No Tickets, No Map, No Problem - Part 2

What's great about the Edinburgh Castle is that in addition to the castle itself, there's like five different museums inside of it: The National War Memorial and the War Museum, the regimental museum of the Royal Scots Greys, the Scottish Crown Jewels and the (supposed) stone of Scone, St. Margret's chapel, the oldest building in Edinburgh, prison dungeons, and a great many halls and rooms dedicated to James VII and Mary Queen of Scots. Most of the castle is from the 16th century, after all, the medieval fortifications having been destroyed in a series of sieges. To say that I ran around like a chicken with its head cut off, rainbows of joy instead of blood gushing from my jugular, would be an exaggeration, but not by much.

The only downers were that it was crazy crowded, and a pretty Disneyfied site overall - with grass you cannot stand on, seriously, because a uniformed official with a radio suddenly will apperate and yell at you in three different languages. The crown jewels exhibit was the worst in the respect. Its lead you through a history of the symbols of state using very, very creepy manikins with wigs worse than Jack's beard and has a strong It's A Small, Small World vibe. However, when I got to the room which had representations of all the kings and queens of Scotland and saw these two pictured above, I nearly lost my fool mind. My fool, Shakespeare-loving mind. The only other time I squealed audibly was in the Scots Greys museum, their claim to fame being that they captured a French Eagle at Waterloo; They still have the eagle, and the still-blooded flag of the French regiment they took it from. So cool.




After two hours at the castle, I walked down the Royal Mile with no definite aim besides to find a cash point. There was an ATM on the Mile, but the line was almost to the curb, and so I turned onto George IV Bridge (it's not really a bridge), on which the great swarm of tourists thankfully seemed less present. So I was taken completely by surprise to walk past The Elephant House, the coffee shop where J.K. Rowling apparently did a lot of work on the first Harry Potter. Naturally, I went inside and sat down to a cute elephant cookie and a fat glass of hot chocolate. It was funny, because the decor of the place was very The Village Indie Coffeehouse. It was really the most American place I've been in yet. It was also very crowded. I finished up quickly so a Scottish woman and her two kids could have my table. Not exactly a Potter pilgrimage, but it was a neat, delicious detour.

Down the street was the National Museum of Scotland, which was free. If you are ever in Edinburgh, people of the internet, take advantage of this. Yes, there are many families with very small children screaming for being unfairly subjected to "culture," but there are also racecars, and stone lions carved by the Romans, and a Claymore that's taller than a NBA center. The exhibits on the Kingdom of Scotland and Ancient Peoples of Scotland were both fantastic. Plus, there was a cash point there with no line at all. The only way it would have been better, as a museum, is if there had been dinosaurs/a giant statue of Teddy Roosevelt. By the time I got through it, I was pretty walked out, so I have less pictures.

I definitely am going to go back to Edinburgh sometime over break. It's so easy to get there and there's so much to do. By the time I walked back from the museum to Waverly station, it was getting close to six and colder as evening came on. I couldn't have timed it more perfectly, because as soon as I had validated my railpass, they were letting people onto the platform for my train back to Leuchars. I waited with one of those really adorable, affectionate old couples - the man was sporting a military beret, I'm pretty sure the lady had a hermes scarf, and they were basically hugging every time I looked over - and I found a window seat with relative ease. The ride back was uneventful and the bus pulled in with just enough time for me to run to meet it. On my way back from the station, I picked up Chinese from the Ruby - the Chinese food here is the only real culinary disappointment, but it's still edible - and later Darren and Stuart came by and we played some pool at the Union. A great, full day.

No Tickets, No Map, No Problem - Part 1

Saturday morning I woke up suddenly at 8, and suddenly decided I wanted to go to Edinburgh. So I did some quick laps around wikipedia to see what was notable and what was free, charged my camera, and I was off. From the bus depot I made it to Leuchars, the nearby train station that's as close as Scotland comes to the Old West. I'm not making this up. There are fields of wheat, and the wind whistles through them, ya'll. It's like a weird cross between Oklahoma! and Deliverance. Plenty of other students leaving for break were on the platform, though, so it was cool. I got the 11:30 train to Edinburgh, and I was in the city an hour later. So...that happened.

Let me say that ScotsRail is lovely. There was cheerful purple carpet and space in the cabin and a snack trolley, without any chocolate frogs but still. The trains in Britain happily lack that washed-out 70s vibe and tinge of despair that you get from using American public transport. Getting off the train, I was taken aback by the sheer volume of people rushing off the platform. This was a city, and St. Andrews is a town. Waverly station looks sort of like Grand Central's red-headed step-cousin. Well, really, it's probably more closely related architecturally to Ellis Island. Lots of rusting iron beams, rivets, Beaux Arts columns and cartouches. But everything was clearly marked, and I found my way out onto Market Street. I was again hit by waves of people, and the sound of a bagpiper playing for tourists.

Edinburgh is really nice. New York is the only thing I can compare it to in my mind, because I don't really remember San Fransisco and Houston is too sprawling to impose any real sense of grandeur or immensity. And they're both too young, come to that. Whenever the Scots want to tease me, they ask how I like taking in classes in buildings that are older than my country. I like it very much, in point of fact. Edinburgh isn't New York, but it is a metropolis, and it was exciting to be in a proper crowd, listening to the aforesaid bagpipes. I got a little lost looking for the castle, ended up on Princess street, and saw an arrow advertising the Walter Scot Memorial; so I decided to head that way and I could figure out how to get to the castle later. The huge crowds and lines of tour buses suggested I wasn't anyplace sketchy.

I paid three quid to tramp the 287 steps up the medieval-style spiral staircase, very narrow with no rails or landings, get my bearings and figure out what direction the castle was in. It was crazy windy, but very beautiful, and I really was able to get a lay of the city. There's a central atrium type thing with beautiful stained glass and facts about Walter Scot inside where I could get out of the wind. I got a little distracted on account of a bunch of little blond American girls in North Face jackets screaming up and down the stairwell. One of them shouted, "Think of it as a bounding experience!" which made me burst out laughing and I almost dropped my camera. I tried getting a shot of the monument itself, it's a very pointy and gothic and looks like it was carved from charcoal, but a tree got in the way.



From the Monument I was able to head up a street called The Mound, with good reason because it involves walking up a hill. From there I turned onto the Royal Mile, the most touristy street I've been on maybe ever - it was sort of like the French Quarter, actually. I saw an Invisible Man and two Bravehearts, there was a whiskey tour, a house of mirrors, an armory (?!) and so many, many shops selling Scotish flags, rugby balls, and kilt boxers. The majority of the tourists along the drag seemed to be French, although I heard some German and there were a few, mostly old, Japanese couples. And at the end of the Mile was the castle itself.

This? This is the Castle.

Fog on the Barrow Downs

For the past three days I have been knee-deep in deponent verbs, the preaching of the First Crusade, a massive carb-eating bonanza in order to rid my cupboard of chametz, and a sore throat that is horrible in the mornings, when I need to walk the mile into town and be alert in lectures, and eases off at night, when I am doing nothing that bears on my GPA. So, this morning, when I looked out the window to visibility levels of maybe three feet, classes were canceled; and by canceled, I mean that I blew them off. Sleeping in until twelve, the BBC Pride and Prejudice, and half a pint of Caramel Chew Chew all restored me to a better humor, though, and at seven I went outside to take some pictures of what fog in Scotland that hasn't lifted in twelve hours looks like.





House 19 is quickly emptying for break, which means that my own Traveldammerung, 10+ days of consecutive journeying across the United Kingdom, draws nigh. Will be sure to keep ya'll posted on my destinations and the adventures had therein. Passover, too, approaches, and last night at Jew Soc's Prince of Egypt showing I met a lovely post-doc fellow named Leslie, who has a car (!) and was happily willing to include me in whatever she ends doing for Pesach - whether it's in Edinburgh, or here in St. Andrews. I need to find a Judaica shop, like stat, because Tesco sells neither matzah nor Manischewitz, which recently I have had the most unexplainable and irresistible urge to buy.

As an aside, how crazy awesome was la historia de Ricardo Alpero en la programa Perdido la noche pasada? I loved it, not the least because my Spanish finally payed off on this show. I'm glad they didn't even pretend to have a B story and just revealed some mythology instead. Loved The Stand shout out to Lloyd as well. Nestor Carbonel was amazing. He does like three different accents in a 42 minute period. Just, you know, FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION, Emmy Voters. There are more obvious Biblical parallels in the story, but the cork conversation Richard and Jacob have on the beach pretty much validates my own Book of Job/Dark Tower leanings as to the end-game of the show. The writers have renewed my complete confidence in them by delivering above and beyond all expectations. I cannot wait for The End.

The Only Way This Would Be Better Is If Howard Shore Was Scoring It.

So, I went to Braemar with the Hillwalkers last week, and I've been too busy to write about it until now. I had to wake up at 7 to get to the Union for the drive, and then fired up my ipod for two hours on a winding road into the hinterlands of Aberdeenshire on a charter bus. I caught my first glimspe of a Highland Coo, and I'm pretty sure I saw some pheasants. The only things I'd heard about Braemar is that it was where Victoria had an estate or something and that it was in Aberdeen, which is like the New Zealand of the UK in terms of its ratio of sheep-people relationships to people-people relationships; so I went in expecting to take some crazy gorgeous pictures and little else.

As we gained altitude, it became sickeningly apparent that I was under prepared. I figured that there wouldn't be snow by this point in March, no reason to shell out the fourty quid to get my boots waterproofed, the weather's been warming, it's quite amiable in fact, so there's no point in packing thermals, and I don't really need to lug around an extra fleece, right? If April is the cruelest month, then March is the most deceptive - on account of this devious lunar cycle I made the assumption that I wouldn't need sunscreen, or sunglasses, or lip balm, or gloves, or a hat, or any other sartorial shields man has devised against the elements. I'd put on my cotton patagonia pants in morning, and thrown some sweatpants for the ride home into my completely unwaterproofed backpack.

Braemar, for the record, is in the middle of the Grampian Mountains. We passed multiple ski lifts that were crowded. In March.

The bus let us off, literally, on the side of the road next to a horse paddock. I didn't really know anyone else on the bus, except for Wesleyan!Marshall; but he chose to do the high-altitude hike, the one where you actually need a pick, and I was having none of that. Our group walked along the road until one of the leaders started to cut into a (snow-covered) field along a ravine, and the walk got very steep very quickly and didn't level off for a while. Soon I realized it was good to be in the middle of the group so that I could step where people in front had already made tracks. I fell in behind a friendly South African post-grad and Joe - one of the trip leaders from Luxembourg who would entertain those with flagging spirits by attempting to sled(ge) downhill on his bivy sack - and started to climb.

Let me try to relate the experience via metaphor: it was like using a stair master. It was like dunking your legs into a bucket of ice water before spending hours and hours on stair master that has been stripped of its handles, greased with oil, and stuck in a meat locker; and if you lose your balance, then you just might fall and die break something. I am here to relate that I was lured onto this particular walk by terms like "medium-low" and "river-walk" and "this is the one for the people who are still hung-over." These were lies. But they turned out to be good lies in the end, because the walk was just the right level of challenge for me - that butter zone between what you think you can do and what you're really capable of. I'm glad I did it and not the low-level, wander-around-the-woods-near-Braemar one. After the first initial steep section, the ground leveled off and we did indeed follow the river through completely unmarked, beautiful hills, meeting only a couple white rabbits gliding across the snow.

Part of me suspects the fun in this kind of outdoor activity has nothing to do with its level of pleasantness, that the exhilaration comes from the release of serotonin into the brain as one struggles to remain upright over long stretching of scrub and slush. But more of me thinks it comes from being immersed in a landscape like the Grampians, wherein one would expect to find a Beacon of Gondor or two. Even though my feet got so wet I began to hear the water sloshing inside my boots, it was well worth it to lie down for a "tea break" on the heather, watch the clouds and basically inhale a clementine, knowing I'd walked from one end of the map to the other. We did about fifteen kilometers (~10 miles) during the day, the last couple coming out of the mountains and passing into town through the Braemar golf course, which held an alarming number of ducks chilling on the side the road.

Braemar itself is a charming, one street-light town. There were forty kids on the outing altogether, maybe twenty were in the medium-low group, and most of us crashed at the bar of the Fife Arms hotel, an impressive stone building with a less impressive hunting lodge cliche interior. I, however, went on a quest for a pair of dry socks at 4:37 on a small-town Sunday afternoon. After a couple strikeouts, I found a Highland souvenir shop that had proper fine-wool dress socks to be worn with kilts, twenty pounds a pair. The shop lady was really sweet about it, however, and sold me a truly hideous, knee-high vermilion pair of clearance socks for a fiver. I crossed over a bridge back to the town square, changed into my dry things, and managed to nab some hot chocolate and shortbread from the Hotel coffee shop before they closed. I felt bad for the poor waitress. It was obvious she wanted to close up, but a group of maybe six nuns came in behind me, and you can't really say no to nuns, can you?


Behold.

At five the high altitude group came back and we all piled into the bus for the ride back to St. Andrews. I definitely want to go on another Hillwalking trip before the semester's over, if the experience will be half as awesome as this trip was. It took three days for the soreness in my legs to go away, but I got to go somewhere wondrous and see things I never would have seen otherwise; and that's what this whole abroad business is about.

Lost In Scotland - Spring

It's twelve degrees celsius here in St. Andrews. The sun is out, the sky is blue, children are eating ice cream on the East Sands, seagulls are crapping on cars. The weather's really started to turn and it's a good thing I'm going to North Carolina right after this, internet, because Scotland today made a compelling case for emigration. I'm going hiking in Braemar tomorrow, too, which should be amazing. Blue Ridge Mountains, come June, you need to bring your game.

In addition to all the (Al)bunnies skirting about, there's this pair of swans, which have been eluding my camera for a week. When I had it on me, they weren't there. Whenever I remembered it, they'd peaced. Finally today I got a couple shots of them chilling in the harbor. I think swans seem particularly elegant to someone from the sub-tropics, where there aren't any outside of zoos, but these two glided along easy as you please, coaxing bits of chips from the people eating outside The Wall. It was cool.

But for Mose? Same Story, Different Ending

Fair warning, this has nothing to do with Scotland.

Today I turned in my mediterranean communities essay, and I'm feeling the familiar sense of inadequacy and crushing failure that usually heralds the B+ range. So after two days of intense, alternating bouts of research, procrastination, and collecting Oscar bets, I treated myself to what has turned into the best week of television I've watched online in a long time.

Ron and April are my favorite people in Parks and Rec, so I was happy to see April show some range in an uniquely April way - I'm fascinated by how Aubrey Plaza manages to communicate varied emotions through a series of scowls - and Ron practically growl when thwarted (hee hee). The Office was a welcome move away from The Workplace of Jim and Pam melodrama it's been most of this season, with Darrell, MegaDesk, and the Meredith-on-Packer-on-Michael action I never knew I wanted. If I had to pick, the working late storyline didn't have enough jokes in it, but the writers clearly are honoring my desire for more of Erin's inevitably horrific backstory and Andy sweetness. 30 Rock is best at its writing and its guest stars, really. This season's been most uneven when it's too focused on any of the main cast. So today was a good day for me, because Elizabeth Banks is my favorite, and frankly, if I had to choose between Jon Hamm and Michael Sheen for my future husband, I would choose Michael Sheen. I would choose him in a heartbeat. I was tickled just by how he and Tiny Fey look together, and their awkwardness walked awkward/comedy line perfectly. He's so sweet and mild I wanted to jump him. That's not weird, right?

But I'm now on my third (fifth) rewatch of Dr. Linus, and it's quickly become obvious to me that by tomorrow it will have taken the number two spot in my Favorite Episodes of Lost Ever (upsetting The Brig but not quite besting The Constant). Not only did my Lost fan melt, but my film student was impressed too. I love everything about this episode. The writing is so smart. The story is so well constructed, and so classic. This episode, more than any other of recent memory, really recaptured that season 1 sense of redemption, the blend of the mythology and the characters. The sideways world parallels the storyline of the island with beautiful symmetry that extends even to the visual cues. There's tender, nostalgic callbacks (Alex finally in happy scenes! Nikki and Paulo!), the overall plot does get forwarded, with a slo-mo reunion scene and a big twist at the end. A note perfect episode of Lost.

Emerson's acting was unbelievable. I've watched that final scene with Illana so many times now, and they sell it to me each and every time. The camera just hangs a frame on Ben's bloody face and his voice takes it away. That scene is why Lost works. It's the emotional gut-punch that's so wanted and so earned. All the mysteries - the samurai and pirate ships and time travel - all that is fun and us genre geeks love it, and we love that a show is brave enough to not help us understand it but to just present a world wherein we can discover lighthouses and play with dynamite. But the show took a gimmicky concept - alternate realities - and pulled off a damned hard thing: to take Ben, the Big Bad, the lying and mechanical and cruel, and make us care about him and want to redeem him.

As to what I think about the craziness going on and about to go down, well, I have my suspicions, but I really don't want to speculate too much on the big questions, ie. how the Sideways world and the Main Timeline will reconcile with each other, who will be the winning candidate, what the struggle between Jacob and MIB is all about. Mirrors and water seem to be the relevant motifs to watch out for, though. Those who can change, as evidenced by the sideways world and so far it's Kate, Ben, Jack, and John, and those who can't, Sayid, seem to be the dividing factor between Team Smokey and Team Jacob. And make no mistake, the character Terry O'Quinn is playing with such terrifying relish this season is the Devil. All the more alarming because Widmore, I think, just brought a sub over to his side. Main characters are going to start dying soon (Sun, for my money, is already gone). The genius of the sideways world, though, is that Dead isn't quite Dead, and I'm willing to bet that Maggie Grace, Cynthia Waltros, and Dom Monaghan will all have parts to play. Kate seems to be more key than ever she was, and I may be Charlie Brown here but I think that Jack finally is ready to lead. The war is coming, the one we've all known would come since the very first The Stand reference. I cannot wait.

On the Road to the Anstruther Fish Bar

Yesterday Houses 13 and 19, plus Erin, decided it would be fun to walk from St. Andrews to Anstruther, which has "the best chippy in the UK," and on the way stop a place called Dunino Den, which was apparently once a center of some Pagan activity. Dunino is only four miles away, Anstruther about another six after that, so a lot of the day did involve dodging cars on the highway, tramping through muddy fields, and avoiding barbed wire. But, again, what I love about Scotland is that you have the right to roam. And walking makes food taste better, anyway.

We walked uphill and into a Scottish mist a little after ten, and reached the wooded path into Dunino a little before twelve. So we made good time for nine easily distracted college students gabbing the whole way and stopping to look at livestock and abandoned houses.

There's a lovely Kirk above the den, with properly huge Victorian gravestones in the yard, and a beautifully spartan chapel with a splash of stained glass above the alter. It was quiet and you could see your breath. I normally don't indulge in any Austenalia, but it was exactly the kind of parish church Edward and Elinor Ferrars might preside over, raising chickens and giving very short sermons. Of course, the vast majority of our walking party were a brutally atheistic bunch, so the atmosphere was perhaps not nearly as romantic as it could have been.

Down the trail, we reached the top of the den itself, a "druid well" on a cleft overlooking a stream, with stairs cut into the rock below. Now, I've only been studying archeology for about four weeks, but the well itself is the only part of the den that looked genuine. The rocks below do contain celtic crosses and pagan symbols, but the work is too precise and unweathered to be from the pre-Christian period. Still, there was a pleasing, peaceful, Neo-pagan vibe to the site, and we all spent some time relaxing under the prayer trees and throwing pennys in the stream. We'd read reports of a wild cat being seen in the area, but the den was really pretty tame overall.

From Dunino it was another two and half hours to Anstruther, and having only eaten a handful of grapes and two nutrigrain bars all day, I was thrilled to get there, let me tell you what. We stopped at a cash point (ATM, in American), and then booked it down to the harbor. Anstruther smells more like the sea than St. Andrews does, but has the same charming stone architecture and colorful doors. It's shopping drag is centered around the harbor and the fisheries museum and the ferry to the Isle of May, which we didn't have the time for, alas. We got to the chippy just in time, though. A huge line started forming behind us and it started drizzling outside.

The fish and chips were really great. The place wasn't so much a chippy, which is more take-out style, as a proper restaurant, and from the line, and how quickly they moved the line, it's clear that they're doing a very good business. I probably need to try them again when I haven't walked ten miles first to see if they still hold up, but I would say that my haddock in batter with salt and vinegar was the closest thing I've had yet to New Orleans food, and further, I believe they would be enjoyed by New Orleanians who are way more hardcore about seafood than I am. As it was already three-thirty by the time we finished eating, we all took the bus back to St. Andrews, a transit time of about fifteen minutes duration, and got Jennettas, the most delightful ice cream parlor I've been in, maybe ever, before heading back the seemingly much shorter road home to Albany.

Mussels, Haggis, and Hypothermia

Rebecca cooked Haggis for dinner tonight, with mashed potatoes and turnips, which were called "neeps" and "sweets" by the respective Scottish and English members of House 19. Haggis is not gross, for the record. The (empty) sheep's liver was pointed out to me in the kitchen, and it just looked like a surgical glove that Hagrid might have split. The Haggis itself had a kind of bean-like texture and was surprisingly spicy and filling. I have a sneaking suspicion that for those with hardy stomachs it would be kind of awesome with Tabasco and garlic bread. It's basically like eating the inside of a sausage. Good with potatoes, but I honestly didn't finish it because in fit of anxiety about the subjunctive tense, I had already consumed, like, six Digestives and a 1/4th of my peanut butter. Not sure if Haggis is something I'd ever order if chicken was an option, but it wasn't disgusting in the least.

Yesterday was much classier. It was the lowest tide of the year, so a large contingent of Houses 19 and 13 went mussel-picking on the shore - I slept in because I had class at 9, and maybe it was lucky I did because Rebecca apparently sunk down to her waist and had to go to the health center eventually for the sand in her eye. I had no problems going over to watch the cooking, however, as Darren assured us he knew how to cook them safely. Later he revealed his source was a "crazy French man on YouTube" and I'm glad I didn't know that going in. But once the mussels were acquired it was a very professional operation, let me tell you, with no expense spared. A good chardonnay, plus finely chopped garlic and onions, for the sauce, French Bread and everything. There were seven of us and we ate a lot of mussels, and none of us died, and I got a fancy dinner completely free. Win.


Saturday I went on the beginner kayaking trip to the Stanley section of the River Tay, near Perth. It was a cold, overcast day and my first experience with a lot of things, including wearing a wetsuit. It was very much like Camp, in that I was basically supervised by counselors. The advanced boaters knew what they were about - my safety buddy Caitlin was a graduate and very sweet lady - and how to run a trip for people who don't know what they're doing. It was interesting to watch them, both as someone who's seen people teach on rivers before (Callum is good, Jessica is better) and as someone who's learning a new boat. They certainly weren't looking for the same level of skill that Green Cove requires of the girls on the river - I think I ferried like once and was hitting eddies low all day, and plenty of the intermediates on the trip didn't have a combat roll. The Tay itself was a beautiful, quiet, dark river, and fucking freezing; I'd never in my life been so cold that I started to really shiver uncontrollably. I suppose if you decide to paddle in February, you're signing up for it. But still. SO COLD. The river was not intimidating, though, and I get intimidated easily by things I haven't run, and also things I've run many, many times. It was like the Tuck, only smaller (although the water was low) and bazillion times colder, and shorter - you can run the whole thing in less than an hour. Lots of flat water with a couple class 1-2ish rapids, and those weren't particularly tricky, just fun wave-trains. We worked a couple rapids at the top, though, so we were on it for most of the afternoon.

I can now say I've run the biggest waterfall (by volume) in Britain. I only swam once, doing proud my long history in the space cadets by semi-intentionally coming out of an eddy leaning upstream. I probably could have self-rescued eventually, though I would have ended up kinda far downriver, but a crazy number of boats were on top of me after I pulled my skirt. They all seemed impressed that I hadn't panicked and even remembered to pull my skirt, but I was kicking myself all over that I immediately chose to enter the cold, cold water instead of waiting for the t-rescue that would have come like ten seconds later. Did I mention it was cold? SO COLD. I want to run this same section again in, like, July, because I think it's a great practice/starter river and a lot of fun. But after I swam, I became a complete zombie. I think I zoned out the instruction and just nodded and shivered and said, "Ok, I'll follow your line," a lot - to the point where they had to get a warming-up-survival-tent-thing out (not just for me, some other people swam, too.) I had the worst reaction to the cold, though, and it was a bummer, because my energy was just gone, and I didn't really get to enjoy the last group of rapids or do anything other than pant "just keep paddling" a la Finding Nemo.

I definitely liked kayaking, though - I think the poor trip leaders were nervous they'd scared me off or something because of the cold - and more than anything I want to go back and really practice to get the basics down cleanly. I think there will be a couple more beginner trips this term, though, so I'll get some do-overs. If only there was a place that taught paddling, though. A place where I go for a period of, say, two months and learn from experienced boaters in return for teaching less advanced canoeing skills to young children, perhaps on a large body of flat water somewhere... I still like soloing more, but perhaps that's because I'm demonstratively better at it right now. I definitely have further incentive to learn my roll, and on the way back we stopped in a canoe store, located in a maze of Industrial Parks outside of Scumdee, and I bought a noseplug for that very purpose.