A Bit Of Delay

Sorry about the delay in posting but it has been a long week for me (Nick). I am the third of our crew to head off to the Motherland. I left on the Wednesday morning and arrived on the same day, one day before my birthday. I was lucky enough to leave just as the weather turned nasty. Expecting the warmth of an English summer as I walked out of Heathrow, I was glad that I was wearing pants and a jacket. Then the next two days a storm was blowing over. I guess you've got to love the English summers.

Joe looking hopeful before he starts

My last day in New Zealand started off by watching Joe smash his PB on a 2km erg by 10 seconds! It was great fun to sit back and watch. He started off well and it looked like he was going to completely own his PB but then our massive row from the day before took it's toll. He then looked like he was going to fold but managed to pick it back up in the last 500m to finish well. He definitely did a great job especially as he was spraying the sink afterwards, good on you Joe! Joe has been feeling this last week of training and during one of the particularly hard ones he said "Man, we better win at Henley because this is hard."

Joe putting everything in the kitchen sink

After this it was time to pack up the blades as the fact that we are very close to racing starts to sink in. We were lucky to get a box that could fit the blades as they are an odd size. So then they were all packed up and ready to go for me to pick up later to get them on the plane.

Beautifully packaged

This is where things have started to go awry. I got the blades freighted over because if I had walked in to the airport it would have cost me nearly $1800 to get them on my plane. Instead they were flown over separately and I was to pick them up a day or so after I had arrived. Little did I know how much of a hassle it would be to get them out the other side. I now have to get an invoice, contact a shipping agent, get customs to release our blades and then finally pick them up. Being the weekend, this hasn't quite happened so it's the first thing on my to do list for tomorrow. 

Still, that's nothing to be too worried about. I am glad to say that we are racing this weekend at the Marlow Regatta in the Senior 4x-. It will be a chance to see just where we stand before we head into a sharp block of training to get us back into sync. We are moving into our lodgings at Shiplake College on Tuesday which is going to be great. As part of our contribution to the school, we get to give some pointers to the kids and hopefully we won't steer them too far wrong.

Joe suffering after his erg

I will leave off here, the next entry shall be soon once we have rejoined and celebrated our reunion. It is a great privilege to row with this fantastic group of guys and I can't wait to get back into the boat and get it moving fast!