Recently, I went on a road trip to Cambridge. The train ride, as with the one to Salisbury, was terrific. Rolling English countryside, lush as hell, a man in a windbreaker and golfing hat riding a bicycle on a dirt track through a meadow. I would have killed to freeze time and morph instantly into an impressionist. Mesmerizing sight - or would have been, had it not been grim as death and wet as a nipple (don't ask me how I made that simile up, I have no idea).
Anyway, Cambridge - the town and the colleges - was truly wonderful. The history in those old walls, witness to the rise and fall of empires, churches, men and ideas. To know men from Newton to Laurie (!) walked these cobbles. That Harvard left his legacy to model an institution like this one. That horny young undergrads are still bonking just the other side of the centuries-old wall. Right.
For once I almost regretted some life decisions, and (almost) wished I had gotten some of my education in an institution like this. Kidding aside, it was almost sublime to feel such history all around.
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