On the supply of sweet flats we can afford

Joyous tidings, o readers. Stephanie has arrived at last and has brought many exciting presents, including a gallon of Maine maple syrup. Truly a worthy wife and I am strongly leaning towards another contract year extension.

Last night we enjoyed the delights of the Golden Hind. Unfortunately when asking for a table for two I orientated my upraised fingers in the wrong direction, telling the proprietor to go fuck himself.

Today I worked for a couple of hours on a phenology paper and then we went and checked out a new flat in Finsbury. Very very nice but on a really busy corner in a borderline scallywaggly neighborhood. It was lovely but we passed, and then re-checked out the other flat in Crouch End. Also nice, but totally unfurnished with single pane windows in a somewhat remote part of London. So we're still holding off. Then we drank beer, went to the British museum where Stephanie became bored in a perhaps record time of 10-15 minutes. I then navigated us to a cider-oriented pub where I had a 7.3% room temperature, cloudy, sharp, and a bit funky cider. Great. I am thinking that the cider is better than the beer for the most part.

How professor random fails to enjoy flat-hunting

I met another idiot agency fool, dressed all in black, gold bling everywhere, and he showed me this utter steamer right on King's Cross Road in what appeared to be a landlocked version of the Camden-canal open air drug market. Filthy hallway, dingy interior, etc. Then he asked me how I liked it and I said not much he said why. Why! WTF? Like he couldn't see it! I think the constant glimmering from his baubles had putrefied the brain. I didn't shoot anything there but here's some of what I've seen ....

This one was totally sweet. Weird, which professor random always likes. Interior was hot, except the bathtub shower was built in a way guaranteed to generate mold and I think I'd have to do my business on the toilet sideways. It's also way out of budget.


Then there was this which is really close to work and not too hideous for a new build. But I still hated it

I suppose that the truth of the matter is that even though I knew intellectually that our housing would be a lot worse than in Logan, now that I'm faced with it, the prospect is quite depressing.

Hideous day looking for a flat

I went over to the Camden office of Black Katz as they're supposed to be fairly good agents for apartments. This guy Caley took me around to maybe six flats, all of which were absolute rot except for this one, which is a really tiny one bedroom with a nice kitchen/lounge area. Almost no space for guests, which would bite.

Caley is a good agent I think and knows the properties - a seemingly vanishing talent with people renting out apartments, but he is a bit high strung/ADD and drives like a maniac. At stop lights he alternately slams on the brakes, hits the gas, advances 2-3 cm, repeat. Then I cycled to Islington, found an agent listing a flat I'll see tomorrow near King's Cross, was nearly deafened by road construction, almost hit by a cement mixer, got stuck behind a reeeeking trash truck for two blocks, made another appointment to see flats at 10:30 tomorrow, rode back to Nature, found out I'd made my first f'up (not too bad I think), worked till six, rode back to Camden/Black Katz, saw another flat which was really nice only no opening windows and a totally f'd up bathroom floor, walked back to my bicycle, rode back to the flat, carried the bike upstairs, frantically searched the apartment for the swipe key to Nature that I thought I'd lost, found it, and now am writing this blog entry.

Here are the fish and chips I ate two nights ago.


I had a long discussion today with other Nature editors about the safety, or lack thereof, induced in a population of bicycle riders by wearing helmets. The arguments against using a helmet are that it makes you feel safer so you go faster, that helmet use creates the erroneous impression that riding is dangerous, which it is not, and that drivers treat helmet-wearers with more disdain. This last opinion has been tested a bit by real scientists and there is some evidence that drivers get closer to helmet wearers. I don't buy the experimental designs though and think that probably the only way to test this is with a video game experiment, where you have some kind of driving experience in which the streets have lots of bikers either wearing or not wearing helmets. And then the game will somehow measure the distances between cars and riders and there's your answer. At least in the video game world.

I also have some middle chest congestion coming on which is either a cold or I'm getting sick from the London air which perhaps is not cleaner than Logan after all.

Most civilized bike ride ever

Today I went out for a ride with the Central London Cycle Touring club www.centrallondonctc.org.uk. We met at Charing Cross station (I forgot my instructions on how to get there but got there ok). There were 14 people on the ride - special hint - if you have a party of four travelling together on UK trains, you can travel two for the price of one. We trained for maybe an hour to Etchingham and then did about 80 km on sweet British countryside roads. Think of something from a movie like Babe but then make it more idyllic with generous sprinklings of cows sheep and whatnot.

In a personally thrilling discovery - oasts. Oast is one of those crossword answers usually clued like "hop oven". They are all over Kent - where we were riding. They look like brick silos with pointy white hats. I had no idea what these things were. Asked another rider, they told me. Great to see that the most exasperating clues from NYT exist in the real world.
This also means of course that Kent produces a massive amount of hops and indeed there were trellised hops all over the place. It's good to be somewhere where beer is important. What a fine country.

We stopped for lunch at a pub - I had a pint of Harvey's and a brie ploughman's lunch. Apparently this will tend to include a blob of pickley chutney, salad, fruit of some kind, bread, and in my case brie not unlike a fine cellulosic powder lightly bound with a whispering of wood glue. Then more riding and on to tea at some castle with the national trust where the most salient point for me was a piece of tasty cake and a pot of tea. We rode on to the train station, trained back to Charing Cross, and I rode back to my flat where I now sit finishing of a disgusting bottle of Gallo red grenache. This is a stunningly terrible wine, sweet like pure sucrose. I had some of it last night at the Golden Hind - which served spectacular fish and chips for not impossible sums of money just a couple of blocks away. The owners are Greek. It seems that all chippies are run by Greeks or Italians.

It was a great day and has restored my faith in UK cycling. I'm whimsical I guess. Very welcoming people as well and a diverse group. Tomorrow I am taking the morning to look for housing. Sadly I noticed that my front tire is disintegrating and my wee bag with patch kit etc. has blown an intestine too.

First ride in London

Hmm. My enthusiasm for cycling in London is rapidly waning. I spent most of the day riding around the city - in the morning went to a bike shop and rode a sweet Pashley www.pashley.co.uk and a couple of fixed gear bikes for fun. The Pashley was beautiful but rode like a pregnant elephant on valium. Anyway I'm ok with my road bike for now. Then I went and saw an ok apartment. It was in a modernized Victorian row house and is way better than the crap new build flats - surely the surest route to suicidal tendencies for the feng shui type.

Then I realized I'd forgotten my massive fort knoxian bike lock back in the flat. So I rode all the way back there, picked up the lock, and launched out on a stoopid London loop ride. My main purpose was to check out lunch at New Tayyab (http://www.tayyabs.co.uk/) which, according to the eaters at chowhound and egullet, is the smoking-est middle eastern eatery in town. I forgot the address but thought I'd find it on Whitechapel. No such luck. Looked for half an hour - nothing. I rode over to Isle of Dogs - ravenously hungry - and ended up in a shite pub where I forced down an execrable sandwich and the unhoppiest ever IPA. WTF.

So then after almost passing out from sleep, I rode over to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich (silent W) via the freaky pedestrian tunnel under the Thames. It was odd no doubt. But I did get to see the stunning Benjamin Harrison clocks in the museum. I'd read about these clocks for years and had wanted to see them very badly so this was terrific. The clocks are astonishing, especially the wildly different scope with which Harrison approached the design.

Ok after that I had a nap and then a crap ice cream cone. Then a long and exceptionally roundabout return through the south-of-the-river streets. This is the "bad" part of London but you could probably just say way more diverse. But based on my ride back across the river, I don't see it as being a viable commute. Ugh. A bit terrifying. Perhaps worst of all, my baldass head is now covered with a disgusting black ooze of sweat and diesel particulates. Think of pureed cockroaches. Mmmm.

I also lost my trouser-holding-velco-thingies and fashioned these hot devices out of a tube carcass.

First week in London

Welcome to my London blog, about my move from Utah to London. I arrived on 14 July 2008 and Stephanie will be over in about two weeks. The purpose of the move over was to take a position as associate editor for climate science at Nature.

I arrived two hours late into Heathrow due to an overbooking of planes in Chicago. I missed the taxi that Nature had booked for me and got one on my own. Usually I would have taken the tube but I had a bike box, two huge rolling bags, and a backpack. The cab ride was $140. When I interviewed for the job back in March I of course noticed that London is expensive but the scope of things is really breathtaking. Here are prices I've come across. Pint of ice cream in a grocery store, $10; pint of beer in a pub, about $6.50; fish and chips, $30; cup of drip coffee, $4. The list could be endless but it's too depressing to contemplate. Onward!

I'm staying in a temporary accomodation in the Marleybone neighborhood. It's a fine, very small apartment. The washing machine is very thorough, taking 2 1/2 hours to run, but the dryer merely transmits a fleeting sensation of warmness to the still drenched clothes. Interesting. The flat is on the fifth floor of the building but the lift is a bit dodgy. I was stuck in it for about five minutes on my first day and discovered a strong tendency towards hysterical claustrophobia. The elevator was a bit small though.

So far the best meal I've had was pizza at the Italiano Coffee Company at 62 Goodge Street. The place crawls with people like roaches in a crumb factory but the pizza is somewhat affordable and good. They cut the pizza is a downright eccentric way - merely scoring the top with no real intention of piercing the crusty underbelly.

Bicycling is sweet. I haven't really ridden in a city since Vienna 2000. It's a bit like bumper cars where you back off at the last second. I forgot my pedals and shoes back in the states so I've been riding on these terribly embarrassing cheeseball flats. It's shocking. I'll try to get some photos coming soon.