28 March, 2008

Oysters and the The Tube


At the beginning, The Tube, London's Underground metro system, was awesome. It was a lot clearer and easier to pick up on than the UBahn and SBahn systems in Berlin, and I'd say I picked it up quicker even than the one in Barcelona. Plus, we got this Oyster Card deal thing at the airport on the way in that we put 10 pounds on and it would last for 48 hours, at which point we'd simply reload it...


WRONG! That Oyster died probably in 12 hours or so. Why? Because its so flippin sensitive. We saw locals just touching their wallets to the readers, a lot like CUIDs at Clemson, and naturally expected ours to work the same way. Nope, we were actually supposed to touch the entire surface of the card itself to the reader, or it was taking 2 pounds away from our 10 each time. ALSO, you have to touch the reader to get onto the platforms AND to leave the station every time...or another 2 pound deduction. With all of this, we were oysterless pretty fast, and The Tube became more frustrating than awesomely easy to navigate. I mean, really, 8 U.S. dollars for one ride?! Get outta here. At least we recovered quickly and minimized the damage with the next 10 pounds...


In other news, Clemson flopped early in the dance, kinda disappointing. But UNC is holdin well for the ACC, pretty much flooring everyone in their path. Kansas / UNC most likely coming up soon, doesn't get much better than that, LOVE THIS GAME!

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