Looking Right Then Left

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

White Horse Photo

You can just barely make out part of the white horse at the top of the photo.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

I was thinking about camping out Friday night for Saturday Wimbledon tickets, but the forecast was rain Friday night and all day Saturday. I should know better than to change my plans for forecasts. Saturday turned out to be sunny and gorgeous. All was not lost because I got to take a nice little bike ride. Clara and I rode to the White Horse Hill about 22 miles away from Oxford. It has a doozie of a climb at the end of the route.

The hill is very chalky, so long ago people would dig ditches and make chalk pictures. The National Trust now keeps some of these preserved. The Uffington White Horse is one of the largest, but there are many of these hill figures across the English Countryside. Clara (the geologist) tried to tell me something about the hills, but I just heard "blah blah blah strike and dip blah blah blah." Some people need to learn how to not talk about technical stuff when others clearly aren't following and aren't interested. [edit: (sarcasm)]

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Pembrokeshire

I've failed to update for a while, so to appease the family I'll link to lots of photos this time. Over the weekend I went with some friends to the Pembrokeshire Coast in Wales. My walking trip to Wales made me think pretty highly of the region. After this trip I think it's fair to say I'm officially in love with Wales. We stayed at a youth hostel right on the coast in a little town called Broad Haven, giving us great access to the beach and the coastal walking path. I even took a dip in the ocean and didn't get hypothermia. More photos of the adventures are available here .

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Lazy Weekend

In order to finally kill the rumor that I'm just lounging around in England, I planned a busy weekend. Saturday and Sunday in Oxford were gorgeous - sunny and ~70 degrees (in American units), so I soaked up about 14 hours of sun thanks to a picnic, punting, tennis, and an ultimate (frisbee) tournament.

Punting is a silly tradition wherein people pile in long flat boats as one poor guy has to propel the boat in the most inefficient possible manner. It's usually fun because people have pretty poor control over their boats ("punts"), leading to amusing situations. Unfortunately I was so good at guiding our punt that my friends just got bored.

After a disappointing second place finish in the spring league, the ChUniv ultimate team showed up to the "Cuppers" tournament ready for redemption. The tourney was on small pitches with just 5 on a side, or, in the case of ChUniv, 4 on a side until the others finally showed up. It was an exhausting day of 7 games. We were just too knackered by the semifinals to keep up with the slightly more organized, uniformed, practiced teams. At least I connected on my first successful hammer to the end zone.

Our Motley Crew

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Wake up, frosh!

It's ditch day! Well it's not ditch day for me, but it is for the folks at Tech. If you want to share in the fun, you can try to crack this puzzle, which is part of my friend Matt Grau's stack.

Obtain the 8 digit decimal number from the following:

000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000010010010010010010010010010101010000
000001001101101101001101101101001010100000
000010011011010010001001000000010100000000
000100010000000000010000000000100000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000001010101101000000000000000
000000000000000110001000010000000000000000
000000000000000000010000100000000000000000
000000000000000000100000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000010101011101000000000000000000000
000000001100010000010000000000000000000000
000000001000100000100000000000000000000000
000000000001000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000101001011101000000000000000000000000000
011000110000010000000000000000000000000000
110000000000100000000000000000000000000001
100000000001000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000101
010111101000000000000000000000000000010000
100000010000000000000000000000000000100001
000000100000000000000000000000000000000010
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000010100101110101
101000000000000000000000011000010000001000
010000000000000000000000000000000000010000
100000000000000000000000000000000000100000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000010100101101011101000
000000000000000000001100010000010000010000
000000000000000000011000000000100000100000
000000000000000000000000000001000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000001010010110010111101011101000000000
011111100001000001100000010000010000000000
011010000000000000000000100000100000000000
100000000000000000000001000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000001010111100
101100101110010111010110010000000100000011
000011000001100000100001100000001000000010
000000000001000001000011000000010000000100
000000000010000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000

Ditch Day Photos

Monday, May 25, 2009

Rectory Farms

On Saturday Melis and I rode our bikes to Rectory Farms, a self-pick farm about 5 miles outside of Oxford. Asparagus and strawberries were in season. The rest is better told with pictures.