What a three days it's been. Seeing two great American sporting traditions, as well as a day of doing more or less nothing.
Starting with Friday then:
Day of relaxation. Not much more can be said really, we really didn't do much. Except play some volleyball and basketball. The basketball once again saw my skills as a basketballer on show, Kobe Bryant has absolutley nothing on me, out of all the shots that I took, maybe 2 went in, beat that! LA Lakers will be after me in no time at all!!!
So after about 3 hours worth of basketball in the midday sun, we were approached by a group of Americans who wanted to know if we'd play some volleyball with them. HELL YES was my reply, the others were like, "yeah alright okay then", we will. So we did.
First time in ages that we'd played volleyball and the game was pretty good, until a group of seemingly amazing players came along and requisitioned the court. Not good times =(
In the evening most of the guys went off to some party, but me, being in an exercisey mood decided to go and play some more volleyball with some random people, but they turned out to be the seemingly amazing players, who were pretty amazing. Getting bored of this, I clocked the guys that I'd been playing with later, and within minutes had made pretty good friends with them, as they accepted me as another volleyball player. As both of the courts on campus were taken we ended up playing at a frat house, for what seemed like 2 hours. I thoroughly enjoyed their company, despite my team of 3 (nicknamed something along the lines of the Statics?) losing most of the games.
So onto Saturday, and an early start, leaving UCO by something like 8.45am in order to go to Fort Sill, a military base surrounded by perhaps the most amazing landscape full of all kinds of creatures, from Buffalo, through to Rattlesnake. The journey down was pretty boring, with the minibus out of action due to some mechanical failures, so instead we headed off in convoy on a 2 1/2 hour journey down to the south west of the state.
Around lunchtime we stopped off at this place called Meers, which is apparently really famous for its burgers. Wow were they big, but I'll get to that in a minute. The queue to get into this place was fairly long, but constantly moving, illustrating just how popular this place really is. The seating area didn't really paint the best picture of the restaurant either, with plastic seats similar to those you get in a primary school.
The food like I've already said was amazing. a few of us had the Seismic Burger, myself included. The name said it all really... 16oz of pure beef in a bun... good times. Lets just say, it didn't defeat me, although I was pretty full afterwards. After the meal, I was stupidly challenged to eat 3 whole pickled Jalapeño Chilli Peppers without a drink. Me being the fool I am, took up the challenge, easily succeeding, much to the onlookers disdain, I think they wanted me to suffer... that'll show them hehehe. Then disaster strikes, we leave the resturant and some asshole biker basically tells flick that if I don't take my t-shirt off, someone will kill me. Stupidly that morning, I'd put a t-shirt with Che Guevara on it, forgetting that rednecks and bikers are the most narrowminded people in the world. Ever.
So we get to the next place, a nature reserve, and I'm forced to change my t-shirt incase the threat is followed through, I value my life quite a bit, so risking it over a t-shirt seems pretty unnecessary... but still, 1st amendment and all.
The reserve was ok, not too much to see, as it was in the middle of nowhere, but there were some cool animals dotted around, such as these two cute prarie dogs:
After this we moved off to Fort Sill, a US Army Artillery training area which also has a museum. Fairly boring to be fair, the exhibits we went were still largely under construction, which sucked. But on the whole the exhibits that were on show were pretty good, for example a painting that was worth the small sum of $23million (or so we were told). As well as a wide range of artillery pieces which resulted in near orgasm for Jonny when he saw this particular gun:
After this we headed back, with a detour to Geronimo's grave. For those that don't know, Geronimo was some badassed indian guy, who was arrested, held and died at Fort Sill. His grave wasn't the most awe inspiring thing in the world, but it was still pretty cool. The journey back saw us still completley and utterly full from the massive hunks of meat from lunch. Again, it was a fairly uneventful journey with most of us comatose in the back of the vehicles, travelling in relative comfort.
The evening was awesome, having got back to UCO, we had about an hour to get ready to go to the Rodeo. A feast of horsemanship and ultra cool cowboys doing mega cool stuff, like jumping from their horses and wrestling a cow to the floor. Pretty hardcore. The best event was the bucking bull event, which saw competitors literally thrown from the back of the bull onto the ground, risking serious injury and potentially even death!
If you want to see all the pictures from the rodeo, take a look here.
Onto Sunday, a truly fantastic day with no heartbreak whatsoever (Or none that we talk about) and another no move until around 1430 when we were meant to leave to go to the baseball. However, delays saw us leaving at around 1500.
Having never been to a baseball game in my life, I was unsure quite what to expect. My basic understanding was that it was basically Rounders, but Americanized. So most probably boring. As it stood, it was an awesome game. The rules were pretty easy to pick up as the game progressed and we witnessed a thorough thrashing of the visiting team by the Redhawks (Oklahoma's team). To top it all off, we were sat in the all you can eat seats. Yes that's right, we were able to stuff ourselves with what can only be described as crap for the entirety of the game... which was a good 3 hours long. Still, not as bad as one of the boys sat in front of our group. Blue Candy Floss turns you blue. So this kid, who must've been 12 or something, and about a billion stone sat and ate around 15 bags of this stuff, literally going away looking like something out of avatar, like this:
But without the beard.The evening saw the group split with 4 of us chilling up in one room, with the rest in another. What they got up to I shall never know, but we had a pretty awesome evening chilling. The original plan was to watch "The Pacific" but that fell through as Jonny started telling us another crazy and ultimately made up story. We must've been up there for about 4 hours when we decided to call it a night, with placement looming for the next day.
Onto Monday, and another day at MIPT. First of all however, we had a talk with a detective down by the OCPD (Think LAPD but with Oklahoma City and you get the gist) who told us what his job entailed and about the guys under his command. After this and a really filling lunch, we wandered back to MIPT where we spent until 3pm continuing our projects, which should look pretty good by the time they're finished! Come 3pm we'd all just about had enough, being told that we could leave any time after this, we decided to call it a day and waited to get picked up.
The evening saw just about everyone make a trip to the University swimming pool where I was once again challenged to several races, which I can safely say I won. Part of me still wishes that I'd continued swimming, as It was the only sport I was ever any good at, representing my county and such.
After a good 2 hours in the pool i emerged, with my eyes looking vaguely like this
Just slightly redder. For some reason, despite spending much of the first 15 years of my life in a swimming pool, my eyes get really badly affected by Chlorine, meaning that I spent most of the next 3 hours laying down on my bed with my eyes streaming under a damp flannel. I woke up this morning and my eyes were still sore. Even now they're still slightly sore. I shall not be swimming underwater there for a while!!!!So that's the last four days, I could write about today, but I imagine that the post will be even longer and I'm bored of this post now!
So until the next one.
Tchuss
x
No comments:
Post a Comment