Unfortunately no one was able to win my proposed upgrade contest. Although the flight stewardess nearly won by moving me to a row of empty seats with an extensive amount of leg room right behind first class.
The video posted above was a project I started basically mid-Atlantic. It’s really all thanks to Air Canada (being in my opinion one of the best airlines to fly) for having outlets on the plane which basically allowed me to use my laptop for the entire flight over. I just started collecting some footage and was progressively adding it to the video at each connection through to Erba. More will be added but unfortunately due to upload speeds I’m not sure how long the full 2 min video will take to post, so here’s a preview for now.
Upon arrival we were greeted with the familiar faces of the hotel staff who always seem delighted by our return. The men’s eight, lightweight men’s double, and coxed pair who train under Mike Spracklen, have already been in Erba for over a week and as a result were settled in and heading out to practice. The rest of us had the usual unnecessarily long jet leg induced attempt at rigging to overcome. Highlights include: Four starboard backstays for the lightweight men’s four, a lost steering post wing nut off the heavy men’s four requiring a 5 man search party through the grass, and a blade heist from the men’s pair. Regardless, most of the work was complete and the crews set out for the most miserable jetlagged 4km row that will ever be endured on this trip. Upon which the fallouts of the typically sub par rigging started to emerge. Highlights from this row included: collars 3 cm off from the port and starboard blades of the heavy double, and a backstay shooting off the bow seat of the lightweight four.
As always, I now return to sleeping most of the day because though its 1pm here it’s really 4 am where I’m used to being.
