Tour de Where?

Somehow in all the hubbub of the Olympics (beginning Friday!), Wimbledon, and MCR events, I completely failed to recognise that the Tour de France had begun. In fact, I was quite surprised to walk into the MCR TV room yesterday afternoon to find that not only were the cyclists in the last 20 km of the race, but Wiggins was about to be the first Briton to ever take home the yellow jersey. Somehow I was here only a few hundred miles away and I missed almost the entire race.

Oh well. Maybe next year I will actually go. Wouldn't that be fun? In the mean time, the weather last week took a turn for the better, like the way a nasty chest cold tends to break up, leaving you periodically hacking up globs of stale phlegm. Yes, as the week progressed, the rain slowly disappeared, becoming infrequent 10-minute stints of dripping before vanishing completely. By Saturday, even the clouds vaporised and I am happy to report our third consecutive day of sunshine! Today, the temperature has even surpassed 20C/70F for the first time in a few weeks; it's positively balmy!

Thus, after spending last week under the throes of writing (aside: I realised that while I can hash out 3500 words of blogging in a mere 4 hours, my academic composition rate is much slower: a tragic 700 words per 6 hours. Sigh.), I decided to undertake my own athletic competition over the weekend. It was an Oxford triathlon of sorts: Croquet, Cricket, and Punting. For the first leg, one of the former MCR presidents proposed a bit of a croquet match after Saturday morning MCR brunch. Since I had never played before (well, we had a backyard set when I was young.. I'm not counting that), I was exceedingly keen. Thankfully, Roos, Jorien, and Gareth (all committee members) were interested in learning to play as well, so Rick (the 09-10 President) gave us a couple lessons. Then we played two matches and started a third. Five hours later (croquet is quite a drawn out game!), we called it an afternoon and dispersed to get ready for the farewell party of our good friend and my next door neighbor, Neomal. Believe it or not, the days activities had been quite exhausting and I slept very soundly that evening.

Continuing the triathlon, last night after MCR tea and cakes, we continued our now weekly cricket match in the University Parks. With the beautiful weather, our match drew an unprecedented number of participants, topping off at 8 or 9 people. At this rate of increase, we may be able to play a real game in a couple weeks! Unfortunately, we've only been playing with a tennis ball, but I am looking forward to playing at the Keble Sports Ground when it dries up (hopefully this week!) and actually using a real cricket ball!

After two hours of exertion, we changed our pace and headed directly to the Cherwell boathouse to go for a punt ride. As the rain has died down, the water has also slowed a bit, and I found it much easier to punt this time than last. Our route took us upstream from the boathouse to the Victoria Arms pub, where the male cricketers (Liam (my housemate), Drew (a visiting student from Wisconsin), and I) gorged ourselves on the Sunday night pie special. I chose the beef and stilton under delicious puff pastry with mash and fresh veg. Ok, I love stilton. If you like blue cheese, you have to try it. It is quite sharp and fairly crumbly, but is absolutely delicious on crackers or baked into dishes. As we watched the sun go down over the countryside opposite the river from the pub, we finally realized that it was time to punt back to the boathouse. It was another exhausting day, but capped a great weekend of outdoor activity. Here's to summer!

CULTURE CORNER
Spectator sport. Oxford has become overrun with tourists and conferences since the end of term. As I may have mentioned already, you can easily tell because the mean age has dropped by about five years, and the pedestrians are all clumped in groups of 15-25. They're a menace to society, seriously. Ok, not that serious... but close. Anyway, tourists in Oxford love Oxonian things and what can be more Oxonian than *REAL* Oxford students playing croquet on the lawn of a 150 year old college? The tourists and conference guests in Keble lapped it up like a thirsty dog with a bowl of water. I began to think that we should have been in uniforms or sub fusc, but surely the spectators would have then demanded stadium seating. It was ridiculous (/hilarious). Well, perhaps next time we will take some signs to erect. I'm taking votes:

"PHOTOS OF CROQUET PLAYERS: 50p (WITH PLAYERS: 1 GBP)"

"QUIET PLEASE. NO FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY"

"WARNING: CROQUET PLAYERS MAY BITE. AVOID SUDDEN MOVEMENTS"

"PLEASE DON'T FEED THE CROQUET PLAYERS"

Word of the Day
Sport. n. A game or activity, usually physical or athletic in nature. Usually used in the singular rather than in the plural. ex. "Do you play any sport?" "Of course, I am an officer of Oxford University Sport." "Oh great, I am keen for some sport myself."