We had two activities today. The first was THE SLIDE. The ArcelorMittal Orbit is a sculpture that was installed in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park for the London 2012 games. The slide is world's longest tunnel slide (583 feet with all the curves and corkscrews) and is attached to the sculpture, winding its way down from top to bottom. Going down the slide seemed like a good idea when I asked Joe if he was into it before we left... but I will admit that when we got to the top platform, I wondered what the hell I'd been thinking. That being said, while it was about 20 seconds of mitigated terror (mitigated by the fact that I didn't actually think there was any danger; terror because I was going down a 583 foot slide at an incredibly steep angle), it was pretty fun. Not that I'm in any hurry to do it again. Ever.
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| See that small gray tube on the left side, corkscrewing down? Yeah, that's the slide. |
This is a sports-themed week, so the second activity of the day was a cricket match. Neither Joe nor I know anything about cricket, but I watched a fair bit of cricket on TV when I was in London for two months in 2008 and Joe has an affinity for pretty much any sport, so between the two of us, a few YouTube videos, and googling the rules, we figured we'd catch on. And we did. It was a beautiful night at the Kia Oval and there was a big crowd for the match between Surrey and Sussex. We had no idea which team the crowd would be siding with, and Joe noted (because I left after the first inning, or half, or whatever it's called) that the crowd seemed to cheer equally for both sides.
