Day 1 - Prologue

Saturday 7 July 2007

7/7/7!! Oh man it’s like I really never left. Same old problems, same old people! It was a little bit of a rough one today, but it will only get better with time.

Trekking back and forth between the hotel in and around Buckingham Palace has been an enjoyable experience, one that is much different from what the rest of the Tour will be like. Not worrying about cars or where to be next has been nice. But that will end.

I picked up our car today after the stage, and it was truly a brand new C5. Although it cost me 60 pounds to get it out of the garage! The drive to Canterbury was not brutal, and both Neal and Dave kept the car ride amusing. And thank goodness for Neal bringing his iPod. Recalling last year, relying on the French car radio was never really that fun.

Made the drive to Canterbury tonight, where tomorrow we will spend our last day in the U.K. The town is very, very quaint, many little shops on cobblestone roads, in the shadow of a massive cathedral. It’s too bad we arrived late on a Saturday night, as all of the shops were closed. I particularly wanted to visit the Bang & Olafson store, which looked like it had some great stuff in it.

Our hotel was impossible to find, as it was just a hole in the wall, wedged in between a Starbucks and an old gate of the cathedral. (By the way, Starbucks has hit the U.K. like a ton of bricks.) You know it’s small when the room numbers have names rather than numbers. And since I know what you’re going to ask next, the answer is, Tranquility. That was the name of the room.