There he was. I haven't thought about him since my childhood, and even then, I never thought I'd ever come face to face with him. Never thought I'd come face to face with a legend. A man who built a dream. A man who took science and played god.
A man who would spare no expense.
Who is it you ask? We'll get to that later in the day. We're going to Tarantino it. The suspense will kill you.
I voluntarily got back together with the majority of the UWSP International Programs travel group, despite the fact that towards the end of the two week continental tour, I was not looking forward to traveling with that large group again. But it was a Friday, I had off work, nothing to do, and Cambridge sounded like a splendid little day trip. So, after about an hour and a half drive we made it to one of the world's first college towns.
Every building looks like a different section of the Hogwarts campus, beautifully ornate buildings with immaculately well kept grassy knoll courtyards surrounded by the four wings of a particular college. This grass is no ordinary grass. It is privileged grass. Only professors of Cambridge can walk across it, making those tiny blades educated sacred ground.
My understanding is that there is somewhere around 20-30 different colleges as a part of Cambridge University. Each college has it's own name, symbol, subject of study, great hall (for dining and socializing), flag, and each has their own dorm-like building that serves as both living quarters and small group class sessions.
As nifty as it was learning about a University that I am no where near smart enough to go to, my favorite part of this town was the gondola-like punts that slowly floated up and down the Cam river. We rented one and piloted ourselves around, seeing this lovely little town of about 100,000 from a completely different view.
Mike, Chad, Michelle, Shannon, and I wove ourselves through the river on the punt. When I first heard that you can pilot one of these bad boys on your own, I envisioned a row boat. I was pleased to find out, however, that we got to take the same boats that we saw the guided tours taking. The only way to maneuver them is with a 15 foot pole that is used to push off the bottom to propel oneself and dragged behind to rudder in any one particular direction.
Right off it was a bit of a challenge getting the punt headed in the direction I wanted it, but a few meters down river and I had the hang of it. The other guys in the punt didn't quite have the same experience I did and we simply spun in circles. We wanted to make it back within our one hour time limit so we wouldn't have to pay more, so I took the helm again so we could get back in time. All that summer camp canoeing paid off.
As did all those voice lessons. Since I was standing on the back of a boat with a long pole steering people down a sexy little river, I felt it most appropriate to sing whatever oratorio or art song came to my head to complete the gondolier persona. I also gave an amazing tour full of fun facts that couldn't have been further from the truth and came to me just as fast as I was saying them.
We walked around a bit, did some shopping at a sweet flea market where I found a Waupaca police patch! For those of you who don't know, Waupaca is a town in Wisconsin and here I am finding a patch from there in Cambridge. As we walked we also found an Irish piper named Dicky Deegan:
I still count my blessings for seeing the legend. At first no one believed me, said it just looked like him. But it WAS him. John Hammond, billionaire tycoon who built Jurassic Park....well, the actor who played him at least. His name is Richard Attenborough, and had I known his name at the time, I would have ran up to him and asked for a picture. But I didn't know. I just knew him as John Hammond, the man who harnessed DNA from mosquitos to create dinosaurs on an island off the coast of Costa Rica. Since I didn't know him name, I had to suffice for the candid picture:
I also didn't wanna disturb the walk he was having with what looked like a wife and son.
Here he is close up, Mr. JP himself. I first saw him earlier in the day as we were on a guided walking tour. We popped into the King's College Cathedral and were seated while the guide told us about some centuries old graffiti on the walls in the church. I, on the other hand, was way to occupied with this man who looked like John Hammond.
My friends all doubted me, until we saw him again in the street, and one said, "hey is that the guy you're talking about?"
"Yes it most certainly is," I replied, and I ran to get the picture. Later that day when we got home, Chad IMdb'ed Jurassic Park and we found out that Mr. Attenborough was born and raised in Cambridge. Yes it was most certainly him that we saw.
We finished our day with an Evening Sung done by the boys choir of King's College. Incredible. I even got a seat right behind the choir and was reading the music over their shoulder and becoming immersed in their sound as I felt like a member of the choir. They did an absolutely unreal Tavener piece called Magnificant and Nunc dimittris Collegium Regale. Simply brilliant.
A lovely day in Cambridge.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment