Adventures with hair and burrs

Aaron and I went to Hungerford about a week and a half ago to collect water samples for my research. We stayed with the same lovely couple that I blogged about before.

Cows grazing next to the canal in Freeman's Marsh in Hungerford

It was a bit of a slow day, as boats are ... well ... slow (4 mph max in the canal). Also, schools were back in, so the number of boaters traveling along the canal in the middle of the day wasn't what it might have been in the middle of the summer. So whenever a boat did come along, we scrambled to get measurements taken, notes made, etc., but in the 0.5-1 hour inbetween boat sightings we sat around, Aaron mostly bored of course. After losing interest in a game of can-I-get-my-hat-stuck-in-a-tree-without-it-falling-in-the-canal, Aaron decided it would be far more fun to play darts.

So, if you're wondering how we came across a dart board in the middle of a canal in the middle of nowhere, southern England... Doubtless you've run across one of these before:You know, the velcro dart boards. The concept is the same. All you need are velcro-covered balls and a fuzzy board, right? Aaron, being ever the inventive and clever person that he is, found just that:

Velcro-Covered Ball

Fuzzy Board

After tossing 3-4 of these things in my hair, and having it whipped around by the wind, I must say my hair was a bit of a rat's nest (the picture above is actually after Aaron had started trying to remove them). So he slowly but surely removed the offensive items from my hair:

The gritted teeth really say it all. The most hilarious thing about all this is that in the first round, Aaron tried to blame the whole thing on me because I didn't take them out right away and thus the wind whipped my hair around and made it really bad. To prove his point, he went out and got ANOTHER burr, and again threw it in my hair. Then he came over right away and tried to remove it...and had just as much difficulty as he did the first time. At this point all I could do was laugh. It was actually more frustrating for him than me, since he was the one having to deal with pulling the things out of my hair. Serves him right ;-). All in all a rather hilarious experience I thought was worth sharing :-).