"All Good Things..."

All good things must come to an end.  I am, of course, referring to my mustache, which met its maker last Wednesday.  May it rest in peace.

In other news, Katie and I had a very eventful week.  Let’s start off with the most recent stuff, and work backwards - I’m just trying to make this as confusing as possible for you, our dear readers (all two of you).  This weekend, we decided to go on a bike trip to Hunstanton, which is on the northeast coast of England.  We had originally planned to go with another group last weekend, but we bailed out for some reason - I think the weather was looking sketchy.  But we went this weekend, and it was grand.  Katie and I rented bikes on Friday night, and took a little ride around Cambridge.  It was a revelation!  I can’t believe we’ve survived so long without having bikes; we got to see some things we never would have otherwise.  Cambridge is actually a very bike-friendly city, so it’s quite easy to commute this way.  That evening, though, we biked out west of the river Cam and visited a few of the more out-of-the-way colleges, like Newham college and B… B something.  Bismark?  Bloomberg?  Bulldozer.  Blast, I forgot.  Anyhow, it was lovely, and started with a B.  Or maybe R.  We’ve really enjoyed going to some of the smaller, periphery colleges in Cambridge.  They’re much less crowded, especially in the Summer.  Most people who visit Cambridge of course want to go visit St. Johns, or Trinity, or King’s, so they’re usually accosted with visitors during the daytime, but the further out colleges are more peaceful.  Lots of them have beautiful gardens, orchards, and even fruit trees.  

So we biked around those colleges, and followed the river up for a few miles before heading back home.  It’s just hard to put into words what a great city Cambridge is.  It’s one of the intellectual capitals of the world, but it still feels like a small, friendly town.  We’d love to come back here to study if we can - our program(me) actually held a workshop last week for those of us interested in returning for graduate work.  We’ll see what the future brings.  

Back to the bike trip, Katie and I - along with two other students - woke up early on Saturday and took a train to King’s Lynn, which is about 16 miles from the coast and Hunstanton, our destination.  Our route took us mostly through rolling hills and farm fields.  Strangely, we saw a lot of flattened hedgehogs along the road as well…  One of our party blew a tube along the way, but we were able to get it patched up and our journey proceeded without event.  After a few hours we rolled into Hunstanton, which is a beautifully quaint village on the beach.  And it’s quite an interesting beach - it’s extremely flat.  When we showed up, the water was probably a quarter mile off the embankment that separated the beach from the road, and by the time we left, the tide had come up all the way to that barrier.  So we frolicked in the water for a while, ate some delicious cinnamon-sugar donuts on the shore, and went to get fish and chips for lunch.  We rode back that night and took the train from Kings Lynn back to Cambridge.  Along the way, we stopped to get kebabs from a great little mediterranean place.  Predictably, I dropped mine while riding my bike and proceeded to run over it.

Today was another adventure for me.  My military intelligence class had a field trip to Bletchley Park, the secret British installation that was in charge of codebreaking during WWII.  We saw some pretty amazing stuff, most of which I didn’t begin to understand.  They had some working enigma machines and some hugely complex computers dedicated to breaking German encryptions.  It was very impressive.  

Oh, good news!  After resigning ourselves to the fact that we’d probably have to live in a cardboard box upon our return to Provo, we noticed one of the apartments in our old house up for rent on craigslist.  We called our old landlady up and got the place!  It worked out pretty nicely, and we’ll go back to living in another cozy little studio.  We’re thinking of buying a Japanese roll-up sleeping mat this time.  Small spaces are fun!

Well, we love you guys.  Enjoy some pictures!

Drinks on the lawn before a formal hall

The view from a window in King's Library

Getting rid of the mustache made me look younger:

Before 

After

Sneaking in the gate of Newham College

Katie,  thinking grassy thoughts.

I'd like a sign like this to use when I get back to the MTC.

England just has a thing for incredibly ironic signs. 

Getting started from Kings Lynn

"Shouldn't there be an app for this?"

Cruising into Hunstanton

These are the cliffs.  You can see how far out the tide is.

Jordan's feet are getting dirty.

Jordan, hiding his lack of mustache.

Walking on water

The water was surprisingly warm.

It's a clam-field!

Mossy rocks

Add caption

Ah, but where is the home of home cooked homes?

On top of the cliffs

Jordan, enjoying a profound slumber.

Katie has gotten pretty good at arm's-length-self-portraits.

Space, the final frontier.

And this is how far the tide came in.