discovery tour, day 7
Jun. 23rd, 2004 08:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kirkcudbrightMay 7 - Birmingham to Oxford
Non-riding day. The schedule calls for us to drive to Oxford, do a couple interviews at the hotel, drive to Egham (just outside London, near Heathrow), tour the Otto Bock UK headquarters, and drive back to Oxford, so we can bike back to Egham tomorrow. The reasons for the nutty itinerary are 1) it's Friday, so we can't do the site visit tomorrow, because no one will be in the office; and 2) the Oxford hotel is already paid for, and Otto Bock would rather have us drive all over creation than eat the cost of the hotel rooms.
Dan had me up at 5:30 because he thought we were loading luggage at 6:15. It was really 6:45, and Brad wasn't up until 7:00. In Oxford, I cleaned the worst of the Sherwood mud off the bikes while the boys were being interviewed, so they wouldn't look too bad for the photo session.
I did all the driving today to save Neil. He was in pretty rough shape after the hour and a half it took us to get through the Birmingham accident traffic yesterday, on top of all the driving he's been doing over the last week. So picture this: I'm driving a 15-passenger van, with 6 people, 6 bikes, crap up to the ceiling. I'm driving on the left side of the road for the first time in 9 years, the clutch is starting to go, and I'm for sure not on the insurance. You're damn right I drove carefully.
After the interviews, we drove into Oxford city center to get maps for the next day, and a new phone for the van. I dropped Emily and Dan, and tried to drive around the block. It's a mess of one-way streets that take you further and further from the city center. I ended up driving all the way out of town, looping back to the A-something, and following the GPS track-log back into town. We would have been totally screwed without the GPS.
From Egham, we followed Shep (an Otto Bock sales rep) back to Oxford. But Shep spends so much of his time driving that he occasionally forgets where he is. He thought we'd missed the exit for the A34, so he apologetically phoned the van, and doubled back. When he realized his mistake at the next exit, he didn't double back again, but led us a loop through Reading, back to the exit we'd first got off on. He also didn't bother phoning the van, as he figured that we figured what had happened.
The reason Shep was distracted in the first place is that he and Dan were talking about what this trip should have been, and planning out next year's trip. To start with, the UK office not only didn't have any input into the UK portion of this trip, they didn't even know about it until the riders were already in Glasgow. There should have been more media — last summer, Karen (who's in charge of this trip) organized at least one interview almost every day; dunno why she dropped the ball this time. Shep wanted to have the UK Amputee Cycling team ride with us, but they couldn't meet us on such short notice. He also would have skipped places like Worksop and Oxford, which aren't important markets, and would have sent us through Leeds. Etc. We'll see if there's a next year. Maybe under different auspices.
Before dinner, we took the bikes over to the self-serve car wash next door, and hosed off the remains of the Sherwood Forest.
After dinner, Dan and I went into Oxford with Shep. Dan's wife spent a year here in college, and may be going back next year for graduate work. Shep also has some sentimental attachment to the place. The hotel was out on the ring road, but there's a bus that runs from there into town. We asked a charter coach driver where the stop was for the shuttle, and he offered us a ride instead, so we got a plush ride, with no waiting, and free to boot.
We didn't get into the campus much, but wandered around the old town, until we found a suitably ancient pub. Shakespeare threw up here.
By national law, pubs close at 11pm. This means that the younger patrons tend to drink as much as possible in the last half hour. It also means the streets are pretty wild at 11:15, and the police start sweeping around 11:30.
Non-riding day. The schedule calls for us to drive to Oxford, do a couple interviews at the hotel, drive to Egham (just outside London, near Heathrow), tour the Otto Bock UK headquarters, and drive back to Oxford, so we can bike back to Egham tomorrow. The reasons for the nutty itinerary are 1) it's Friday, so we can't do the site visit tomorrow, because no one will be in the office; and 2) the Oxford hotel is already paid for, and Otto Bock would rather have us drive all over creation than eat the cost of the hotel rooms.
Dan had me up at 5:30 because he thought we were loading luggage at 6:15. It was really 6:45, and Brad wasn't up until 7:00. In Oxford, I cleaned the worst of the Sherwood mud off the bikes while the boys were being interviewed, so they wouldn't look too bad for the photo session.
I did all the driving today to save Neil. He was in pretty rough shape after the hour and a half it took us to get through the Birmingham accident traffic yesterday, on top of all the driving he's been doing over the last week. So picture this: I'm driving a 15-passenger van, with 6 people, 6 bikes, crap up to the ceiling. I'm driving on the left side of the road for the first time in 9 years, the clutch is starting to go, and I'm for sure not on the insurance. You're damn right I drove carefully.
After the interviews, we drove into Oxford city center to get maps for the next day, and a new phone for the van. I dropped Emily and Dan, and tried to drive around the block. It's a mess of one-way streets that take you further and further from the city center. I ended up driving all the way out of town, looping back to the A-something, and following the GPS track-log back into town. We would have been totally screwed without the GPS.
From Egham, we followed Shep (an Otto Bock sales rep) back to Oxford. But Shep spends so much of his time driving that he occasionally forgets where he is. He thought we'd missed the exit for the A34, so he apologetically phoned the van, and doubled back. When he realized his mistake at the next exit, he didn't double back again, but led us a loop through Reading, back to the exit we'd first got off on. He also didn't bother phoning the van, as he figured that we figured what had happened.
The reason Shep was distracted in the first place is that he and Dan were talking about what this trip should have been, and planning out next year's trip. To start with, the UK office not only didn't have any input into the UK portion of this trip, they didn't even know about it until the riders were already in Glasgow. There should have been more media — last summer, Karen (who's in charge of this trip) organized at least one interview almost every day; dunno why she dropped the ball this time. Shep wanted to have the UK Amputee Cycling team ride with us, but they couldn't meet us on such short notice. He also would have skipped places like Worksop and Oxford, which aren't important markets, and would have sent us through Leeds. Etc. We'll see if there's a next year. Maybe under different auspices.
Before dinner, we took the bikes over to the self-serve car wash next door, and hosed off the remains of the Sherwood Forest.
After dinner, Dan and I went into Oxford with Shep. Dan's wife spent a year here in college, and may be going back next year for graduate work. Shep also has some sentimental attachment to the place. The hotel was out on the ring road, but there's a bus that runs from there into town. We asked a charter coach driver where the stop was for the shuttle, and he offered us a ride instead, so we got a plush ride, with no waiting, and free to boot.
We didn't get into the campus much, but wandered around the old town, until we found a suitably ancient pub. Shakespeare threw up here.
By national law, pubs close at 11pm. This means that the younger patrons tend to drink as much as possible in the last half hour. It also means the streets are pretty wild at 11:15, and the police start sweeping around 11:30.
