It's Sunday afternoon in Oxford, and I'm finally getting a chance to sit around and relax for a while. Friday was mostly occupied with writing my paper for Dr. Archer's class (It was about changing contemporary perceptions of social order in 17th century England. Sounds thrilling, doesn't it?). After emailing my completed essay I watched Grizzly Man, which is the funniest movie about a guy getting eaten by bears ever made, ate a kebap from the van down the street then went to bed. Saturday was spent shopping. Sort of.
I don't know if it's just the fact that I went at a particularly busy time, but it seems the English don't really go shopping so much as they go pillaging. The retail experience seems to go to their heads somewhat. Every store I went into was an absolute madhouse with merchandise literally flying through the air and harried looking sales clerks dashing about. The funniest part to me was the queues for the dressing rooms and registers. Amidst the chaos, an absurdly long queue would snake through the store with everyone in it smiling calmly and quietly facing the same direction. I just happened to poke my head into most of the stores and I didn't end up buying anything. What I was really looking for was a bike.
Despite what I said about not getting a bike earlier, I've bought one. Honestly I just got tired of making the 20 minute trudge to and from meals while watching the my cycle-owning housemates whiz past then recede rapidly into the distance. I've rationalized that it will save me more than an hour a day on meal commuting alone. Once I decided to get one, I called on probably every cycle shop in Oxford, no mean feat considering I had to walk to all of them. What I was really looking for was a used, cool vintage road bike. Unfortunately, nobody had any of those, even the exceedingly sketchy store that I went to. This place was back in an alley in Jerico (a neighborhood NE of the city) and had a huge assortment of "used" bikes that I'm fairly confident were chained up outside their rightful owners house the night before. A sizable percentage of them were missing a wheel or still had a chain lock on them! The gentleman working there, who either had the most facial piercings I've ever seen or was the victim of a multitude of extremely unfortunate fishing accidents, politely informed me that he didn't have quite what I was looking for, but if I checked back tomorrow he'd see what he could do. I nodded, smiled, and backed up out the door.
I settled for a blue utility bike from the 4th place I went to. Several other people from the house have the same model, and they seem to work OK. It cost £100, but the store garunteed to buy it back at the end of the term for £50. The ride home by itself confirmed the value of my purchase, considering it took 10 minutes while the walk there took at least 40. The distance was paticularly irritating since I had to walk there yesterday, order the bike, walk home, then walk back today to pick up my assembled steed. But I've got it now, and that's the important thing.
The other important thing I did Saturday was sample a little bit of the local nightlife, in the form of a dance club called the Purple Turtle. Oh yes, the Purple Turtle. It may sound questionable (and it is...), but its popular with students and there's no cover charge. It was certainly an interesting experience. I don't know if it was 80s night or if the whole country is a few decades behind the States musically but the music made for some memorable moments, such as every American in the place belting out "Don't Stop Belivein'" along with Journey and later dancing the Macarena. I know, I know...but everybody else was doing it and to be fair my decision making was somewhat compromised at the time. Actually, I think the English patrons were impressed by the quality of the Americans' Macarena-ing.
I watched the UGA game after getting back from downtown. What a bummer. Oh well, at least Florida and USC lost too. And to weaker teams. Anyway, it's now time to ride my new bike to dinner. Away I go!
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