London: Surveying and skating in Jolly Old! Summer 2014: Day 49 6/27/14 (Beast mode through breakfast, skating Hyde Park, throwing down in Hyde Park, letters pictures and The Giraffe, the London Friday Night Skate, leaving London)

The day started off at 9 AM for breakfast (which was really actually around 9:30 AM), and Shoop and I went down there and feasted on sausages, eggs, pastries, OJ, hash browns and other good foods. I had about 2 plates of food and was utterly stuffed. It was okay as I was planning to go into Hyde Park to go skating. Since yesterday we had proofread most of the paper for both advisors comments on the final draft (to fix formatting and other minor changes) and we had then submitted it, we still had to fill out and sign the e-cdr (basically submitting our final project and signing that we did this for X credits at WPI etc). So Shoop and I got the e-cdr files and then went to Shockey’s to print them out and sign them. After signing them we had finally finished IQP!!!!!!! EVERYTHING IS DONE FOR THAT! WOOT! Now the only thing that remains is to get the grade back, although I have high hopes for it. After the e-cdr Shoop went off to several different museum exhibitions around town and I walked to Hyde Park to skate around there. I skate around the entire Park for about 3 hours and even helped one newbie on blades to start skating. After that I skated back to the hotel and dodged people on the main streets around London. It was a blast. I then showered and walked over to meet Peter and Will for a letters photo (wearing our Fraternity letter shirts) and then we had Shoop join us for a few more. We then ate at the Giraffe (a restaurant nearby to Russell Square station). I had potstickers and this good chicken rodeo burger and then had to run to the station to jump on the Piccadilly line to get to the corner of Hyde Park (conveniently there is a tube stop right there). This was to meet up with the other skaters for the London Friday Night Skate. This group consists of a bunch of skaters (mainly inliners) who have skate around the streets of London on Friday nights, Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. As part of the group, there are “marshals” who stop traffic and make sure the route is safe for the large pack of around 100 people skating on the main roads. This was totally epic! We got to skate 11 miles around on the surface streets and it was beautiful weather outside. Overall everyone did pretty good in terms of speed and I was one of three people on quads out of the group (1 guy was marshal though). WE skated the first half in an hour and then took a break and skated the rest. One of the best parts was when I shot the duck down one of the steeper hills and shot past many of the people. The whole experience was definitely worth it and was the most fun I had in London (perhaps in most of IQP too). I had to tube back to the hotel and quickly pack. Then it was off to the airport on the Piccadilly line. I arrived at the airport at 12 AM for my 6 AM flight (as there weren’t any tubes after 12 AM until 6 AM). So I then derped around in the airport for 6 hours. I tried to sleep a bit, but it didn’t really happen. I did repack my one checked bag to be under 50 lbs and printed my boarding pass. Bought a ton of food at Café Nero too. Eventually made it through security after the Nazi lady at the airlines made me change my bag to fit in the stupid carry-on bag container. Ended up meeting a couple of bros heading to South Africa to longboard and talked to them all about it. They made me check my backpack into the belly of the plane in Heathrow at the gate and then went I arrived in Aalborg, they had lost both of my checked bags so I had nothing besides my phone and Brazil jacket (and passport). It was interesting. Luckily Kasper was at the airport and helped me fill out all the forms to get them to send my bags to here ASAP and they arrived today (6/29/14). So I was only without bags for a day. Overall good trip and really loved IQP work! Had a blast working with my teammates and loved working with Shoop and having him become my bro!