A long way from home

Today's trendy trend is to 'Go Green!' whereby you're saving the planet through, for instance, counting your food's carbon footprint, or working in darkness. Some people though go even further than this in the name of saving the world.

This weekend, Jon, a good friend of mine from back in Penzance really went one further. Not content with all the usual methods of transport he determined that he'd come to Cambridge, from Norwich, on his bike. Not a motorbike, but a bicycle. 75-odd miles on a bicycle. Again; that's 75-odd miles. On a bicycle. Yes, it's pretty flat, but still, 75-odd miles. Madness.


Granted, I think it was more in the name of saving money than the world, and I'm not sure how many tonnes of carbon-dioxide he saved, nor how many calories he burned off, but whatever the final count, undeniably it was a pretty amazing effort. It took him just over 7 hours to cover the distance. But perhaps most amazing of all was that he could still walk yesterday evening and today.

I've been back at Cambridge for three-weeks now, not that it really feels like it, but most of the time has been spent in the library reading this and that, and understanding this but not that. So it was good to be able to take a complete break from things and have at least part of the weekend off from this studying lark.

After a well-deserved, and personally much-missed, Cornish pasty on Saturday for lunch we spent the rest of the day wondering around Cambridge before coming back to cook dinner and spending the evening playing pool and indulging in a bit of Nintendo Wii action. I learned the hard way that it's quite depressing to be beaten, at midnight, at Wii Tennis, by someone who got up at 6am and cycled 75 miles earlier in the same day. Today saw a further wander as a build up to the (in)famous Selwyn brunch, some real-life bowling (where needless to say, I was again beaten), before Jon took the train back to Norwich. No more cycling today.

It's odd how it's tempting to divide friends into 'Uni-Friends' and 'Home-Friends', as after all, aren't they essentially the same? Supposedly the friends we make at University are the friends we'll have for the rest of our lives, and I certainly don't doubt that. When you're living around people for three years you really do get to know people on a different level to the way you knew people in school. Jon on the other hand is certainly a home friend, but I've known him since I was 11, and a further 11 years since must count for something. The same goes for other friends from home. At the end of the day I think the University versus Home friends thing is a false dichotomy. Friendships aren't about geography. It doesn't matter how, or where, or when you know someone. What really matters is why you know them.