15Nov2008: Day 173: Howletts Zoo & Rugby

Makenna and I went to Howletts Zoo this afternoon with Andrea, and her friend Fran and her two kids April and Thomas. It was a small zoo compared to the Whipsnade Zoo that we went to a few months ago. But they did have some "new additions" to the zoo. Such as baby tiger cubs, baby leopards, and some baby monkeys.

They also had elephants, lemurs, rhinoceros, and some wild pigs, wolves, wild dogs, capybaras, and other types of animals. Mostly monkeys though. There was one weird thing that I just couldn't get over, and that's a cat. They had cats in cages! That was just so bizarre. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why they would possibly have cats in cages. Then I realized, well, they'd probably walk away if they weren't caged. The cats were called Pallas cat or Manul. Unfortunately, my picture taking wasn't the best today. The camera focused more on fences than on animals. Or the animals showed more of their backsides than the fronts.

Makenna really enjoyed the leopards and monkeys. She kept saying leopard but it came out more like wepard, and lemur was “ wemur”. She was good for the most part. She unfortunately did not eat lunch before we left as she didn't want to. So when we got to the zoo, she was a bit irritable. I wanted her to eat somewhat healthy, of course, and of course, she did not want to. I tried to get her to eat cereal, but she wanted chips. Then Fran had mini cupcakes and I relented. Then again she wanted chips, but I asked her to eat cereal first. But Fran again had some organic cheese rice puffs and I relented again. Then I just finally gave in and let her have the chips and another mini muffin.

After the zoo, we went to Fran's where she put together a quick meal of pizza, pasta, breaded mushrooms, and potato skins. Makenna ate....nothing. She just kicked up a fuss. She finally ate a yogurt, but it was more like a pudding than a yogurt. She enjoyed playing with April and Thomas's toys and their cats.

Chris went to a Rugby match and will write about his time later.

Yes, I went with Darren, he is Andrea's fiance and a good friend from work. They are the couple who took us out the day after we arrived here and showed us around...they also bought us groceries. Very friendly people and I was really looking forward to going to this game since he offered it to me a couple weeks ago. We went with Jess a friend of Darren's. We left around 9:00 to get to the train station. It was about a 45 minute journey to Victoria station and then we took several other trains eventually making it to the Richmond station, where we walked to a pub by the Thames and had a couple of Guinness extra-cold. I always thought that most Brits like their beer warm, but in fact extra-cold Guinness is everywhere, so I'm not sure who drinks it warm.

But, anyway, we left there to walk to the stadium about a mile away. Along the way there were people selling hamburgers and sausage outside their houses, and one spot that Darren always stops at, was a South African steak sandwich place so we grabbed a sandwich there, which was good. We then headed to the stadium.

It was a huge place, apparently 80,600 people attended. The match was between England and Australia, apparently a pretty good grudge match. So, I was surprised that when the Australians came out that everyone stood up and clapped quite loudly, with no whistling or booing. (The Brits are sooo polite!) Earlier, Jess said to me that they thought that the Brits should be more patriotic like Americans. So, I was blown away when they started to sing their national Anthem...they BELTED it out. They sang it with such power, I was truly moved. The Brits are actually very patriotic, perhaps more so than even Americans. I've been at plenty of Baseball games and other stadium sports in the states and no one sings any more - I bet more than 50% of Americans won't even know the whole national anthem, and that may be generous. These folks were like they were on the American Idol finals...the sound must have travelled for miles! Now, one thing you may or may not know is that the founding fathers of our great nation changed the words to the tune of the British national anthem to "My Country ‘Tis of Thee". I started to sing it with the tune to have a chuckle with Darren and Jess, but was totally washed out making it rather sad and even perhaps rude, so I stopped. At the end of their singing, I turned to Jess and told him that Brits are very patriotic and explained why. Anyway, the game started from there.

Rugby is a very fast paced game. It is only 80 minutes of play, 2 halves. I don't know why we changed it so much into what is American Football now. Rugby is actually quite a lot better. I think the reason it was changed was because you can't really do commercials very well with Rugby, so it is not very marketable. There is no stop in play. I think I saw the clock only stop once during the entire match and that was at the last 6 seconds of the game and the bonehead Referee called a penalty. Let them play! I thought that a lot during the game as it was basically won by the Referee. He called so many penalties near the goal against England that Australia just kept kicking the ball and scoring. Very disappointing. The ref was from South Africa, so I don't know if there was bias there or not.

It is a very interesting game though, again very fast paced. Basically, the two teams charge one another and at some point the ball is grabbed from behind and passed back. You can only pass backwards and kick forwards. Scoring is either by kicking the ball over the opposing team's goal or crossing the goal line and planting the ball "with downward force" into the ground. Basically, if you manage to keep the person with the ball from touching the ground, then it is not a "touchdown" (they call it something else, but in football you don't have to have it touch down, just cross the line...so why do we call it a touchdown and they don't? Strange.) When the ball would go out, you could still catch it and run, also when it was dropped out the team would throw in and they would lift up the catcher into the air (like a cheerleader lift) above their heads to intercept the ball and toss it back to their team to start the charge. (Speaking of Cheerleaders, there are none...I thought that was odd...I guess cheer leading is an American adaptation.) A normal charge would be a series of back passes along the field with small runs and tackles in between. The cool thing about the game that really keeps it moving is that if you are tackled to the ground you have to immediately release the ball. This makes the action go on forever. Only until there is a penalty, out of bounds, or score does the action ever stop.

So, basically, a 40 minute half , 10 minute halftime, and another 40 minute half and it was done. It all went so very very quickly. Baseball, kills me with how long and boring it is - 3 hours plus. Football can be the same way, so many stops in play for commercials and timeouts, boring! Rugby never stops...just play...except penalties. Those stink. Most of them were because of people coming into the side of a scrum...or whatever...its is when someone gets tackled and you can only enter the pile from behind, not from the side. So, the team in control normally charges their own tackled man, from behind, flipping him over his head to reveal the ball under him which they grab as if they were in some sort of violent Easter egg hunt and toss it back like a hot potato...it is quite amusing.

When the game ended we decided to hang out and wait for the crowd to dissipate so we had another Guinness. After that we headed for the buses to the train station, but we stopped along the way to visit Darren's Tombstone, which he had mentioned all day and I had no idea what he was talking about. I thought maybe we were going to tip toe through a graveyard to find a tomb labeled with his name or something, but apparently, the stadium was raising funds by selling of 7x7 inch squares of ground around the whole stadium. His finance had bought him one for his 40th birthday and this was his first time seeing it. So, after about 5 minutes of looking, we found it and took a couple pictures of him lying on the ground next to it (on Jess' cell phone, so I don't have it) and then headed for the buses to the train station. We got home about an hour or so later and met up with Teri and Makenna at Jess & Fran’s house.