It has been rather quiet around here recently. That's due to a combinations of Summer, Work and Rowing. The latter has culminated in the annual festival called "Cambridge town bumps" and the answer is up three, which is a decent result in the first division. Not quite blades, because we stuffed up Thursday, but who knows we might not have caught Tabs 2 anyway.
The full wildly exciting story - which I'll spare you - is told in posts on the club blog for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
Briefly: after a good winter and a spring training camp in Sabaudia our M1 was shaping up well, winning Press Head in June, IM3 at Peterborough (we'll gloss over Marlow) and second only to Tabs 1 in the Time Race; in particular beating Tabs 2.
We started 12th, with Nines 2 ahead of us; they had bumped us, unexpectedly, in a rainstorm on the last Friday. But this year both they and we were different crews. Behind us were Robs 3, who were really Leys Lysander, usually decent. The first night is weird, because you've got little idea of relative speeds. But all was well; we caught them on First Post fairly painlessly off a fast start with Robs nowhere. Since Nines were slightly up on Tabs 3, Wednesday was expected to be easier. But it wasn't, we didn't get them until Grassy; there's a bowcam video if you're interested. Thursday was back to uncertainty, because City 2 were unknown to us, and presumed to be good. We closed to within a foot at Ditton but we'd used up a lot of energy rowing somewhat messily in their wash, and didn't take the corner well, so they escaped; that was the end of our dream of blades. Friday was mostly a repeat of Thursday, except we rowed more tidily and didn't stuff up the corner, and so caught them not far past the top of the Reach. Relive the excitement below.
We were: James Tidy (cox); Me (stroke), Dan McGreal, Matt Woodthorpe, Conor Burgess, Simon Lloyd, Steve Penson, Brian Stevens, Keith Lee (bow).
And Tabs 2? We will never know. Next year a different us will try against a different them.
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Chesterton M1?
"Let's get rid of the lot," Paul Callaghan said. "Let's get rid of all the predators — all the damned mustelids, "
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/25/487362815/by-2050-new…
Not bad. You've presumably got enough blades for a crew of your own by now :-)
I applaud your sport. So much more tasteful than loading you, your family, and your pets into a huge, fast, fossil fuel powered boat and motoring up and down the river, oblivious to the noise, pollution, and destruction you are causing. Or the "sport" of riding Harley Davidsons. Deafening yourself and annoying your neighbors is an activity with a lot of appeal to the adolescent brained and criminals. But what can we do about such ridiculous excesses? Not much, it would appear. The system seems to have a severe need to collapse in upon itself like a rotten pumpkin before we can make any progress against such foolishness.
So, in the mean time, go,man, go!