As I leave Tom's Oxford house for our (hopefully) amazing home in London, I thought it would be a great time to write about the experience at 188 Howard St. Now first of all, the stay was free, so I shouldn't have expected much, but it was still a rough couple of days. It's a classic, old English house, with 7 current and former Oxford rowers in it who were all very welcoming and funny, and seemed like great guys. But the house was what you'd expect from 7 college students and recent alums, not unlike Lynnwood. The dust and mold that covered everything really messed with my allergies, especially in the room I was sleeping in (which happened to be the room of a GB national team guy who just a couple of weeks ago claimed third in the world championships in the pair, only 12 seconds off Murray/Bond - so maybe the dirt improves you're rowing?) and limited my sleep to only a couple hours a night.
In the back yard, they have a coop with 6 new chickens (names still being decided - leading suggestions include Zeus, Salvatore, Mr T, and Princess) that they take care of. Now these were new chickens because just days before I arrived, there was a massacre when a stray fox snuck in through an open gate and ate 5 chickens, while (we continue to believe) that one escaped to safety. Feathers still covered the yard when I arrived. RIP chickens.
The house is several hours away from London, Henley, and Wimbledon, but Kevin and I learned how to use trains, buses, and the tube to get from place to place. We are no doubt still learning and making mistakes, as we got on the wrong train from Henley on Thursday, which added 3 hours to the return trip, and planned a route to Wimbledon on a bus that apparently didn't exist, but we improvised our way along and eventually made it everywhere we needed to go.
We took walked down Cowley Road in Oxford this morning, through the Cowley St Carnival, which seemed almost like a send off parade as we walked down the main stretch of Oxford for one final time before boarding the bus out. London here we come!
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