Last Tuesday marked two exciting milestones for me in OPIG! Not only had I been looking forward to group socials since the beginning of lockdown, but I’d never met anyone other than Charlotte in person since starting in the group in April. As such, the annual cycling pub trip was an apt introduction to several OPIG members (who are now exempt from the game I play by myself during weekly Zoom group meetings: “Guess how tall this person is in real life!”) and a chance to interact with people other than my housemates! 

The day started as one big question mark, with the sky not deciding whether to pour down torrents of rain or to provide some much-appreciated sunshine, though all is well that ends well, and the trip was on! We started at the Statistics department from where Tom expertly led us to the Fishes for pints, which I would highly recommend even just for the lovely garden! Though the event is normally a pub crawl (or so I hear), this time we decided that one pub would be enough and headed over to Port Meadow. After the trip almost got ruined by me nearly dropping my bike in the river we made it to our destination and sat around on the grass, ate some packed, socially distanced picnics and were joined by more OPIGlets! 

We decided to head back after an evening of admiring the sunset, discussing solutions to long-standing problems in structural biology (Turns out sitting on a meadow and having drinks is not the best time to attempt to solve the protein folding problem! Who would’ve thought?!), and talking about some not so academic matters like scenic cycling routes around Oxfordshire. All in all, a lovely time was had and I am very excited for the next Tour de Farce which will hopefully involve fewer pandemics and therefore more pubs!