hope I haven't substituted fiction for history.

Another trip to London

In London there is a giant, sparse, Apple store on Regent street not far from Picadilly Circus. I had an appointment there on Sunday at 1 with the "Geniuses." Long story short is the guy we got wasn't helpful or sympathetic and basically a little condescending, straight out asking at first if I used limewire and then implying everything was my fault for not backing up the hard drive. The hard drive had some kind of mechanical failure and all he would offer to do is replace it (in 10 days or so) for free. But I would lose all my data so I wasn't so happy. He also said iTunes wouldn't allow me to re-download everything I've lost because of piracy issues and hey, they warned me to back up my iTunes library.

He gave me the numbers of some data recovery companies in London and said it might cost between 100 and 1000 pounds to save the data, so I should decide how much it was worth. So that was a sweet trip. Plus, it was raining and cold.

My current plan is to try and save the data myself with some online instructions. Thanks to TJ, who you can see diagnosed the problem sight unseen and then offered a better prescription than the "Genius" at the apple store.

But we did more that day than just get frustrated. We also visited the Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibit at the Natural History Museum. I really like these kind of photo exhibits. In DC the Smithsonian Natural History Musuem had two: one was the National Geographic Photographer of the year show and the other was a collection of photographs in Antarctica. These kind of exhibits are the only chance you get to see photos of interesting places and things blown up way bigger than in a book or computer screen and without a crease running down the middle. I even paid money to see this one.

At this exhibit they didn't blow the photos up as big as they did at the National Geographic one, where they were usually five feet wide or so. Instead, they used really big slide prints that they put in front of light boxes so the light shines through the transparent photo. It makes the colors really bright. Anyway the photos were great. It made me want to get a new camera, one that has a bit more manual control options but will still be small enough to take everywhere easily.

We also finally visited one of the conveyer belt sushi places that inspired the restaurant where Grace worked this summer. It looks like Grace's restaurant was pretty faithful to the original design. But Grace did point out that this place seemed to have less people in the kitchen making a lot more food. And in addition to the waitresses who bring you drinks there were tap and carbonated water dispensers at every seat. Classy.

Today Grace was in London again, this time to get a visa for our trip to Paris this weekend. It was another six hour ordeal but we got it and we leave on Saturday. We're going with the economics group and apparently there's a big rugby match, France vs. England on Sunday which means everyone will be in a pub or bar all day to watch it. Also, I learned that you can bring as much wine back from France as you want, so long as it's for personal consumption. Wine is really cheap there. I might bring an empty suitcase.

Harbringer's of Doom?

After telling Grace about my post she told me that her iPod was "acting really funny yesterday." It was almost out of batteries and when Gnarls Barkely's "Crazy" came on, it started playing half-speed.

And when I tried to post the previous post, I had major problems. I put up empty posts, it rejected it, it had errors. I ended up restarting the computer.

And when I tried to post this very post, which you are reading now, the same thing happened.

I ask again: What's your game Jobs?

Coordinated Apple Failure

*It should become clear from this post that I've been reading "The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World"*

This is a pretty busy week. I'm applying for summer internships on top of my normal classload and one application was due Thursday and the other was due today. I had to get my CV in shape, write some cover letters, get references together, write a statement of intent, fill out the forms, list my employment history, get my transcripts and blah blah blah.

It was a once in a year moment for Steve Jobs to deploy his shock and awe tactics, ingeniously calculated to transform a busy week into a perfect storm.

So, on Wednesday night, after spending hours and hours on these applications on Monday and Tuesday he enveiled his first attack. I should have read the signs, seen the troops massing, but Jobs played me like a fool - I never saw it coming because I didn't believe it was possible. My macbook was acting a little slow that night, but I was running a lot of programs, including the infamous Microsoft Word (which I'm convinced was written under heavy protest by some Microsoft loyals who made sure it would gum up any non-windows machine). I left after uploading my cover letter and transcript to the application. I decided to wait until Tuesday to upload my CV. Crucially, I also did not upload my longest application - the one that needed employment history, overseas experiences discussion, letter of intent and statement of interest (all but the last part of which I had written).

I was out of the house and Grace was home reading, but none of us saw Steve Jobs strike. We know that it happened at 10:11, but we missed the incident. All Grace saw was that everytime she moved the mouse to wake the computer screen up and check the time, it read 10:11. Eventually she realized it was frozen (not uncommon) and she shut the computer.

I came back from my radio show around midnight and opened the computer up to do something. It came right on, and iTunes was loaded up and everything, but there was no mouse arrow. I couldn't click on anything - it was frozen. So after trying all the usual tricks I held down the power button and she shut off.

It was when I turned her on again, that I realized something was really wrong. I could hear something plastic - like a bottle cap - being swatted around somewhere in the laptop's belly. And an omninous clicking of something repeatedly trying and failing to engage. Eventually a folder with an exclamation point popped up and blinked at me.

I did what any person who doesn't understand how computer work would do. I picked it up and looked at it from different angles, I looked at the air holes in the back I even tried to peek in the CD-ROM drive. No clue. I restarted the computer several times, I unplugged it, I plugged it in again but every time there was that horrible sound of something plastic being batted around and then clicking.

My last computer I had for four years. I went crazy with how slow it got but it never just spontaneously blew up like this. I mean, I didn't drop this thing, I didn't spill coke on it, I didn't try to put cheese in the CD-ROM; I wasn't even home! No, this was a calculated strike by Steve Jobs. I don't know what his plan was, and that could be the most frightening part.

So I went to bed and began doing a damage assessment. Well, worst case scenario is I lose all the data - most importantly some 3000 photos and 14 gigs of music. But almost all the music is still on my CD's back home or there's a record of me purchasing it from iTunes and I understand they will let you have all your stuff back. The photos would be a pretty big loss. It's mostly from 1.5 years and though I still have the absolute best photos saved on FlickR, that's on the order of 150 photos. So it would be a pretty big loss.

But the most pressing things were those applications. They were due in 12 and 36 hours.

The next day I tried to fix the macbook with the provided CD's and I was able to load up the CD. But at the crucial juncture where I was repairing the hard drive errors cropped up. A B-Node failure. Damn. I called up AppleCare on my cell, since skype was inaccessible now and quickly cut to the chase.

Nothing to be done. I would have to reinstall the operating system, which would entail losing all the data. He added, almost as an afterthought, that I could take it down to the apple store in London and they could try to back it up. I made an appointment for Friday, then cancelled it because I realized I would need all possible time to get the applications done. I would have to worry about the computer later. So I shut it and put it in a corner.

I spent all night in the computer lab and finished my applications up at 1 AM. They weren't as good as they had been and I wasn't able to submit an application to a post in South Korea, but all in all things were OK. We had a guest from Grace's working staying at our flat that night and I completely missed them but what can you do.

Steve wasn't done with me yet. This morning I went to plug my iPod into my big speakers, since my 14 gigs of music are locked away, perhaps never to be found again. The second I inserted the cord, my iPod screen flashed the little picture you see in this post. It was like he was mourning the death of his big sister and couldn't go on living. So he didn't and now that thing is completely busted. I looked up the symbol on Apple's support site. Apparently it means there's a hardware failure beyond any quick fixes.

So now I have a double trip to the Apple Store in London this weekend. Or this exactly what Steve wants? What has he got waiting for me there? Good God. I better bring a couple hundred pounds in bribe money. Or a gun.

C'mon, are computer really supposed to just break of their own volition?

Seriously though I've heard of this before. When I bought the thing a friend of mine said his girlfriend's hard drive inexplicably crashed, necessitating $400 to fix. He told me to make sure I paid for the AppleCare package, which I did.

I thought it was pretty ominous that Apple offered an expensive warranty package that didn't even cover accidents. Why would you make people pay extra to protect against spontaneous breaking?

What's your game Jobs?

A.S. Byatt has consequences

Ever since Grace and I went to see A.S. Byatt speak Grace has been doing nothing but read her book, Possession.

I mean, it's 1 am for crying out loud!

A.S. Byatt and Econ formal

Also, in the past week, we saw a short talk given by the wonderful British writer, A.S. Byatt, who wrote Possession, which is probably my favorite book. It was wonderful to hear her speak and talk about the research that went into it. She writes a lot of historical fiction, so the talk was about her research process and how the stories are formed. It was even nicer because it was such an intimate setting, just a little classroom basically with about 30 or so people. That is one of the amazing things about Cambridge, they get amazing speakers and it is almost always open to all university students (and their guests.)

On Friday, we went to a formal hall at Jesus College with the other economists. It was a nice night. We went at the end of the night (because nothing else is open that late) to the disgusting Kambar. Although it was repellent, it was not nearly as bad as, for example, the Union in Iowa City, or An Brogh in Cork.

Grantchester, Football, Hot Fuzz and Animals

Yesterday was one of those days were you accomplish as many things as it would take a week to do under normal circumstances. It was all the more incredible since we didn't get started until noon.

Anyway, we started the day out with a walk down to Grantchester with some of our friends. Grantchester is a little village south of Cambridge. To get there you walk across long level plains (owned by King's College) along the river cam. You can also punt there, but I've never done so. The reason for going to Grantchester is mostly to take a walk and then eat at one of the pubs, which is what we did. It was a thatch roofed place, which means it's roof was a pile of dry straw stuff, over a foot thick. You might think having a thatch roof is just a way of making your place more exciting for tourists, and I'm sure that's part of it, but so many places in villages have thatch roofs that it's more than that. It really is an aesthetic, and we were told thatch roofs last over 50 years when done well.

When we were finished with lunch we had free tickets to a football match between Cambridge United and Southport, but the game started in 25 minutes and we were four or five miles away. So we called a taxi and arrived a few minutes late. We were meeting one of my fellow economists at the game and even though we were only eight minutes late, the score was already 1-1 when we arrived (which means we would be lucky to see another goal).

This was not the big football stadiums you see on the World cup. This was like minor league football, barely professional. There were no hooligans. The stands were not that much bigger than a big high school's. And there wasn't even a scoreboard. But the game was pretty entertaining, mostly because a few fights almost broke out. At one point someone got injured and the ref rushed over, but tripped and fell onto someone kneeling by the injured guy. I guess that made people angry because about eight people threatingly walked the ref all the way over to the sideline. It was tense, but eventually the ref regained control and issued about five yellow cards and one red card.

Here's something strange - the hotdogs came in fancy french bread style baguettes.

After the game we headed walked into town and showed up at the movie theatre right as Hot Fuzz, a new comedy by the guys who did Shaun of the Dead, was starting. So we watched that and it was hilarious, though I'm not sure it would be as funny if you didn't know about England.

After the movie we headed into town for dinner and went to four different places before we found someone that had room. And after dinner we went to a party that Team Economics was having. It was animal themed, but we didn't dress up.

Next weekend I really want to go down to London for a day to see Blue Man Group, the Shell Wildlife Photography Exhibit at the Natural History Museum and maybe the Cambridge v. Germany rowing match. And the following weekend grace and I are going to Paris!

Gambling in the US of A and the UK

We had a homework problem today where we used our statistical knowledge to test how good the Las Vegas spread is at predicting Basketball game winners. But in the UK, and Europe in general it seems, people aren't familiar with the concept of the spread. This led to an ever lengthening tangent on sports gambling by a wild haired english professor.

You see, in America, he explained, the rules of our sports are set up by people in charge to maximize scoring. Basketball games will often end with one team winning 95-85, whereas soccer matches will often be 0-0 or maybe 3-2 in a great game. Also, in America, it's often known beforehand with a reasonable degree of certainty which team will win. So instead of giving odds, like in horse racing or in UK gambling, we bet on spreads to keep things interesting.

Fair enough. I'm getting lots of looks though, from everyone in the course. "For real?!" they ask with their eyes.

The professor kept going though and started talking about the football (soccer for us) pools established in the UK in the 1920's. There was all sorts of debate about whether betting on football was legal or not - it was illegal to bet on games of chance, and so the matter hinged on whether a football match was a game of chance. In the end the experts of the day decided it was not and a great UK institution was born.

But this was before the national lottery, so people basically used it as a lottery, guessing winners at random, even if they did not have any real expertise in the matter. It became such an industry that one particularly snowy winter bets were taken even though no matches could be played due to the weather. Football experts then met and decided who would have won, if the game had actually been played.

The professor then started thinking about the United States again and noted that our laws are also problematic, having been established in the time before phones and internet. For instance, a recent case decided that the law forbidding gambling over the phone applied to internet gambling as well. In the United States, gambling is only legal in Las Vegas and on Indian Reservations which had the class in stitches. I heard someone remark, "what a funny country!"

The punchline was that a lot of gambling took place on riverboats because border rivers are not technically part of any state!

Hey shut up guys! America #1!

New Photos

On Top of the Hill
Originally uploaded by msclan.

Finally, finally, finally, I've recovered my camera cord and thrown up a pile of pictures. This one is from our trip to the Peak district, and there's a little set of photos from that trip. There's also a new photoset of snow in Cambridge from last week, and there's four new pictures at the end of the Cambridge photoset which show the interior of King's College Chapel (they just changed the rules so you're permitted to take non-flash photos inside). Anyway, all those photos can be found at flickr.

Our World Is Falling Apart

We just wanted to let you all know that our world, the world of Cambridge, is falling apart. In the last week, one of our closest friends in Cambridge has decided to quit and has moved back to Liverpool; my job security is in a perilous situation and I may be jobless any day now; Matt's tuition is going up £3000 next year; the dishes are a mile high in our sink; the couple whose Oxford blog we've been following (since it's so similar to our own) have SEPARATED AND ARE LIVING ON DIFFERENT CONTINENTS; al Qaeda is regaining strength and setting up terrorist training camps on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border!!!!!!!!!! Most of these things affect other people more than they affect us. We're actually doing okay. But for those who are affected more deeply, we're thinking about you and wishing you well. Not you, al Qaeda, so fuck off.

February is a Huge Month

It's got my birthday in it, for one. Also Valentine's day.

The night before my birthday we got into the proper mood for great times with a special showing of the hit movie The Core. If you haven't seen it, I give it my highest reccomendation. We followed up the movie and accompanying beers with more alcoholic beverages at the college pub. You can buy a bottle of wine there for £3.60, which is about the price of a pint of real good beer. The barman calls it the "Cheap and Nasty" but we're not exactly wine connesieurs so no harm.

The barman at the Fitz bar is a good guy. He's always really polite and I think he likes us, maybe because we never get belligerently drunk. Anyway, he served me first before a bunch of Undergraduates who had been waiting for longer than me (take that!) and I took that as a sign of our developing relationship. So I asked him what beer he liked most and he told me he's never drank alcohol in his life, which was a bit of a surprise. He then told me the best beer on tap was the Heinekin, since it had no preservatives that would cause a bad hangover. I had ordered practically everything for the group except Heinekin, so I think that set our budding relationship a step back.

The next day was my actual birthday and I spent most of the day lounging around in shorts reading the NYTimes. Grace got me a bundle of presents and then we were off to a restaurant for some Thai food. At the restaurant we met our mates, and one of them, who also happens to be named Gareth, but is not the Gareth pictured and posted about below, told us all about his upcoming trip to Algeria. This guy, Gar for short, has the sweetest deal I've ever heard. He's a geology student and he's doing his PhD at Cambridge, despite the fact that he has no master's degree, or even a bachelor's degree for that matter. While he was in his third year at University he applied for this PhD program at Cambridge sponsored by the good people at BP ("beyond petroleum"). He got into the program even though he doesn't formally have his degree yet (he'll get it, just a matter of paperwork and bureaucracy). Anyway, despite their green slogan, BP is still pretty interested in petroleum and Gar is sort of in charge of North Africa and figuring out it's geology, presumably so BP can see if there's any chance of oil. Hence the trip to Algeria.

They've already sent him to Greece for a week or two and he's going to Egypt for the better part of month when he returns. Son of a gun. BP pays for everything of course - posh hotel, chartered jet, drivers, everything. Let me tell you kids - if you want a life of adventure get into one of the sciences that can't do it's work in a lab.

Incidentally, Gar is also a really accomplished rock climber (one of the best in the UK, I've been told by our friends, after a night of drinking). So, being in a field that studies rocks is an even better fit for him potentially.

Anyway, after some great Thai food we went bowling which was awesome.

For Valentine's Day Grace and I had a quiet night. I cleaned the whole house, taking out the Christmas tree (sitting by a dumpster, shhhhhh) and pulling down the decorations. We made Grace's famous Mushroom soup and watched a Marlon Brando movie ("I coulda been a contender!").

I was thinking about this, and Valentine's day seems like a much smaller holiday now that we're married. I think it's because it's been largely supplanted by our anniversary. Valentine's day is for anyone, even the kids who nobody likes in elementary school but get a card anyway because you have to make cards for everyone or no one. But our Anniversary is just for us, and it celebrates our wedding which is something much more concrete than love in the abstract. Still, I got Grace flowers, chocolate and a card. But the day just wasn't that big a deal.

The next night we went out to a pub quiz, which we lost. We're trying to keep busy since we all miss our mate (see below), which is one reason why we're going to London tomorrow. While I'm there I'll finally get my camera cord and, finally, I can put some pictures up.

Snow in Cambridge

There was a big snow in Cambridge today and no one came into work! It was only 4 inches of snow! I, being the intrepid, indefatigueable Iowan, went on in to work only to discover that no one else in my section bothered to come in. I had to sit there all day and work and they were probably playing in the snow, drinking hot cocoa and getting toasty by the fire. Bloody Brits. They're the most staid, stiff upper lip, carry on, business as usual people... until it snows. However it's almost 8PM here and most of the ice has melted and the roads are pretty clear. As long as it stays above freezing driving shouldn't be any different from when it rains. I suspect however they'll find a way to make a long weekend of it!

One Week On...

Back to classes. I had a nasty shock today when I learned that I have 17 weeks till my final exams, not 27, as I thought. I don't know why, but I naively thought there were 27 weeks until the first week in June, but that's calendarically imposible.

The local library has closed and with it our access to DVD's (I know there's a blockbuster somewhere in town, but it's not convenient). And Grace and I have no TV, so there's sometimes not a lot to do. . . Anyway, we signed up to rent DVD's through Amazon.com, which apparently you can do in the UK. We get six a month for 10 pounds. That's about the right amount. As I type this Grace is watching Jane Eyre (with William Hurt as Mr. Rochester). We don't have a TV, so we haven't paid for a TV License, which is a 100+ pound annual tax you pay if you have a TV (the money subsidizes the fine programming on the BBC). Anyway, we've been getting increasingly threatening letters from the government. Now an inspector is going to come around and see that we really don't have a TV. I've called before to tell them we don't have one, but it seems to have gotten lost in the bureaucracy.

One of our friend's mom is a fraud inspector, but not with TV licenses. There's a lot of ways to try and cheat the system here and a lot of people try to do so, say by pretending to be single when they really have a partner. Apparently our friend's mom is amazing at catching people and generally being really quick on her feet.

Grace and I are heading down to London this weekend to go to a friend of our's party. The following weekend is my birthday, so get ready for that. And one of our friends is obsessed with going surfing some weekend down on the coast (with wetsuits). And the economics people want to go to Paris on the tenth of March. So, that's the plan for now.

And tonight, another radio show. This week, introducing the blood brothers.

Radio Show Tonight

Mixtape radio is tonight from 11 pm to 1 am! Go to cur1350's website and click on listen now! If you're in the Iowa, we're on from 5-7 pm.

Also, we had some snow today, but it all melted before ten. I'm back in the swing of classes and I'm working a lot now. That's all for now.

The Peak District

At long last, the tale of Grace and I's trip to the Peak District last weekend. There's great photos but since I lost the camera cord, you can't see them yet. I divided the post up into parts for your enjoyment.

I. An Introduction to the Peak District

What is the Peak District, you ask? It's a national park full of big big hills (but not mountains - but they were 400 vertical meters from the valley floor). Named for the ancient tribes who previously lived there (not for the peaks of the . . . hills), it is the second most visited national park in the world, according to my guidebook. Fortunately Grace and I were going in January, which is not the peak season (ha ha ha!). It's sort of in the middle of Great Britain. Farthest North we've been in the UK thusfar.

II. Whereupon Matt and Grace Journey to their Hostel in the Peak District

Friday morning I packed up while Grace got herself a root canal. I had a topographical map in a plastic bag, a compass, an emergency headlamp that I bought the day before (in case we were stranded in the night), gaiters (waterproof things that go over your shoes and cover your shins), a first aid kit and a guide to hill walking. Plus some food and an ipod and clothes.

We left from Cambridge train station around three o'clock and went up to Peterborough (50 minutes). When they came to check out tickets we realized Grace had forgotten her "Young Persons Railcard," which lets us travel for a cheaper rate. But they didn't ask to see it, so we were in the clear. At Peterborough we switched trains for one bound for Doncaster. The first train to come through was totally full and they wouldn't let anyone on board. The second we got on, but we had to stand. It was about 70 minutes to Doncaster. There we switched again and caught a train to Sheffield (30 minutes?). At Sheffield we had some time to kill before our final train, a little one out to the village of Edale. At the station I called our hostel and asked if there was going to be someone there to pick us up at the train station (when I booked the hostel they had said there might be).

Not tonight though. We were advised to walk - through the car park, go left, then right at a crossroads, then a half hour along the road. Eventually we would see a white sign for the drive up to the hostel. It was a good thing we called when we did, because once the train entered the Peak district there was no cell phone reception.

Around 7:15 we departed on a little train, just two cars. Several stops later we were in Edale.

It was night, and lightly raining and we were deep in the countryside so there were no lights up. It was really, really dark. Right off the bat we couldn't find the car park which we were supposed to go through. The train station was just a concrete platform and a little shelter. We followed a path down the road, but there was nothing ahead or behind us to indicate the existence of a parking lot so we went back to the train station. We found a sign pointing to the car park, but couldn't actually find the park. Everyone was parting ways and we decided to follow a big family (how many hostels could there possibly be out here?).

We had to pull out the emergency head light almost instantly and Grace wore it. The family turned off the road into some other hostel so now we were on our own. We pulled out the map and the compass and plotted a course to the hostel that involved going left then right at a crossroads, as we had been instructed.

In the dark we could only really see as far as the light went, which was about 25 feet. It was a strange sense of both open space and being really closed in, since we were unable to get any wider sense of where we were and where the roads were going. Well, we turned right at the crossroads and we were on muddy wheel tracks rather than a proper road. This quickly turned into a wet, muddy footpath through fields. But we did know where we were. The map was correct about the placement of fences, and we passed a farm on schedule. Eventually we got into a tiny village, really just a clusture of inns around a farm. Our course passed through that though and we were back in farm fields. We saw signs warning that there were bulls in the field, but we didn't see anything.

At this point I was having a lot of trouble keeping on my feet. Grace had the light and so I was feeling things out with my feet but the ground was a mix of really slick grass and mud. Before long I had fallen and caught myself with my hands, though they landed in mud and were filthy from then on.

And we had a small problem. We were supposed to catch a path that veered to the right, but we weren't seeing it. We saw a set of muddy wheel tracks that went off to the right but since the light only went 25 feet we weren't sure they were actually a path, or just the farmer's tractor marks. We investigated and I tried to avoid walking in the mud tracks, so I walked along the grass instead. But this was up a hill and when I turned around my feet went out from under me and I landed on my hands and butt and legs in the mud. The map also went flying off into the night.

The map got snagged on a fence though so we were allright. And Grace's lighted investigation of the wheel tracks revealed they just went in a circle. And I was coated in mud now, and this was my only pair of pants. We took a close look at the map and turned off the path onto a gravel road that connected with the main road through the valley. We followed that road (realizing later that this is what we had been meant to do - we would have gone this way if we had found the car park) and stumbled up to the hostel after an hour in the darkness.

No eyebrows were raised about me being covered mud. It's probably pretty normal in the Peak District. We checked in and I did laundry (1 pair of jeans).

That night we pulled out the enormous map and plotted an ambitious route for the next day. Most long walks we take are 8-10 miles, but we usually have to bike or take a bus somewhere first. Since we would be starting and finishing at the hostel I aimed for 12-15 miles, with several hundred vertical meters of travel thrown in for good measure. We would go across the fields we tried to negotiate at night and follow a river up to the top of a really big hill. We would walk along the top of the hill for a few miles (it was more like a hill-range), descend into the valley, follow a roman road to the other side of the valley and summit two big hills on the other side before heading back in for the night. A little too ambitious, it turned out.

III. Whereupon Grace and Matt realize they are not as good at Hill-walking as Matt thought

We left on our walk around 10 the next day after a hearty breakfast at the hostel dining room. Cutting across the fields I fell again and got my leather gloves filthy with mud. Why would I wear leather gloves?! It was stupid (plus, I'm a vegetarian!).

The walk was really good at the beginning. The landscape was much more dramatic than Cambridgeshire, which is sort of peaceful and idyllic. Here we were surrounded by a landscape that dwarfed us. We passed through farmers' fields full of grazing sheep (walking is so historic in the UK that you can cut through private property as long as you stay on the legal path). We went into a quaint village and over delightful little stone bridges.

Already I could tell we were not as extreme as the other people here. Everyone else had walking poles and waterproof pants, plus much bigger camping backpacks. And we were passed by everyone (we only passed one group all weekend and they were sitting down to eat after having passed us earlier).

Things got considerably harsher and less quaint. Going up the hill the path changed from a stone path to a dirt path to picking our way through rocks next to the stream. We had to spend a lot of time figuring out where to put our feet next. We had to use our hands more and more. The wind started to roar and the fine misty rain came in and out. Grey clouds moved fast over the top of the hills.

After about an hour and a half we had walked a few kilometers and gained perhaps 120 meters. We stopped to rest and eat before tackling the final section of the hill which went 80 meters up over, perhaps 250 meters. We used our hands all the time now to lean forward and crawl up the rocks which now dominated the terrain. The higher we got though, the better the view and there was no civilization in sight now, just this dramatic landscape of dark muted greens and browns.

We reached the top and a trio of people in skin tight athletic clothes scrambled up after us. Once they were on the top of the hill they took off running. They looked like the joggers you see in Iowa City, but they were out in this dramatic landscape that I had brought a first aid kit, map and compass for. For them this was just a little weekend exercise or something.

Anyway we had quite good views from up here and we walked off on a path following the edge of the hill. We stopped once to look at some big boulders that I thought looked like they were some kind of stone-henge-ish thing. Anyway, I started to get a little worried up here. It was coming on 1 o'clock and the sun sets around 4:30 in the UK winter. We should have been over halfway done by now and we were not even a fourth of the way through. On top of that I got a little spooked when I couldn't find a path that should have joined us at our right and then a fence appeared which wasn't on the map. It was obvious now we wouldn't get the whole route done today but I was worried we would be able to do the first half of it. It was a long way to the end of this hill top and then we would have to descend and get back to the hostel. I thought we would be hard-pressed to finish by nightfall.

And it was really windy and cold on top the hill (it was January, after all). And we kept getting passed by people. And then, coming the other way was a family of people who had brought their little dog with them. They had no gear, they were wearing tennis shoes and for them this was like a walk in the woods.

So we arrived at a juncture. It was 1:45 and we could take a side path straight down the hill and back to the hostel, or we could shoot for the other end of the hill and and walk back around the valley. There weren't any paths in between the two ways. We erred on the side of caution and came down the quick path.

I fell in those muddy fields a few more times, again landing on my butt. We realized my old hiking boots had a nice smooth sole from four years of use. No treads for me.

When we got back an hour later Grace took a nap and I hung out reading. We ate at the Hostel again (not wanting to walk the half hour to the nearest pub) and hung out in the lounge reading and playing boggle over some Hoegarden beer. Went to bed early so we could get one more walk in before we left.

IV. Wherein Grace and Matt have a generally pleasant walk

The next day we set our sights much more humbly. We would do one of the two hills we were going to summit yesterday and take the 2:50 train out of the Peak district. Grace was pretty tired but we made good time this time. The winds today were even stronger than they had been the day before though. There was a particularly frightening part where we walked along the edge of ridge and up a natural stone staircase. The wind was so powerful that we had to keep low and pause to brace against the gusts. The top was a great view, but windier than all get out. The descent was on the slick grass and mud I had grown to hate, but there were just enough rocks in the landscape for me to stay generally upright even with the harrowing wind. I did fall at one point, but only planted one of my knees in the mud.

After the hill the rest of the walk was really nice through English countryside and farms. There was a little dog that barked at us a lot and we illegally slogged through a muddy field to take a shortcut to a quicker path. We sank to our ankles in that mud.

Anyway, except for the fact that Grace had to use the bathroom for the last two hours of the walk, it was a good way to finish off the day. It was much sunnier too, and didn't rain at all.

V. Whereupon Grace and Matt's trip home is some kind of Joke

Once again the mini-bus to the train station was a no go so Grace and I walked there (this time on the road - no more muddy fields for me). We showed up a few minutes before the train left and got on to the platform. There was a train on the other-side and Grace warned me that the kids in the other train were tapping on the glass to get our attention, so I should ignore them. The tapping didn't stop and they opened the windows to yell at us - "That track is broken! This is the train!"

We hurried over to the other platform and dashed onto the train with minutes till the train was due to depart.

But we were sitting there in the station for twenty minutes before an announcement came on: "We apologize for the delay. We're just waiting for the driver. We should depart in 20 minutes."

After a half hour there wasn't a second announcement: "We apologize for the delay again. We are just waiting on the driver and we've been in contact with control. We should be departing within 10 minutes."

That was the last announcement we heard before 4:30 (after we had been on the train 100 minutes past it's scheduled departure). At 4:30 they apologized again and told us this train was going to become the 4:50 train, and the 2:50 service was cancelled.

At 4:55 we left (no explanation for the driver's absence). It was night by then, and our hope of a nice train ride through the Peak district was spoiled by night. Also we had missed the train we wanted by an hour or two in Sheffield. So, instead we had to take a train to Doncaster were we could switch for Cambridge. I figured we would be in by nine or so.

Anyway, on the train to Doncaster the coach master came around to check our tickets. We gave him ours and he asked to see our Young Person's Railcard. As you may recall, Grace had forgotten hers. We told him and I showed him mine. It turned out that I didn't have mine either - what I thought was the young persons railcard was actually just a photo ID they issued with it (stupid system). So we were travelling illegally.

The kindly guy just wrote on our tickets that we were invalid so we wouldn't be able to go further without fixing things up in Doncaster. This was instead of charging us each £50 each, so that was nice I guess.

At Doncaster we had to upgrade our tickets to pay the non-discounted rate (£17 each). There was no way to get a better price without our cards present. And we had to take a totally garbage route home. She wrote it out for us because it was prety complicated.

Train from Doncaster to Newark.
Bus from Newark to Grantham.
Train from Grantham to Peterborough.
Different train from Peterborough to Ely.
Different train from Ely to Cambridge.

We would get in at 11:30 or so. Each leg of the trip was under 40 minutes long. We just had so many lay-overs, the one at Peterborough over an hour in the cold.

Well, what can you say? For about an hour I was furious but eventually I was just tired. The bus from Newark to Grantham was ridiculous. The whole train had to get off and walk to the end of the platform, down a ramp, across the tracks, and wait in a big crowd (a lot of the crowd stuck on the tracks - ha ha for them!). Anyway they crammed us onto this bus with 70 seats - three on one side, two on the other. The seats were too narrow for me, and I'm not exactly a wide guy. I had this foreign couple next to me (about six inches from my face, but across the aisle still) and they were having a really loud argument in French (I recognized some words - thanks Basic French 1!). At one point the man punched his the palm of his hand really loudly for some reason.

At Peterborough Grace bought some crisps (or, Chips, in American) and some crazy drugged out woman walked over to her and stuck her hand out and in a childlike, loopy voice asked, "Can I have crisp please?" Grace gave her one and she walked off, but not before stopping and ecstatically shrieking while shuddering. Grace was interested in the crisps after that ("they probably have traces of opiates now" she said), but eventually she got hungry again and ate them anyway.

Also, they cancelled our train from Peterborough to Ely which was quite a surprise. It was on the board, but it wouldn't list the platform and I went looking for it. Eventually I found out it was cancelled and when I came back it shortly disappeared from the board.

Fortunately a half hour later a train straight to Cambridge showed up. We jumped on board and took a taxi home where we quickly went to bed.

The end.

Radio Show

Get ready!

I have a radio show. We're on from 11 pm to 1 am on Wednesday nights and we're called Mixtape Radio.

They have a webcast and, best yet, they archive all their shows for six weeks, so if you miss a show, or want to listen to it again, you can stream it from the website. To stream our pilot show, which we had to perform under the watchful eyes of the training head, go here and click on either hi or lo, next to the Mixtape radio show (from 11-12 on Friday the 12th).

Our first proper show is not tomorrow night, but the following Wednesday. Earlier I commented that I was really worried about the show because I hadn't been interviewed about my musical tastes. I suspected I was being hired to babysit a computer.

It turns out that's not the case - the radio station is just gloriously informal. It's in the basement of some people's house and they have a 1 watt transmitter, so must of their listenership comes from the webcast. The guy training us told us he doesn't care what we play and the 24 hour computer broadcast plays mainstream stuff like Fergalicious and Jerk it Out, so we don't even have to worry about Indie pretension if we want to slip in some mainstream stuff (finally, the opportunity to play Shakira!). We have the same restrictions on swear words as in KURE, which is that if someone complains and we get fined, the station goes bankrupt (they get even less funding than KURE!).

Equipment wise the station is both worse and better off than KURE. They've got two CD players that work fine, and a computer that lets you play bumps, beds and jingles. But there's only one record player, and it's busted. Our trainer didn't seem to know if the minidisc player or the tape decks worked, but he didn't think they did. They do have three microphones though. The strange thing is that the training head was really particular about proffesionalism on the radio. He insisted we use background music ("beds") while we chatted, that we go no more than two songs without talking, that we plan out what we were going to say, etc. He would say things like "Your sound levels were good there, but it didn't sound like you really wanted to be talking."

Anyway, like I said the show is on the web. If you want to listen live, and you live in the Central time zone, it'll be on from 5-7 pm on Wednesday afternoons. Naturally you can listen any time, since the shows are archived, but if you listen live a little webcam takes pictures of us in the studio and you can look at that. You can also send us emails with the little web player and complain about the show.

To listen live, go to cur1350's website and click on "Listen Now." To listen to an archived show, click on "Listen Again" and find our show in the schedule.

What's On

Grace is working all week and I'm supposed to be studying, but I'm finding it difficult. Grace is getting a root canal on Friday morning and then we're taking a train up to the Peak Distict, a big national park in the heart of England. We'll spend the weekend in a remote rural hostel and do some walking in the dramatic scenery.

I've been getting really into hill-walking, which is the proper name for this activity. I've got topographical maps, a compass and I'm learning me some navigation skills. This new interest is not making studying economics easier.

Our bikes have been ravaged by the weather and the chains turned brown from rust. For about a week I kept saying I would scrub them clean with a toothbrush (my brother left his here) and then grease them up. I never did it though and my transformer (not sure if that's what it's called - it's the thing on the back wheel that makes you shift) crumpled up one day. I took it to the Bike man and he installed a new one and cleaned the chain. So now the motivation to clean the chains is lessened and Grace still has an ugly brown chain.

We've been happily active though now that everyone is returning to town. Tonight I go to get trained for a radio show - stay tuned for more information. I'm actually really worried because there was no interview to get the gig, no form to fill out about my music tastes. I think those are clues that I'm signing up to be a glorified computer babysitter and I won't have any actual input. And that's a shame because there's so much music I want to play.

Anyway, if that's the case, I won't be finishing the training. But, if all goes well, I'll be co-DJing a show with a British friend of ours.

We're Back

Preface:
This is a really long post about what Grace and I have been up to with my family. The first part is about London, the second about Paris and most of the last part is about trying to punt in Cambridge. In case you don't want to read it all, because it's long, there are pictures up at flickr. The relevant sets are "London with the Family" and "Paris with the Family."

Real Post:

After a frenetic eight days running around London, Paris and Cambridge with my family, Grace and I are settled back in at home. Grace is at work, and I've got under two weeks left in my vacation. I spent yesterday doing six loads of laundry and tackling the mountain of dishes.

Anyway, my family came over and we spent three days in London, three days in Paris, and one day in Cambridge, plus some days spent mostly traveling. First we went to London.

It was difficult for Grace and I to travel on Boxing Day (December 26th), since the trains were not running. Since my parents were arriving at 9 AM and we wanted to spend the 25th in Christmas, it was impossible for us to get to the airport for their arrival, as much as I love the idea of meeting at international arrivals gates. Anyway, we got a car to pick them up. It was the real deal, with a guy holding up a sign for Mr. Clancy and everything, which I think is great. Grace and I took a bus down to my parent's hotel. Because there was no traffic on Boxing Day we arrived early and were served tea in the lobby while we waited.

I was really stressed out during this time since there was no way for me to contact my parents and make sure things were going smoothly. Also, I had arranged both their hotel and the driver, so I was worried I might have screwed something up. But I didn't and they arrived and there were a lot of hugs. I hadn't seen them since September, and now that they're gone I won't be seeing them until August probably.

Our relatives in London had gone to the States for Christmas so Mike, Grace, Hannah and I were going to use their flat. We dropped the luggage off there while my parents took a nap and then went for a walk. Straight away, within an hour of my brother and sister's arrival we had the necessary pictures of them in red phone booths, next to stoic guards, and in front of Big Ben. There really wasn't much left to do after that, so we all went to some relatives house for an extended six hour tea/beer/dinner. It was a good chance for us to meet some relatives we hadn't before, and they told Grace and I to come and stay with them anytime we wanted to, which was really nice.

That took us into the night and all the weary travellers collapsed into bed.

The next day we got up relatively early and had some English Breakfast at a little cafe. We took the family on a walk to see Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, and Harrods. We spent the afternoon in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Imperial War Museum. The Victoria and Albert Museum has a room full of enormous plaster casts of things like Michelangelo's David, Trajan's Column, the doors of Cathedrals and so forth. I was loving it, but my dad was unimpressed with the casts because none of them were originals.

The Imperial War Museum looked really interesting, but unfortunately, Grace and I were already tired of museums by then and didn't really give it our full attention. Maybe some other time. We did like a small exhibit about a messenger pigeon on D-Day that delivered an important message and was awarded the Animals' V-C award before later being accidently killed when it's trainer stepped on it.

It was dark by then, it being winter, and so we all went home, passing the lit up Houses of Parliament on the way. That night I advocated ice skating at Somerset house and around 9 o'clock we headed out. We walked for a half hour only to find it was totally sold out, until January 6th or so. So Mike, Grace and I went to a pub.

The next day was another busy one. We spent the morning at the Tower of London, which was pretty grisly. Lots of talk of executions, torture, and so on. But we did see the crown jewels which were pretty big, as you can imagine. But we weren't allowed to take photos, so you'll just have to go to the monarchy's website. The place was really crowded, since it was a holiday.

After the Tower Mike went for a run while we all went to St. Paul's Cathedral. Grace and I balked at the £8 entry fee and went to the free Tate Modern art museum instead. My mom, dad and sister paid their dues and really liked the cathedral. They walked 500 steps to the top of the enormous dome (second only to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome) for a nice view. After that they went shopping on Oxford street which sounds like a bit of a mistake. The place was completely packed with people since the January sales were in full swing and everyone was still on holiday. It was pretty claustrophobic and when Grace and I got done with the museum and went to Oxford Street ourselves we quickly left.

That evening my mom and dad and sister had tickets to go see Les Miserables at the Queen's Theatre. Mike, Grace and I had some Thai food and then decided, on a whim, to see if rush tickets were available for the show. We ended up getting standing room only seats for only £10. We did have to stand though, and the musical was probably three hours.

There's pictures of the london segment of the trip here.

So, on to Paris. We packed up for the trip the next morning. My mom wanted to get to the train station really early, but Grace and I negotiated us down to leaving for the station 90 minutes before the train left. Once we had left and were taking our luggage down the two stops on the tube we realized that we had been reading the wrong time on the tickets. It turned out we had 25 minutes till the train left, not 90 minutes.

Well, some panicked a bit. The tickets weren't exactly cheap around New Year's Eve. In classic fashion we ran through the terminal with our luggage, trying to make the train. My mom used the wrong ticket trying to get out of the tube and the exit machine kept reading "error." When she realized this and got the right ticket out, it blew out of her hand and she had to chase it down the station floor.

It was like Home Alone or something. We had seven minutes to catch our train when we cleared security. We were in car 16, which was a long way down the platform. So we ran again, the only people on the platform, everyone else sitting calmly in their seats with their books. We had to take our coats off to get through security and I forgot that I had put all the gift money from my grandparents in one of my pockets. As we were running the money wafted out into the air and my sister yelled out "Leave it!"

Well, we didn't leave the money and we made the train.

So, we arrived in Paris. Mike, Grace and I were sharing a small, cheap room in the Garden Hotel, while my parents and sister were sleeping in the lap of luxury at a fancy hotel near the Arc de Triomph. Our room was just that - a room, entirely taken up by two beds. A third bed for Mike had to be wheeled out from under one of the other two. There was just enough floor space for the three beds to exist along with our luggage. But the bathroom was pretty nice, although we were warned there was no hot water between 8:30 in the morning and 10:30 at night, due to the hotel being totally packed (one morning Mike got up early to take a shower only to find this was a lie! Ha ha ha!).

So the first night in Paris we had this great plan to go to the Louvre, since it was open late on Fridays. Unfortunately, half of Paris had the same idea and when we saw the line stretched around the courtyard we switched plans. Instead we walked along the Seine until we found a restaurant, which Grace and I had actually eaten at last time we were in Paris. It wasn't a great place then, but it was alright and it catered to tourists with it's bi-lingual menu. The notable thing about the restaurant is that it had Cheeseburgers, and Mike ordered one, and (ha ha ha!) it was tiny, like a meatball for a hamburger patty. The small size of the burger was not reflected in it's price.

After this meal we went to the Eiffel tower. Grace and I have been there before and we sort of hated it. Not the tower so much as the endless lines and steep price to go to the top. This time we paid 3 Euro to walk up the stairs to the first floor. Then, we went home and watched French Celebrity Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

The next morning we did go to the Louvre. It was raining, as it would continue to do all day. The line was much more manageable, probably since we got there early. It's a really big museum, the biggest in the world. We took Mike to see the major sights - Venus de Milo, Mona Lisa, Large Format French Paintings - just to get them out of the way. The rest of the time at the museum I really enjoyed. The crowds stayed close to the just mentioned major sights so the place was quiet everywhere else. We took in some more French paintings and some old Mesopotamian artifacts that Mike had learned about in his Art History class.

Following the Louvre we went to the Ile St. Louis, an island in the Seine, for lunch and ice cream. This place did not have bi-lingual menus and my family struggled a little bit. Many of us ordered the wrong kind of ice cream. It was pretty much the nadir of the trip.

So, after lunch we went to see Notre Dame, the big, free, Cathedral. We did pay to see the treasury room, where they keep bones of saints and the carrying case for the (maybe) actual crown of thorns. We weren't sure where the crown was, since everything was in French.

After Notre Dame we parted ways. Grace and I knew a Cambridge student from Paris pretty well, and Mike, Grace and I spent the rest of the day with him. It was so refreshing to be in the city with someone who knew the language and the city. He took us to the Latin Quarter, to small French streets, to the Sorbonne, to the Parthenon, and to many other place we would not have found without him. He humored us by accompanying us to the Champs Elysees and helping us order some crepes.

For dinner we went to a traditional French restaurant. I shared a three cheese fondue with him while Grace and Mike gathered around a pot of boiling oil to cook pieces of steak on little skewers. We had some white wine, which Grace and I thought was just wonderful. Our French companion was not so impressed, but he admitted he was a bit spoiled on wine, since his family had opened a 20 and a 30 year old wine for Christmas. I thought the three cheese fondue (which you dip pieces of stale bread in using skewers) was really, really good. It would be a mess to clean up the pot afterwards though.

The next day was New Year's Eve. Mike, Grace, Dad and I met at the Catacombs early in the morning. The catacombs was the one thing I really wanted to check out in Paris. It's an extensive underground network. It was originally a quarry I think, but has been used for clandestine meetings by anyone operating under official radar. The French resistance used it, and recently the police uncovered a secret movie theater being run by an arts group. It's also famous because it holds millions of bones. There was a cemetary in Paris back in the 1800s that seemed to be causing lots of disease problems so they had all the bodies disinterred and moved into the catacombs. Now the bones are stacked in perfectly symmetrical patterns along long hallways. The place is a labryinth of caverns and tunnels far below Paris. It's illegal to enter it except on the tour part, which is what we did.

When we arrived, we saw a sign warning that children and people of a nervous disposition might be upset by the Catacombs. We payed our admission charge and walked some 100+ steps down a spiral stone staircase deeper than the metro and into the guts of Paris. The beginning part was all dank, short stone tunnels that were dimly lit. I had to stoop most of the way.

Eventually we came into a big room with a bunch of placards about the French Rebellion and the bodies down in the catacombs. There was an old warning over the doorway into the next section, called the Ossuary, which read, "Beware; you are entering the empire of the dead."

It was in here that the hallways were lined five or six feet deep, with endless bones. The bones were arranged like bricks, perfectly symmetrical with the skulls forming a long horizontal line a few feet off the ground. The first skull I saw gave me pause - I think that's probably the first time I've seen a real human bone, unpolished, unprotected. But the effect quickly wears off since you're literally surrounded by bones. Grace didn't wait around and quickly walked to the end of the tour. I waited for Dad to catch up, which took 15 minutes then went to find them. Because we delayed then seperated, both Dad and I were pretty much alone except briefly for the whole 15 minutes of quickly walking through endless halls of bone. There were a lot of placards with french poetry and apparently it's pretty grim stuff if you can read it. There were also small monuments among the bones, and sections were the bones were arranged in new patterns, like crosses.

Eventually I left the ossuary and caught up with Grace and Mike up 83 stairs and outside the Catacombs.

While we were at the Catacombs my mom and sister had gone up to Sacre Couer Basilica, which I think they probably enjoyed more than they would have the Catacombs.

After the Catacombs we took it easy at my parents swank hotel while Mike ran and then went out again in the late afternoon to get some Berthillion Ice Cream (best ice cream I've ever had) and do some shopping. My parents went to the Musee D'Orsay, which is full of impressionist paintings. Our shopping/ice cream expedition was hampered by lack of time, intermittent rain and the fact that it was late Sunday on New Year's Eve so most shops were closed. Still, Mike found a hat he liked at an open air booth and Grace and I got some ice cream. We were also part of a big crowd watching a street performer. He had pulled some people out of the audience and was directing them through a movie scene that involved someone with a gun, someone in love with someone else and a lot of French dialogue.

For dinner we had room service. This was because most restaurants were both booked and extremely expensive for New Year's Eve ($100 per person was the cheapest we could find). Now that I've been to Paris on New Year's Eve I think we would have been able to grab a cheap bite at a cafe (as opposed to a restaurant), but at the time we didn't know what else to do. Anyway, Grace and I bought some French wine, and we thought it was alright (we brought a champagne and two reds back to Cambridge and the first red was really good).

There had been a lot of debate about what to do for New Year's Eve night. We knew there would be tons of people on the Champs Elysees to watch the fireworks but we had also heard that, 1) they were a really rowdy group, 2) they were not actually Parisiens but just tourists, and 3) there actually weren't any fireworks at all. My parents were not interested in going out into the mess because of the potential for rowdiness. Grace was tired of crowds. I wasn't crazy about being with a bunch of tourists. My brother was worried about how we would get home, since we lived far away and he had to run the next day.

Anyway, we decided to go to a performance of Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" and Mozart's "Requiem." It was in an enormous church/cathedral. I had never been to a classical music concert like this before. People were extremely respectful, holding their coughs and shifting until the breaks between movements. It was pretty long though, and my family got pretty tired of it, so we got out of there pretty quickly when it ended.

Outside we were greeted with pouring rain. That sort of clinched it and we went back to our hotel, since it was already 11. Personally I kind of like being part of a big crowd and would have liked to stay out, but I think I was the only one in the group of that mindset, so we had a pretty tame New Years. Ah well.

Pictures of the Paris leg of our trip are here.

The next day was devoted to travel to Cambridge. We arrived at the train station very early this time and had a pretty straightforward trip home. Grace and I were really excited to get to our home. At Cambridge the plan was to take it easy and recover from the sight seeing expeditions we had earlier embraced. We stuck with the plan, taking in a pint at "The Eagle," an old (1500s) pub where Watson and Crick announced they had discovered DNA. We had a long dinner at a local restaurant and Mike, Hannah, Grace and I stayed up watching YouTube junk at my place.

The next and final day my parents came over for breakfast and to see my place. We took them for a nice long walk into town. The sun was shining and the weather was really mild for January. We all got some hot chocolate and the plan was to take a relaxing punt down the river cam.

Good God, what a mistake. Where to start?

First off, in case you don't know, punting is where you take a long, flat, narrow boat down the barely moving river Cam. The boat is propelled by someone standing on the back of the boat and pushing off the ground of the river with a long pole, like the gondoliers in Venice. The plan was I was going to be the punter, pushing us off the river bed and Grace would be in the front with the emergency oar which is used when you're going to crash into things.

Now, this is a pretty sedate activity. It's hard to achieve anything approaching walking speed on these boats. But it's much harder than it looks to get the boat to go where you want. To go left, you either push off the left side of the boat (so the back goes right, due to Newton's third law, and the front goes left), or you try to use the pole as a rudder and drag it on the left side of the boat. It's really hard to just go straight. And you're standing on a flat boat all the while, trying not to fall into the water. But like I said, you're going really, really slow, so if you crash into things, you just sort of bump into it. And there's a bunch of bridges too.

So, I've done this before and I thought I had the hang of it. I wasn't a pro, but I could get the boat to go where I wanted with a little work and some zig zagging. Of course, my family had never experienced the usual, even worse, style of punting, and so all four were yelling advice immediately about where to put the pole, warning me that I was going to hit that wall, that I wasn't pointed in the right direction, that I was about to fall into the water, etc.

And then, right after the second bridge the pole got stuck in deep mud and I had to let go or fall off the boat. We kept up our momentum and drifted away from the pole. Grace paddled us back, but by then the family had lost all faith in my abilities to command the punt and the backseat driving ramped up to a fever pitch. And it started to rain. We had been out 10 minutes when my mom started asking if we should just go back (normally it takes a little over an hour to see the best of Cambridge from the river).

There was intermittent light rain and the relaxing punt on the river with hot cocoa became an ordeal to get through, not enjoy. The boat didn't seem nearly as easy to steer as it had a few months ago. We drove into walls, into branches and had to be paddled out of a lot of situations. It didn't help that I didn't really know anything about any of the colleges, including their names in most cases, so the informative aspect of learning about Cambridge was pretty much non-existent. We made it just as far as I felt we had to, to the Bridge of Sighs (which is famous for some reason, but I don't know why), and then tried to turn around.

Here we encountered a delightful new problem. There was a slight wind at our back while we were heading down the river. Now it was in my face, and it seemed that when it was forced through the opening between the surface of the water and the bottom of the bridge it followed principles of aerodynamics and sped way up. We could see the surface of the water change under the bridge and suddenly the wind howled past my ear. We literally could not make it through the bridge. Everytime I tried to push us through the wind forced the front of the boat to turn sharply left or right until we were sideways under the bridge. As I said, it's really hard to go straight on a punt - normally I have to zig-zag my way to a location. But with the wind, any turn was amplified and the boat turned 90 degrees, where no forward motion was possible. It also didn't help that I'm really tall and acted sort of like a sail.

We went at it three times, each time ending up sideways before making it under the bridge. Eventually we backed up, straightened out and, with a combination of paddling and grabbing the bottom of the bridge, we made it through. Of course, by then there was no confidence in my captaincy. I gladly handed over the duties of punting to Mike and was delighted to see him subjected to the torrent of suggestions, warnings and panicked cries. After he failed to make much more than 15 feet of progress in 10 minutes, he sat down and let Dad have a shot. Mom was certain Dad would fall into the water and could barely watch him as he stood on the back of the boat.

Dad did better, but it quickly became clear I really did know sort of what I was doing. So, in the interest of getting off the river, I took over the punt and we hurried back to the dock. The backseat driving finally stopped.

We made it back without any more major incidents, though I almost lost the pole in the deep mud again. As we piled out of the boat we saw some tourists heading out, with both passengers standing, one with the pole and the other with the emergency oar. I doubt they fared well.

We had the punt renter take a picture of all six of us, the only picture with everyone in it. Mike ruined the picture by blinking.

The remaining few hours of the day we had some lunch and split to go shopping. Shortly afterwards everyone left and I was sad.

Grace and I tried to see a movie, but everything in the theaters was terrible so we went home.