Individuals can
and do make a difference, but it takes a team to really mess things up. - Unknown.
Another busy couple of weeks but thought I’d try and get a
quick blog post done on progress against challenge No. 5 participate in a team
sport. I have been offered chances to play a bit of 5 a side football and other
fairly common activities for blokes of my age in order to fulfil this one but
have been turning them down on the basis that I’ve done these sorts of things
before (with varying levels of success) and it would be a little bit too
familiar. I have also been asked about joining a mixed netball team at work
which I’m still planning on having a try at (before anyone else makes any comments,
I will NOT play said game wearing a gym skirt!!) but in the mean time I had a
chance to practice a bit of team work whilst on a break in the Lake district
with Laura, Scott, Saqwindar, John and Abbey.
Me and Scott needed a couple of days to recover from the
race we’d done at the start of the week away so we had the idea of catching a
ferry from Ambleside down to Bowness and then pottering about for a day. It
then occurred that we could hire a rowing boat (or two) this would keep us off
our legs but still be a bit of exercise (I think me and Scott were really
expecting this to turn into another race).
The boat trip down Windermere was very pleasant and we had a
nice morning pottering around Windermere then found our way back to the lakeside and hired
a 4 person row-boat for me, Scott, Saqwindar and Laura. Some elaborate points
system was devised based on whether we managed to catch up with (and collide
with) particular species of wildfowl but I can’t remember the details. As you
might imagine me and Scott didn’t let the girls anywhere near the oars but they
were quite content to sit at the back of the boat and let us do the physical
work – they would be the eyes and direct us as required – being the cox so to
speak. I got in the front of the boat and Scott took the stroke seat.
Lake Windermere - and some of the boats we nearly rowed in to.
Everything start off well…. Actually who am I kidding, it
started very badly and proceeded to get worse – no sooner had we left the jetty than
we started to head straight towards the most expensive looking motor boat in
the marina – going in a straight line just wasn’t working for us, we kept
veering left, something that would keep happening for the remainder of our little
cruise. Our inadequacies as a rowing team are too many to describe in full here
but in summary……..
·
Scott’s maximum power approach (get the oars in
as deep as you can then pull as hard as you can, as fast as you can) meant that
we consistently got more power on the right hand side of the boat and kept
going left.
·
My breaking approach (literally sticking my oar
in the water on the left side to arrest our left turn) didn’t work.
·
The savagery of Scott’s oars hitting the water at
the start of each stroke led to a double tidal wave being launched into the
front and soaked me through.
·
As I was in the front seat, I was supposed to
keep time with Scott, but as the photo below shows I just couldn’t match his
frenetic pace.
·
Our coxes tried their best to provide steering
instruction, but after 15 minutes of putting up with the boys ignoring them,
they gave up and chatted instead.
starting off - note the perfectly unsynchronised oars
We decided the least we could do is make a lap of a nearby
island and made slow winding progress until a chap on a nearby motor launch
pointed out (rather urgently) that we were heading straight for some shallow water
with some very pointy rocks. Me and Scott both started taking counterproductive
actions to avoid hitting the rocks and putting a hole in the bottom of the boat
until, according to Laura and Saqwindar, I used my “Dad voice” to instruct Scott
to “get your oars out of the water now, please!”. Much of the remaining voyage
was conducted in silence but we did eventually manage to get things
co-ordinated enough to steer our little boat back to the jetty (avoiding
hitting the Ambleside ferry along the way) and everyone was friends again at
the finish.
my angry dad face
There was a slightly more successful bit of teamwork done on
the same day. Near the boat hire kiosk there was a small bird of prey demonstration
and for a few quid the public could hold one of the birds for a few minutes
while chatting to the handler. Myself, Laura and Saqwindar all had a go (see
picks below). It turns out that so long as we each stuck to a team of two, and
as long as one of the team wasn’t a human being then we could for a successful
Stand While Big Bird Sits on Your Hand Team, I’m not sure if this sport will
make it to the summer Olympics in Rio but we enjoyed it.
Saqwindar with a little owl (sorry, I can't remember what type of owl it is)
me with Henry the female Eagle Owl - couldn't quite get her to look at the camera the same time as me
then Laura shows how it should be done
p.s. I almost forgot to mention - John and Abbey also took a boat out, it was too small for John to row in as he's 6 ft 4, so they showed a perfect bit of teamwork and agreed to head back to the jetty after 15 minutes.
No comments:
Post a Comment