With that said, we have now learned why so few coxswains seem to exist in England forcing the rowing of coxless boats such as pairs, straight fours, and sculling boats. Coxswains have a special pre-practice dock duty to perform while the rowers warm up. Enjoy the photos of Emily and Jess embracing this British custom! When in Rome....
We thought we had it bad at the DRC. They have Canadian AND Egyptian geese here!
I'll conclude with few photos of the course and the boats:
MARY HESLER - Class of 2012
Today was our second day rowing on the Thames River. I woke up with 15 minutes until our meeting at 7:30 (having only one cellphone and therefore one alarm has not worked out so well for me). I managed to grab a bite to eat before hitting the road with the rest of the eight to get down to the boathouse. I was the last one out the door but we still managed to make it there with some time to spare. Unfortunately two of our rowers in the eight came down with food poisoning and got little to no sleep last night and one of which could not row. Change of plans, we had to go out in a seven. As we were discussing plans for the day with Coach Steele, Coach flinched, grabbed his ear and explained he was "bit by a bee". I've never known bees to bite, sting maybe, but I've never seen somone get stung just standing there doing nothing to harrass it. I never even saw a bee around him, but I guess it decided that coach's ear needed a new piercing. I came to learn that bees do sting, they don't bite. I, being the closest person at the time, removed the stinger. It's safe to say coach probably doesn't want comments on his inflamed left ear, but let me tell you, I don't think it was a good look for him. After the drama of the morning, we moved our bowman up in the eight and rowed up and down the race course by sixes and fours in our uneven boat. As we were rowing, the bowman, now seven seat, noticed that beads of droplets coming in through the seam in our rented Resolute. This is common for boats that have seams. Most of the time the leak can be fixed by smearing a good amount of vasaline on the seam and bolting the seam back together. What's not so common is having a team that randomly carries vasaline around with them. When we came back for our second practice, our coach asked our coxswain whether any of us, in the four or the eight had vasaline on them. Surprisingly enough, none of us had vasaline with us. As for practice, coach decided to join our eight in bow and row with us for the second practice as our seven seat still was feeling under the weather. That meant I, as two seat, had to row perfectly as my coach was directly behind me and could see every move I made. It was awful. Actually, it wasn't that bad. Until we did starts. Oh boy, did Coach Steele not like our start. We started with our normal start we've done all season long.. but he couldn't get it right. I thought I was going to lose a kidney with those starts. So he changed our start. No, it wasn't all due to the fact he couldn't remember our start, but it seemed that way. He was pleasantly surprised with our power and not too ashamed of our set so all in all, I think we passed that test. He on the other hand may have not passed ours.. though. I don't think that Emily liked him giving demo's to the four taking random strokes when she's trying so hard to steer a straight course all the way down the river. That pretty much wrapped up our day of rowing in a nutshell. Now we have a fun row to Reading up ahead of us. We should have some good stories from that trip too
FOR DAY 2 (YESTERDAY) PLEASE VISIT THE END OF THE FIRST POST (Grand Adventure Begins).
I did not create a seperate page for yesterday's blog. Sorry if you missed it.
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