Last Wednesday, I listened to Paul Wilcox speak at the Rose Cafe on the Transatlantic Series. I went into the event questioning why I signed up to listen to a talk about a sporting event when I have zero interest in sports. I was pleasantly surprised that I could relate to the talk, for while it was about sports, it also was about cultural exchange. I find it fascinating to consider the fact that there were groups of American college students in the late 1800s, many of them from Cornell, who were getting on a boat and traveling across the Atlantic. Nowadays, this does not seem as big of a deal, since traveling to England only requires less than a day of flying by plane, but back then this was a major commitment. Traveling across the Atlantic took days, and there still was the return trip. This seems like it was a massive endeavor for a group of college students, just for a track and field meet. This idea of an international sporting event was quite new at the time–not even the Olympics had started yet–and it seems astonishing to me that such an event could be pulled off during this time. The fact that this tradition has been able to remain for so long–as well as the fact that there were those willing to put in the effort to have this event back in the time before airplanes–suggests that the chance to actually experience a different culture was worth the effort.