Dave Orchard's Blog

Next morning, after a full and wonderful sleep, I met my friends Scott and Wendy for the London 10K race. It was fun how this worked out: I told Scott I was coming to London, and he suggested we get together Sunday afternoon as they had a race in the morning. So I volunteered to enter the race, and Wendy was able to get me signed in.

I hadn’t run a competitive 10K race in about 10 years, but I’ve been active with Team Ultimate and the Grouse Grind this year, so I was completely unsure how I’d do. Well, after a hotter race than I expected, I finished with 45:30 time, and I had completely even time splits of between 4:30 and 4:45 per kilometer. I’m paid for working that hard as I was sore from Sunday until Wednesday.

After chilling over brunch and coffee at Covent Garden, we satisfied my new-found interest in gardening by going to the Kew Gardens. The brits sure know how to do the gardening thing. I’ll update the pictures when I get Scott’s pictures.

After seeing Much Ado About Nothing, I went with Scott’s friend Katrina to the Baltic Restaurant. Another neat place that was simply dead when I went.

I have an important tip to share. LOOK RIGHT, even if it doesn’t say it on the pavement. I once decided to cross the street after looking left, then looking down and not seeing the expected look right, I didn’t bother to look right. I was then able to look closely at the tourists going by in the bus. Yeouch.

There are a lot of Eastern Europeans now doing service jobs. A large number of hotel, restaurant, taxi, and coffeeshop staff were clearly new immigrants. I hadn’t quite realized the population migration that had happened.

Prices in London are the same as in Vancouver. For example, gas is 81.9 cents per litre, and a tall mocha frapp is 3.25 (ok, so it’s $4.25 in Vancouver). Basically it’s about 2.25 times more expensive in London than Vancouver.

Another tip: always bring your camera battery charger. I put a fully charged battery in my camera on Friday morning. 10 pictures later, it gave me a low battery warning. I’ve had this problem b4, but I never expected it after so few pictures. It seems that I run out of battery power when I travel, so I should stop trying to optimize my weight.

On Tuesday I changed hotels to stay at the 41. Very upmarket hotel at a reasonable price – for London standards. My room was done in a black/white theme. Highly recommended for a Victoria station hotel.

A recieved a random act of kindness. I couldn't find my tube day pass one evening. I'm rummaging through all my pockets. The chap working at the tube volunteers to let me through and calls ahead to bank station to let me out. Very nice experience.

Scott also explained a few of the more interesting British innovations in electronics. I'd apparently missed the wired article on toothing. I say! as the Brits would say. It's also interesting how many technical journals had articles on this in April/May and I missed them. I also learned about "ipod raves" where a tube station and time is selected, and then a bunch of Ipodders show up and dance for a while. Imagine you're at a quiet station, and then 2000 people show up to dance for 30 minutes. Cool!