Returning from my lunch, I passed the punts and the botanical garden and took a sharp right toward whatever it was that I seemed to remember was in that direction. This turned out to be a good idea, because it led me to the Museum of Oxford.

The Museum of Oxford consists mostly of mineralogical and natural history exhibits. Dinosaur bones, magnetite, fossils, enormous quartz crystals, stuffed sea turtles and the like. Most of the space was devoted to the dead fauna, including stuffed birds and animals with signs next to them explaining what a shame it is that people are killing and capturing them because they are very rare. I’m not sure what high horse they were hoping to speak from, but they were pretty well destroying their own credibility with the fact they had obviously made their own contribution to the endangeredness of those animals and birds.

The skeletons of triceratops and tyrannosaurus rex were very impressive, as was the towering jaw of a sperm whale (I want to say it was eight to ten feet tall standing on its end, but I can’t exactly remember, nor am I good at judging height). Anyway, the museum had made a little parade of mammal bones in one end of the building which was pretty neat (incidentally, elephants are very, very big creatures) but probably the coolest thing about the museum was the building itself. The building was, obviously, your typically old structure with the usual ornate pillars fronted by the usual statues of the usual philosophers and scientists. The cavernous, three peaked roof towered above the central atrium with a second floor balcony circling the interior. All this was nice, but not nearly as interesting as the fact the roof was made entirely of glass.

So that's why women can't get on boards of directors...

I cannot recall seeing any sort of electrical lamp in the building aside from those required for illuminating the displays. The interior was provided the warm, ambient light of the outdoors, a very natural way to see the displays and a fantastic way to keep the old electric bill down. Of course, the sun had disappeared by then, so it was more of a grayish light, but it was outdoor light nonetheless.

After the museum, I wandered a little further, passing by a very large grassy area with a looping path around it that I decided to take. It was essentially a very large, multi-purpose athletic field. Closely mowed grass tennis courts were to be found on the outside of the loop, usually with a large sign next to it saying, "Members Only", though what you were supposed to be a member of was unclear. Therefore, I assume my membership in the Ohio State Alumni Association counted, but unfortunately I’d forgotten my tennis racket. On my trail around the park, I passed a cricket game in progress, so I decided to stop and watch for a bit.

Needless to say, I had no idea what was going on, aside from the fact that one guy would come sprinting up to three stakes planted in the ground and throw the ball toward a batsman, clad like a field hockey goalie, who was standing with a small oar on his shoulder. The batsman would wait for the ball to bounce once in front him, then he would watch it go by. Some guy behind the batter wearing a pair of work gloves would catch the ball and the process would be repeated. Everyone else would stand around and do nothing but look snappy in their white pants and sweaters. Occasionally, something would happen that required the action to change directions and everybody would go running out as though they were going to play the field while yelling, "C’mon lads," and the same things would happen going the other way. Once, somebody actually did hit the ball and everyone involved in the game began running in random directions. Not being able to tell which team was which (they were all dressed in white) did not help me in my attempt to figure out the rules. Incidentally, I was very interested to see that each team’s batter did not change. While a team was batting, the other batsman just stood there doing nothing, thus proving that the designated hitter rule stems from baseball’s roots. Most of the time spent by either team was also spent standing around and doing nothing, an obvious change from baseball where the team batting is allowed to sit down and do nothing.

From the cricket field (Green? Park? Ground? Patch? Ice? Obstacle course?) I finished my tour of the park and walked back down the street in the direction from whence I had come, passed the Oxford Museum of Rocks and Death and came upon a sign that was pointing the directions to various sights. Deciding I should probably visit Oxford Castle, I headed in that direction.

It is hard to say if I saw Oxford Castle though I am now quite sure, from further research, that I did not. I had, once again, gotten completely lost on the way because the arrow on the sign had been pointing at the door of a small shop and I figured that they wouldn’t have fit a castle inside the store without it having been disassembled to bricks and stacked several stories deep into the ground. Nobody is that industrious, except maybe the Amish and I don’t think they had been left in charge of any castles. So I walked toward where I thought the castle was in and saw a large building that did have a sort of turret or something, but it could have just as easily been the main post office. It was at this point that I realized my second smallest toes were walking on top of my pinkie toes and I would be well served to go back to the hostel and rest what were going to be some profound blisters. The only problem, of course, was that I was, once again, thoroughly lost (for the second time, even; a very good day of touring). However, I had a general idea of which way to go and I walked in that direction.

After about forty-five minutes of passing closed shops, houses, bike racks, an ice rink and nothing that gave me any idea where I was supposed to go, I finally saw a sign that indicated I was mostly correct in my bearing and I eventually landed at my hostel to drop stuff off before I grabbed some dinner. After my meal, I sent an email to Mom and Amy (my sister, for those who do not know) to let them know I was safe, sound and in Oxford since both of them would probably like to know where I was and I knew that Amy would be worried.

Later that night, I chatted with a few people at the bar (they had one in the hostel), though I had little to add to any conversation going on because, of course, I live in Ohio and that is a pretty dull life compared to that of people who live out their backpacks. I mostly talked with a group consisting of an Irishman, an Australian, a South African and a Canadian, so obviously it would be unseemly for me to be caught not drinking. While there, I tried some manner of drink whose name I cannot remember, unfortunately, as it was very tasty. I seem to recall it required vodka, a splash of bitter and, everybody’s favorite artificial stimulant, Red Bull. It was amazingly easy to drink, so I stayed away from it after one.

On a side note to my other side notes, I picked up a car shopper magazine that was sitting there and I sort of paged through to get an idea of what car prices were like. Of course, the only car whose prices I had any idea about was the type I own now, so I found a couple of those and compared prices between what my car cost me and what they were listing there. This brings me to an interesting point about the mileage on British cars: it is actually recorded in miles.

"Well yes," you think to yourself, "that’s why it’s called ‘mileage’, because it counts the number of miles the car has traveled."

"Yes," I respond, "but everything else over there is in the metric system, so why would they count the miles instead of the kilometers?"

"Yes, but, well, you know, you have to count miles. I mean that’s just, you know, mileage." Then you ask for another drink and stop talking to me. I’m still not at all clear why they count miles instead of kilometers and, quite honestly, I don’t think anybody else over there knows either.

Anyway, after talking with a Spaniard and a Frenchman for a while, I eventually decided it was time to call it a night, as I needed to be able to wake up in time for checkout the next day. I returned to my room, found somebody sleeping in my bed and so took a different one, finally getting some rest after a long and busy day.