Monday, June 1, 2009

Weekend Wrap-Up

I had a good and interesting weekend. After lighting the grill tray on fire on Friday night, I had a relatively calm Saturday while Nick went mountain biking with Adrian in the morning. I did my weekend studying then, and then, when they got back around 3 in the afternoon, we all went on a punting adventure. Adrian went to Cambridge for two years back when he was an undergrad, but apparently never punted. So we let him do it for a bit after we navigated through some of the crowds (lots of people were cranky about the river being so crowded). He did fine, happily zig-zagging back and forth.

Geese

The crowds

Adrian punting

Duck

At one point I told Nick to take a photo of me and his response was "I can't from here, you wouldn't fit. I'd need to switch to a wide-angle lens to fit you in." Ouch.

Requires a wide-angle lens

We had dinner at the Thai food restaurant across the street from my house, and went to bed early because we had to get up early to go to the Peak District the next day.

When we woke up, my bathroom door said this:

The locusts came

I opened the door trepidatiously.

Getting ready for the attack

Luckily, whatever infestation there had been the night before (I had heard some squawking from the hallway outside the bathroom the night before) seemed to have died out. There were a bunch of carcasses on the windowsill and the sink, and in the shower, but there didn't seem to be anything alive. Phew.

So we got ready to go up to the Peak District, and met up with the three other CUMCers who were going to ride in our car with us. The ride up was uneventful (all four of us besides Nick slept the whole way), and then we did some good climbing when we got up there.

Nick did some good leading, and I followed more-or-less competently (although at one point I had to hang to attack a nut). I also led a VS and an HS without too much drama -- and then failed to lead an HS. Barely got off the ground on that one -- true jamming required.

Fiona-from-OUMC showed up to climb with us in the afternoon, since she lives near the Peak District now, and I put her on photo duty. I also made a panorama and took pictures of the many sheep and lambs around.

Nika leading

Nika leading

Lambies

Peak District Panorama

Nika leading

We had dinner at a nearby pub, and drove back late to Cambridge. The backs of my legs were wicked sunburned (they still hurt) -- but don't tell Krissy.

Oh, and speaking of burned, it turns out the grass we used as a fire extinguisher on Friday night didn't survive quite as well as we initially thought. The shape of the grill tray seems to be traced into our lawn, now.

Fire-extinguishing grass

Next exam: International Intellectual Property, tomorrow afternoon. Stay tuned!