This evening and tomorrow morning will mark the first real 24 hour period of rest we've gotten in over a week. I could probably go back and figure out if we had 24 hours off from rowing or not between our last practice in the States and our first practice here in London, but the reality is that the travel and processing, while fun, was anything but restful!
Today was definitely the nicest day we've had here so far - I think the fact that this "summer" has been miserable even by English standards has been pretty well publicized, but to be honest we've really lucked out the past few days, with very little rain, and today was as nice as it's been. We even needed our sunglasses for our morning row, and Nick may have been spotted in a tank top. This morning was a good session, somewhat harder work than we've done yet over here (the exact nature of which won't be posted online but it isn't really that interesting anyway) with Volp's other children, the heavy pair. Then the afternoon off and tomorrow morning as well before we get back to it.
It's starting to become noticeably more crowded here, although the volunteers, police officers, and soldiers (paratroopers today with red berets and jump wings) still seem to far outnumber the athletes. However the morning bus to the course (they run hourly) is now not one but two, and both full. Additionally, we have a few new arrivals to our section of the boat storage area. All the smaller boats (1 and 2 people) are kept in one "forrest" of boat racks, to the left of the boathouse, and the 8's are stored in the boathouse itself. The 4 person boats (men's fours, heavy and light, and men's and women's quads) are stored to the right of the boathouse. Up until this morning, it had been just our hull with the USA women's quad to keep it company, but the Greek heavy four, Chinese light four and women's quad, and South African light four all showed up today. Maybe there will be a race here next week after all!
This afternoon we ventured on the bus to near-by Staines, 2.5 miles east of the village, to go see the most recent Batman film. It was a bit pricey (11 GBP for a ticket? In Oklahoma they go for $4...) but definitely worth it to just get out of the village and relax a little bit. Reviews were generally positive, though not ecstatic. Most criticism was directed at the opening ads - the 4:20 movie didn't start til 5:00, and there were only 4 trailers. The rest was other advertising. Then a bus ride back to the village (the driver must have thought he was Mario Andretti) for a late dinner. We're all looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow.
That's all from London - enjoy your afternoons!
-Will
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