Day 3 - Hatsy's take

Hi all,

An eventful Wednesday as described by resident wordsmith, Nicholas Andreou...

The four cows that live in the barn beside Rad and my bedroom let us know it was time to start our day.  I’ve named them Bertha, Mary and Betty.  I offered Rad the option to name one of the cows, he chose “Frank”.  Rad assured me that he knows that cows are female.

The restored barn that we live in has two bedrooms, massive exposed termite munched beams, bathroom, kitchen and a Shane that lives on a couch.  We wake him for meals.

I had loved rowing with the boys of the previous two days on the Henley course.  Henley for rowers must be like Mecca for the Muslims, Graceland for Elvis fans and a 24 hour gym for Angelo.  Unlike the rest of the crew, the last time I was in Henley was about 7 years ago, I was hung over and bitterly disappointed that the local lass at the Angel pub had not responded to my praises about the improved state of British dentition.

Imagine a river, with manicured lawns on flat broad banks, where serene white people lounge on polished wooden yachts that cruise quietly by.  Think of miles and miles of marquees all with wide vertical blue and white stripes on their external walls. Think of polite stewards, perfectly dressed, assisting you to find your boat, gently moving commoners off the pontoons and picking up leaves that have strayed onto magazine cover perfect rose bushes.  Was I in rowing heaven?  Where was the Rowing Victoria salute of “Power House! Power House! Check your boat Power House!  Yellow Card! Yellow Card for delaying Melbourne Uni!”?  Ah this was bliss.

You may have read about the issue of the boat equipment.  You’ll recall that the boat was delivered without seats.  We had to borrow some seats, which we initially thought were for our boat, but turned out to be someone else’s.  Conrad volunteered to play dumb if asked about the seats.  I knew we had our best man on the job.

Before we headed off for our drive down to the course, we had our breakfast.  Breakfast involves the following ritual.  I’m usually awake first, replying to emails and making phone calls to Melbournians just about to end their working day.  Conrad gets up and attaches himself to the coffee plunger.  He will not release the coffee plunger until about 30 seconds before departure for the course at which time he will take with him a mug of coffee...  his 5^th for the morning.  Drew will wake up, ask how everyone slept, ask how they are feeling today, try to clean a spot on the bench to prepare some breakfast and then ask if anyone would like some toast.  I’ve already had a bowl of cereal because I know that if you don’t eat before Shane gets up, you may not get to eat.  This man has the ability to inhale cereal.  

A knock at the door.  It’s Tora, our host, she’s the farmer’s daughter.  More about her later.  We open the door, she sees the breakfast scene, she has bowl of farm fresh eggs, steps back and with outstretched arm hands them to us.  The look on her face tells me she wished she’d kicked the bowl under the door and ran like an apprentice zookeeper on lion feeding duty.

We bundle into the car, and Drew’s skills as a former ambulance driver are evident.  Patient, careful and economical.  Everything I wouldn’t be with a hire car.  Shane utters something about the morning’s training session, numbers spew out of him, I don’t really listen unless he says any number above 36, then I panic.  Drew listens carefully and I can tell from the intonation in his voice that he is taking what Shane is saying very seriously.  We trundle along narrow country roads, dodging tractors, passing places that have names that have been pulled out of Wind in the Willows.  Conrad and I are in the back of the car, he removes his lips for just a second from the coffee mug to say something along the lines of “yeah.. nah... Mckenzie-Mcharg... er... yeah...2008 nationals...Drew Ginn... yeah nah” before mercifully putting his lips back on the mug.

We arrive at the course.  The car numbers are building up and we are parking progressively further from the course.  We walk out to the boat.  It’s missing the seats.  Disaster.  I was so keen to have another row on that course I was prepared to surgically attach wheels to my arse.  We walk the course instead as Drew has organised for a courier to deliver the seats to our farm house.  There’s a headwind that is making me cringe.  None of us say it, but we’re all looking for coxless fours on the river.  We want to know the form.  None are out that we can see during our walk.  The course seems to take forever to walk.  Shane and Drew walk ahead, deep in conversation about the wind, the currents, the atmospheric pressure and the position of the moon.  Rad and I talk about lawn mowers and associated grass maintenance equipment the whole way back.

Back at the farm, the seats finally arrive by courier.  A meal of scrambled eggs for lunch.  Conrad has some more coffee.  We discovered last night that Conrad has anaphylaxis to fish.  Fortunately he told us before we tucked into Drew’s (now) famous tuna risotto.  I was dubious about his claim as it appeared to extend to ‘...and that foreign stuff, you know... chinese and curries and stuff’.

Back at the course and we put the seats into our Italian made boat.  The seat are white.  How Italian.  Out on to the course.  I had for the previous two days been rowing on bow side.  Not my usual side, but I have ability on both sides.  Not because of any great design, but simply because I forgot which side I rowed on 10 years ago and have been swapping around ever since.  The consequence however is known to rowers.  Your hands turn into something that someone with leprosy would flinch at.  I had taped my hands up but with no luck.  They were leaking and I was scaring small children.  When it was determined that I was to give my hands a rest, I was put into the stroke seat.

Well my friends, it was like been handed the keys to the Maserati.  Because once inside the boat, the coffee addict, the fastidious risotto maker and Darwin’s missing link are formidable generators of rowing power.  I could hardly contain my childish grin.  

There was a headwind and the brains trust had reduced the length of the oars from 377cm to 376cm.  The warm up was steady, but the tail wind was letting us know that we would have our work cut out for the trip down the course.  At the starting line.  The plan was a start and do a 30 stroke piece.  Out of the blocks at around 40 strokes per minute, we continued and settled at about 38 strokes per minute.  At each finish, like the compression stroke of a steam engine, a hiss would come out of Shane and the boat launched.  I was blinking back the tears of joy.  I was lost in the moment and forgot to end the piece and we went hammer and tong for about 60 odd strokes.  I kinda knew it was wrong, but this was Henley.  We settled at 29 strokes per minute.  The Temple Island started to shrink into the distance.  The wind played havoc, from headwind to head cross wind.  The gods were testing Drew who was in charge of the strings.  I didn’t care.  When I wanted 31 strokes per minute into a headwind, I got 31 strokes per minute.  If I wanted 29, or 30 or anything really, the engine obliged.

We lined up again, out of the blocks at 40 odd and settled at 29 strokes per minute.  We had already done some work into the head wind on the first trip and the wind was no different this time round.  After about 1200 meters I thought of the hire car.  If I was going to hand the keys back to Shane at the end of this trip, I was going to make sure I had got some value out of it.  I didn’t care what the insurance excess was going to be.  So, up the rating went.  Anyone sensible would realise that a higher rating makes everyone work, including the stroke, but I was happy and ready for an early grave.

We returned the boat to its rack.  I was laughing on the inside.  I played it cool.  Drew could see though it all.  The change rooms are an experience.  The shows are cold.  Cold showers in England.  For such a civilised people, this was a streak of sadism that I was not expecting.  Shane had jumped into the showers the day before and in so doing stared at me and yelled “I am Spartacus! I am Spartacus!” whilst beating his chest.  I had backed away slowly, nodding, turned on my heel and ran.

We returned home.  Tora was working.  She works 7 days a week.  We were all like school kids with a crush on the teacher.  We peered out the kitchen window.  Tora could drive tractors.  She could actually drive 3 different types of tractor.  Tora had a handshake that could crush quartz.  Tora rolled up her sleeves, picked up chickens with one hand and pushed 1500kg cows out of the way with the other.  We were certain she was interested in our rowing war stories.  We were boys on tour and loving it.  We needed to get all our best lines in before Sam arrived.  

Drew and Conrad picked up Sam from the airport.  Despite 22 hours of flying, Sam still managed to get us all smiling.  I’ve cooked lentils tonight.  Conrad mentioned his interest in fibre and in lentils.  I’ve offered to swap bedrooms.  With anyone.  Including Frank the Cow.

Hatsy over and out.  Till next blog rotation.

Rad's next.  Be ready!  Drew