BUMP! dinner and eclipse! :)

yesterday was D day. we had to bump or else we wouldn't have forgiven ourselves. FaT just HAD to go down today. we needed that bump!

so here we are all ready in our brown boat to go out and kick ass! cat and emma came up with this cool little limerick for our dearest brown boat:

We don't mind the brown boat.

At least it stays afloat!

It's not really sat,

And it's heavy at that,

But stop us from bumping it won't!

everyone in the boat had their own limerick. haha evidently we had too much time marshalling at the railings. here's mine:

We all love our friend Jasmine Ho,

She really knows how to row!

She's at the seat seven,

And takes us to heaven,

By defeating all of our foe!

apparantly my name is too hard to rhyme, so that's why they all love my surname. :)

even before the race, rosie was tired. stretching out comfortably on my legs.

at the start of the race at the bottom of the lock. adrain had to push us out with his pole at the 22 sec mark. he did this awesome calculation of river currents, weights, boat weight etc and found out that we could have our best start if he started pushing us out at 22 sec to the cannon. the cannon goes at the 4 min, 1 min and start marks.

so counting down: 10, 9, 8, 7 (come forward), 6, 5, 4 (blades in and buried), 3, .... BANG!

this was taken from the FaT website. hah i love the irony of it. there u can see FaT W2 at the bank with their flag (which means that they have blades after bumping every day of bumps). at the top of the picture, there's FaT W3. and not so far behind u see US! pembroke W4 closing on on them! woopwoop! at this point i guess there must have been at least 2 whistles already. (the whistle system goes like this: if the gap between the 2 boats is 1.5 boat length = 1 whistle, 1 boat length = 2 whistles, half boatlength = 3 whistles, almost bumping = continuos blast of the horn) then after a few seconds, horn sounded and bumpity bump! :):) alrighttttttt! so now FaT are now the BOTTOM of the river ahaha! and have the humiliation of being bumped by a 4th boat. hahaha!

so we hurriedly stuck some greenery from the bank into our hair (it was the sign of bumping someone!) and on the row back, when we stopped for a rest by the peony, there was this group of school boys:

little boy: "can i touch your blade?"
me: "yea sure"
little boy touches blade with one finger, :"yay i'm famous too!" -wide grin-

hahahha

along the way further down, W2 was rowing to their start postition. everyone was so focussed cos they just had to bump once more to get a blade. peter went, "let's cheer for W2!". so we cheered up a storm. ellie (LBC) was in W2, we wanted to catch her attention the most cos we wanted to show her our greenery and inspire her too! she was so focussed she didn't even look at us but kept looking in front, then in a split second, she spotted some greenery in the brown boat and her face just changed!! it was amazinggg! haha she started like a madwoman! haha then it was back to being focussed as we got out of sight. ahhh. that was one of the best moments today!

after our race, we walked down the reach to tiger's den to watch the remaining divisions race. i think this is women's 2nd division. there was this hugeee crowd by the bank and the whole atmosphere was electrifying. ahhh i love rowing! esp bumps!

everyone loves pembroke! even the drain cover! so i couldn't resist taking this shot. hahaha. rich was walking by, he thought some one fell off her bike, then realised it was just the few of us fooling around, lying on the floor and posing. haha. the look on his face!

4th boat at boat club dinner!

"think of your animal! push with the legs!" haha peter's call around tiger's den when we were gaining on FaT. i think i was a frog. with strong legs for pushing and powering down. haha. but to pose as a frog wouldn't be so fun, so here i was some sort of scary cat. HAHA.

our lovely lower boats captains! it was maggie's birthday and it wasn't fair for her to prepare ellie's birthday present on behalf of the whole lower boats. she bought a super nice neckalce that ellie was eyeing all term and that brought her to tears. awww. so the lower boats thought of getting her her very own birthday present! awwwww. PLUS, since they are excellent fantastic LBCs, they each got a handmade PCBC pillowcover! complete with the martlet and blades (the PCBC logo!) ahhhh. sweet dreams of rowing they're going to have everyday! :)

during the dinner, LBC speech!

everyone up on their chairs! singing the PCBC song! all i can remember is the chorus which goes:

PCBC, PCBC!
PCBC, PCBC!
PCBC, PCBC!
Row on PCBC!

haha not very hard to rmb eh?

peter! our lovely cox whom we all couldn't have done without! he's such a nice guy too, always dancing and singing in the boat. :)

stern pair, rosie and me! i've been staring at the back of her head all term in the boat, and according to cat, i should know every bit of her hair now, just like how cat can recognise me from behind anywhere. hmm thinking about it, that wouldn't be so hard given i'm the chinese with the black hair! haha.

me, vikki, nicola, rosie. half of our boat!

we all knew something was going to happen at either 10.44pm or 11.20pm, depending on who was right, BBC or chris' sister. hahha. turned out none of the two was correct. and we waited in vain for the eclipse to happen...

in anticipation that the moon would disappear at any moment. all of us in black tie, waiting out in the cold. ahaha it was funny how all the boaties were there and random people just joined in to wait for the eclipse. lorna and hannah joined us. and before the end, it was too cold so everyone just retreated back to the JP. heh. gave up man, silly eclipse took too long.

ahhhh all in all, yest was FANTASTIC! i would do it all again if i could.