July 21: Lindsay and Lucy come home, and we play Rambo

On July 22 I biked to the gym in Oxford and worked out in the Ladies Gym for the last time. I'm so happy I had that!! I've definitely lost a lot of muscle tone in the past 6 weeks, but I've kept up an exercise routine pretty well for being on vacation. Then... YAY!!! Lindsay and Lucy came home!!! Erik picked them and their suitcases up in the van, drove home to get me, Sophie and Stone, and then we all went back to the Ropes Course place to play outdoor Laser Tag.

It was INTENSE!!!! I hate guns, I hate violence (even simulated), I hate being bad at things, I have a hard time caring about made-up games, and I always feel like I'm going to be terrible at new physical activities. So I was really really not excited for this. But the kids were super excited about it and I appreciate it when they join me in activities I care about, so I did it. And actually I loved it!!! The owner of the ropes course and laser tag course is a fun, friendly local man who brings his adorable kids to work with him, and he had such positive energy, it made it feel welcoming. Initially I was intimidated because we walked in late and were place on a team with a bunch of older teenagers/young adults, and I thought they would probably take it very seriously and  be annoyed with a 41-year-old mom who had never done it before and would undoubtedly run the wrong way or use the gun wrong or get tagged out over and over again. I felt exactly like I did in P.E. class my entire life - terror of failing and looking like a fool and letting people down. But once we started we found that they were very very nice, even to some little kids who were on our team. The teenagers turned out to be from Germany, so the red team was all non-British (with the exception of the owner's little son, who joined us) vs. the all-Brit blue team. Having just finished the Viet Nam documentary and studied the two world wars recently it did feel odd and haunting and kind of wrong to be simulating a battle field - there was a downed helicopter and a real tank as well as a vine-covered maze that made it feel very evocative of a real war zone. I thought with deep sympathy of the millions of soldiers throughout the world who have had real guns placed in their hands and are thrust out onto real battlefields without training and forced to kill or be killed. In my view, war is a wasteful and tragic enterprise, and one of the great horrors of humankind. It felt weird to be approximating it... but on the other hand, the desire to fight for a common goal on a team against another team must be innate in humans because in the absence of war, we have sports mania, and in the absence of war and sports mania, we have laser tag. And with kind, supportive people and a friendly (but excitingly tense!) environment, even I could get behind that. (Also, Stone said it was the best day of his life and he now wants to move to Oxford.) :)

Some of the ropes course 

After laser tag Erik was excited about a Mexican restaurant he found on Trip Advisor, so much so that he continued undaunted when Google Maps sent him on a tiny bumpy dirt road through a field in our giant van. I was so nervous we were going to blow out another tire! We didn't, but when we arrived in the neighboring town there was no parking anyway, so we turned around and went back home and ate at the Rusty Bicycle again. Lindsay and Lucy took a nap for awhile, and then we got to work packing and cleaning for our departure to London the next morning! The last part of the afternoon and evening was spent trying to finish the Oxford treasure trail, which was sort of fun but mostly frustrating as we couldn't find the first clues and ended up walking a long distance for nothing. We snapped a few last pictures and walked around Christ Church college and the meadows and headed home in the sunset. Farewell, Oxford!