Castle 2010
This time, my master’s degree was
completely finished. My coursework was done, my thesis had been defended and
submitted to the university; the only I needed to do was show up for
graduation. Brian, on the other hand, was in his first semester of his master’s
coursework. His professors told him that it was better to go to class, but he
was a big boy and he could go if he wanted. I had a presentation by myself and
Brian and I were slated to make a presentation together.
We had a little more time and the dollar was slightly
stronger (1:1.75). Brian and I decided that we would do a little bit of touring
in advance of the conference. We flew to Detroit-Ft. Wayne and then to London.
Our recovery day in London was spent in a hotel that used to be a bank in
Edwardian times. It was in Cheapside. Jane Austen fans will recall that
Cheapside is where Elizabeth Bennett’s Uncle and Aunt Gardiner live.
Elizabeth’s sister Jane goes to stay with them so she can stay in the vicinity
of her love, Mr. Bingley, who is in a more fashionable part of London with his
sisters and friend Mr. Darcy. The next day we got on a bus and took a tour that
went to central England and eastern Wales. As part of the tour we went to the
birthplace of William Shakespeare and his eventual home in Stratford-Upon-Avon,
Stonehenge, the Cotswold Villages, Oxford, and Bath. Jane Austen fans will
recall that Bath is where all the fashionable people went in her novels to flee
the hustle and bustle of London. Jane Austen herself lived and wrote in Bath
for several years.
When we returned from our trip around England we headed for
the high-speed train that took us through the Chunnel to Paris. In Paris, we
stayed in Le Defense, which is the modern downtown. The older downtown was
about a mile to the East. We walked up and down the Champs Elyses, through the
Louvre, up and down the steps of the Eifel Tower (this took over an hour and
presented considerable physical challenge—Brian was bleeding by the time we got
to the top from a cut sustained while climbing), the Champs du Mars, Notre Dame
Cathedral, the former site of Bastille Prison, the Galleries de Lafayette, and
Napoleon’s tomb.
When we returned from France, we went to the Castle
conference. We were afforded a day to go to Brighton again. The weather was
more accommodating this time and we ate fish and chips on the beach and strode
through the amusements. I was also able to find some running trails and so I
ran from outside a little town called Bexhill to a Battle, where the Battle of
Hastings was fought. The town of Hastings is a few miles further away.
After the conference, we returned to London and stayed by
the Tower of London so we could visit it. We were told that we needed to have a
whole day or most of one to go through it properly. This was good advice. We
had the time to wait in line to see the crown jewels and to go in every
passageway and look through every turret. I thought it was magnificent.
We flew home via Minneapolis. We arrived extra early to
avoid stress and checked in. We read magazines and watched the planes land
while waiting for our flight. When it was time to board, we went to our seats
to find people in them. These people were Brian and Marcy Rice. They checked in
after us and the airline only recognizes the first three letters and the last name
of a person—so both couples were BRI and MAR Rice. The computer recognized their
attempt to check in as a reprint and gave them our seats. My husband is a very
calm, very kind man who is very slow to anger, but in that moment when we were
told that we would have to wait several hours for the next flight, he was
enraged. I have never seen such a spectacle of anger in all my life. The
airline miraculously found seats for us that were in different parts of the
plane. I was just happy just to get on the flight, but Brian was still
seething. The person assigned to sit next to him went and found me and offered his
seat to me. That man did not want to be in the path of a grizzly, I suppose. By
the time we landed Brian’s blood pressure had come down a bit, but hearts were
pounding again soon because we had to run at a breakneck pace from customs to
our gate for Salt Lake City in time for our flight as it was scheduled. Once we
got there, the attendant announced a one-hour delay. We arrived home late that
night. A day later, I donned my robe and regalia, and attended my master’s
graduation with the rest of my cohort. The day after that, school
responsibilities began.
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