Day 1

After an extremely long flight, some focused sleeping, and Ian excessively sweating on the plane, we successfully arrived at the airport in Glasgow, prepared for action. However, we had other business to attend to (i.e. waiting for other teams and giving Kiera the caffeine needed to put up with us). So, one trip to Starbucks and a Bacon Butty later (along with several kilt sightings) we were ready to roll.

Ten minutes later, every person on the coach was asleep.

When we arrived at the Museum of Rural Life, we immediately learned several important things, such as the fact that 7-up is available in the United States (Ian, we're looking at you) and that paisley patterns originated in the Scottish town of Paisley. We hiked to the museum's demo farm, where we met Jim the calf and got to see a wild piglet escape attempt. After we looked around the museum and Julia came within inches of beginning her novelty pencil sharpener collection, we were shuffled back to the bus for our next stop.

Ten minutes later, we were all asleep again, despite our best efforts.

After several "detours," we eventually made it to Alex Park and Sons' dairy farm, Patterson Holsteins. Upon meeting the farmer and hearing his Scottish accent, we promptly decided that he would be our first souvenir, with his tiny, rock-obsessed Jack Russell terrier as our fallback option. He showed us around his 250-cow dairy, which houses all his stock, from calves to dry cows, in one building. We found it interesting that he only needs about 50 replacement heifers per year because his pasture-feeding operation is so self-sufficient. He also keeps his silage trenches inside a building due to the strong winds that come from his close proximity to the coast.

We then proceeded to the hotel, where we relaxed for several hours before dinner, where we tried several dishes that we can neither spell nor pronounce and learned that Courtney gags in the presence of discolored carrots. We had an intense debate about Oreos, then called it a day, even though it stays light until 11:00pm here.

--Dysfunctional, but it works