A Screaming Headwind and A Flightless Bird

This morning we were all introduced to Mr. Coleman's new way of waking us all up, the cowbell. After groggily stumbling out of bed with our ears still ringing, we headed downstairs to have our standard breakfast of cereals, bagels and fruit.

Now may be a better time than never to tell you more about where we are staying here in Henley-on-Thames, England. We are staying at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Coleman. For those of you familiar with the 2005 Henley trip, we are in the same place that they stayed and according to Coach Lombardi, not much has changed with the house since they left it 3 years ago. This year Mike P, and John V share a room on the third floor right across from Jim, Steve, Kyle and John S. On the 2nd floor, Kevin, Vince and Ryan share a room right next to Coaches Lombardi and Fife. Every morning at 8am sharp, one of the Colemans wake all of us up in some fashion. We also eat all 3 of our meals here with dinner being quite extravagant. Mr. Coleman informed us that normally when crews come to stay with them, they only need to serve 3 loaves of bread at dinner, but us ravenous young lads regularly consume over 6 loaves per night. 

Back to today, our 4th day in the Uk... After our breakfast we ran down to the regatta venue as we do before every practice (about a mile and a quarter?) and had a skeleton row over the course to rehearse a few different parts over the racecourse. The practice didn’t go as well as we could have hoped but we learned a lot on which to build upon before our race in the afternoon with Trinity College. After our morning practice we went back to the Coleman’s for lunch. Most of us were pretty worn out from all that we’ve been doing this week so we gave up the croquet and wiffle ball for some naps, movie watching and card-playing.

After collecting ourselves together for the evening row, we ran down to practice and prepared to race Trinity College’s Varsity 8 from Connecticut. The racing consisted of two trips “in the booms” with each trip beginning with a starting piece to the barrier and concluding with a closing piece from the mile marker on the racecourse (about 500m to go). This was a great opportunity to race a crew that was faster than us. It was a great row for us as a boat and feel like we have reached a level of speed and confidence that we had yet to feel in the U.K. After warming down past the boat tents and launching docks, we came across a distressed swimmer in the middle of the Thames in the form of a small black baby bird with a red beak and a blue head. The bird was obviously struggling to swim (it was not a water fowl as Kyle identified it). As we glided by this helpless creature some of us immediately called for the boat to stop and for us to rescue it. And so John Scanlon plucked our new friend, who would later be named Gnarles, from what would have surely been a watery grave. Gnarles fell in the care of his mother Kyle and his father Jim after we docked and his screeches during our post-practice debriefing were certainly comical. [Check out the pictures of Gnarles on our photobucket account] Sadly though, Gnarles had to be relased before we got back into the van after his transportation with us was met by much opposition and this was much to the dismay of Jim, Ryan and Kyle.

The Coleman’s were out for the day as they were attending their son’s wedding in London. But luckily for us, the Coleman’s friend prepared a dinner of lasagna topped off with apple pie for dessert. After dinner, we just hung around watching movies and playing cards some more.

Thanks to everyone for all their continued support.

Love,
The Boys