rowingMy club at Basel Head this year, edited by Lord F. A totally shitkicking video.
OMG
The STUFF going down in the boatrace right now. Nearly decapitated a human being - that would have been a fucking trophy. Violent sport this, not all lycra and bollinger!
Liveblogging the Oxford/Cambridge Boat Race
- Still sleep deprived beyond description.
- Sitting with rowing homies, watching from the comfort of student sitting room rather than freezing it out on miserable damp bank. Supporting Oxford - Davidson was our prez two years ago.
- Mutiny on the Bounty?!
- No significantly less drama.
- Jess: 3 x Olympic silver medallists? Try harder babe.
- THE MOST ARYAN MAN IN BRITAIN IS NOW ON SCREEN.
- DORNEY!!!! Too windy to be an airfield. Let’s put a rowing lake there.
- Low tide lol.
- Town buoy? It’s the fucking black buoy. So called cos it’s death. DEATH. And, also, it’s blaaack.
- Why are you wearing a bow tie?
- Yes. More alcohol. More hilarious lifejackets.
- YES. GO ALEX GO. He also has fucking cliffs in his hands. Seriously.
- Yes. That is a fucking good reason not to lose (cos then you will have wasted the last six years of your life.)
- Bus at 4:30 in the morning the river? yuss.
- Davson vs THE WOLF MAN
Rowers at Play; Jas wearing the social tour t-shirt i designed.
Serious shit is going down tomorrow
There’s an entry in my planner reading ‘MISHA COLLINS UP IN HERE Y’ALL, RAISING YOUR SHIT FROM PERDITION SINCE WAY BACK WHEN.’ And then ‘Castiel’ in Enochian.
Also my last tutorial of undergrad. Ever. Fuck, that combined with the audience in the Hunger Games just makes me feel fucking old. I’m also getting sentimental in my old age - I was involuntarily moved to tears at one point in the film. It was a perfect Ackle’s OPT. I was embarrassed.
Thank God by about 1739 (we’re getting the train at 1737) I will be heinously drunk on the way to Birmingham with my crew buddies, on Rowing Social Tour. This state of drunkenness will continue until Sunday, at which point it will be a new world. Tumblr will have imploded. I will never have to avoid my department again. I will have a shitload of revision to do. There will be new!Misha to watch.
So it’s totally the time to play AC/DC loudly and paint my nails with UV polish.
So, Castiel returns this weekend, the Hunger Games is released
What will I be doing?
…but at least I’ll have some bomb-ass hangover watching material. Above is the graphic I designed for the social tour t-shirt…
Coxing Vet’s Head, 2012
Rocked up to Putney getting pumped, listening to Fort Minor’s Remember the Name.
Okay so not literally. Although one of my crew did ask me if I’d brought my catapult/peashooter.
Crew rocked up and were in good spirits, heading almost instantly for the bacon stall. By this point I was subsisting on caffeine and rage, as is the coxswain’s normal state pre-head race. I headed to the Rock the Boat stall and picked up the Vet’s Head 2011 t-shirt for a discount.
Lady selling the t-shirts: You know this is last year’s t-shirt, right?
Me: Yeah. I survived that one, so it’s okay to get the t-shirt.
Boated with a minimal of fuss, and rocked up to the start line feeling good. Sun was shining, the crew was nearly technically perfect for a scratch crew (a mix of a small sculling school and Cerea, Italy), I was driving a beautiful Filipi called ‘Return of the Kings’ and we were very easily taking every crew also ambling up to the start. I was like,
As usual, for a big Thames head race there was some lol!coxing, with people who had no idea that yes, you can actually tuck into the bank on the Surrey side at high tide. Massive irritation from the slow crews stuck out in the outer/middle of the inshore zone. I was all,
But managed to retain a calm demeanour. Marshalling was somewhat hilarious, but not quite as hilarious as Quintin. There was the odd mini clusterfuck, but I we began the race with a working functional rudder, so was already a step up from my last head race….
Span into the start. 
Absolutely nailed the line. Which would have been fine, except from the second to the third bridge we had the longest overtake in history from the crew behind us.
Accepted overtaking policy? Boat overtaking matches the slower boat’s line, moves up directly line astern, slower boat moves aside into slower water, faster boat in faster water breezes past, slower boat resumes previous line in faster water.
Actual practice? Crew behind us doesn’t move into our line. I move over anyway but they effectively steer parallel to us for a ridiculous amount of the race, we were so evenly matched. Very stressful steering/coxing, especially when the COXBOX UP AND DIED. I was like,
But you know, shit happens and we got on with it. At which point, the overtaking finally gets a move on, overtakes, and then FUCKING CUTS BACK INTO OUR LINE TOO EARLY, SO WE END UP SCRAPING, BOW-TO-STERN, in spite of my frantic efforts (nearly full left rudder, ‘BOW SIDE FUCKING GO LIGHT’). Self:
However. The outcome of this was they ended up getting partially span off course and into the slower water.
Them:
Them:
Which was pretty funny as a) was pretty much their fault (I will admit to not being able to get bow side to go light, as my fucking cox box was no longer for this world), and b) we could out-shout, out-rant and especially out-swear them as we had Italians on board.
However, we had more important shit to worry about. The racing line was clear.
Us:
Us:
So we hit the gas, shot Hammersmith Bridge, then had a textbook perfect overtake with Tyrian. That’s how you do it, and being overtaken by UL old boys?
We then spanked it all the way to the finish. The rain even held out until the end. Most amusingly, the boat that overtook us so crappily had fuckall idea about the racing in line, cutting that fatal corner at Fulham. It looks tempted, with the finish in sight, but the water over there is DEAD compared to actually following the stream. You can see crews murdered by it, and that’s pretty much what happened to them, I think - although by this point had head in the boat, coxing the guys through the wind-up and flying finish. Whoop whoop.
…in the interim of writing this post, results have gone up. We unfortunately DID get spanked by the crew that overtook us so badly, but on the other hand we spanked the crew we set out to (think old grudge), moved up six places from our start position and came in the top half of our category, with a scratch crew and no cox box. Boom.
All in all? Good fun, would do again.
Ed, Joe and Jack looking happier on the row back. First VIII.
Second VIII shooting Hammersmith Bridge
Daniel, Ollie, David and Elliott on row back from HORR 2012.
