I thought seventeen was bad, but the next week...
Fourteen! What le coq! Pardon my French.
My mind was filled with many a thought along the lines of: "Where is everyone these days? Where on earth have they gone? Not to dragon boating, that's for bloody sure!" Rach was one of those missing but she wasn't very well, so that was a fair reason to miss out. And I bet everyone else had a good reason too, but we only had fourteen! As a team we were all such eager beavers at the start too, the very first practice session of the season we even had a spare paddler. We sat lower in the water back in those days too, although that just made getting the paddle out of the water harder.
Fourteen! That's the number of paddlers we had for practice on the 10th of February. Fourteen! Seventeen was bad, but fourteen! I'm not sure how many paddlers you can go out with but fourteen seems like it should be the minimum to me. Of course, the boat was somewhat spacious with six missing crew, which gave me plenty of room to slide around in. Sorry, I got carried away there, I just can't stop going on about it... Fourteen!
Heading out of the lagoon (with only FOURTEEN paddlers) we went left, as usual, towards the start line but instead of ending there Hayden turned us around and took us back across to the other side of the harbour again. Obviously he considered this was a good time to warm up with a double traverse of the harbour, our previous best distance being one traverse. Zoiks. It wasn't easy but I astonished myself by being able to manage it, even at the slow pace we took up to carry it out with. I wonder if it was this dawdling that inspired Hayden to turn us around and keep going, rather than our usual "stop, ponder, go" regime. I expect the distance we did was something like three quarters of a kilometer and I think I was probably on the edge of my endurance. One of the other sweeps once told me that, when he was paddling, they used to go around the fountain and back for their warm up, which I think must be somewhere between 2 and 3 kilometres. I couldn't be more thankful that I didn't have to do the round the fountain race.
Whatever the motivation for the extra distance, Hayden's hope was clearly to toughen us up for race day and with only a few more practices left I guess every minute of our precious hour long session really did count. To help get our race spirits going we cruised up alongside another boat, full of competitive looking schoolkids and Hayden challenged them to a race. What? No! Racing! That's madness. I have little idea how the race went but we lost, although not by too much. That was no shock at all but, in a rare moment of weakness, Hayden told us we did well for a bunch of unfit old folk of reduced numbers - I think the actual quote was "You did well against them, you really did, they were younger and fitter." I was so taken aback that I think I might actually have said "thank you" out loud.
The following Saturday was our super gambleathon casino night. Each of us had been charged with flogging 5 tickets at a cost of $25 each, nearly all of us failed. Personally, I thought I had a really good chance of shifting them in a workplace of 100 guys but the fact that it landed on Saturday the 13th of February may have been an issue: "Come on love, I've got some tickets for a posh doo, get your best togs on and let's go play poker." Actually, that doesn't sound too bad to me, but I guess it was a tricky sell on the home front. However, we had some good friends cave in to our ticket peddling so, including the tickets we sold to ourselves, we shifted 60% of our allotment. Even telling people at work that we needed the money to buy paddles, which was true, didn't raise the sympathy bar, although the idea of us competing sans paddles did raise a smile or two. Bastards.
With four unsold tickets I had to pop down to the Four Kings to turn the tickets in for door sales. Walking into the pub I stuck with my previous week's form and completely failed to recognise (less bad) Clare outside of training. Actually, that's not 100% true, I thought it was her but I looked over and, she claims, she looked back and smiled. I contest this version of events m'lord. For sure, I looked over, and for sure she reacted but I say her face was more one of "who's this pervert looking at me?" Luckily, as I went sailing past, trying to be nonchalant in the face of the strange look LBC (I have no idea of the origins of the nickname) had cast in my direction I was called back by both her and Captain Claire. As I was already in for a feeling foolish penny it soon became obvious that there was a feeling foolish pound that I had been put in for too. I rue the moment I said "I don't have to go for half an hour." A tutu was produced from a bag, as was a long, flowing blonde wig, and some Dragon Flys deely-boppers, which I had to put on. I was then sent forth onto the streets of Wellington to hand out fliers for our evening of gambling, in the hope of generating door sales for our bulging stack of spare tickets. I'm not convinced that the wig and tutu combo was really the right message to be sending out. People looked at me rather strangely and as soon as they did I would swoop on them to stuff a flier in their mitts. As an illustration of how this costume may have been slightly off topic, one of the people I bumped into was Lorna, one of our own team and I couldn't convince her to come.
All the time I was doing this I was fairly confident that Claire, Clare, Jenna and Siobhan were probably having a lot more success than me at drumming up genuine business, rather than simply being an "I got this flier off a bespeckled boy in a wig and tutu" tale to tell down the pub (one without a casino night, I presume) later.
After picking up Rach and Ronel and returning to the pub I was pressed, once again, into walking the streets but this time I was not alone, as I was in the company of Claire, Clare and Siobhan, who, it turns out, possibly weren't any luckier than me. As a pack we had one success, where Siobhan collared a guy, got him interested then pretty much pushed him down the steps to the gambling. I'm not sure if he stayed or not.
Down in the gambling den however, things were pretty interesting. For the cost of a ticket we got a bunch of chips and a drink. Pint in hand I set out to find what I could lose my chips on: There was one roulette table, with a wheel of such incredible miniatureness it was hard to see where the ball was landing. There was also two blackjack tables, which were fairly popular, and two poker tables, one of which looked very serious (not a wise option for me) and one of which looked more inviting. In the middle of the room stood a craps table. I rejected the blackjack because there weren't any seats and the poker because I get lost in the betting. This left me to wander over to the craps table, where the croupier was trying to explain the game to one lone potential punter. Me and the other punter stood there for minutes trying to get a handle on the rules. Eventually the croupier gave the other punter a chip to place an opening bet so he would roll the dice and we could learn on the job, as it were. Once we were playing it became much easier to pick up and a crowd started to appear, including our good friends Pete, Gareth and Dorit. Gareth and Dorit had a little blast on the craps but were soon drawn away by blackjack. Me and Pete though, well, we were kinda welded to that table all night. I had great luck as a roller and my games went on for ages, although there was still plenty of opportunity for losing chips - one guy lost over 8,000 on one of my rolls. At ten dollars for 10,000 worth of chips that's a bit over a pint's worth! Heady bets for sure.
But why care how many chips you have left? Well, there were ten prizes that night, each in a sealed envelope. The ten players with the biggest haul at the end of the night got to choose an envelope each. Of the prizes on offer the best were the three cash prizes, two of 100 dollars and one of 200 dollars. Of the ten top gamblers three were Dragon Flys. Can you guess where this is going? All three cash prizes went to the Dragon Flys contenders! What are the chances of that happening?
However, the evening wasn't an unmitigated success, because it cost money to put it on and we pretty much sold enough tickets to cover the cost of running it, perhaps even a slight loss. Claire may have known on the night, but she didn't tell. As Lemmy once sang "Seven or eleven, snakes eyes watching you!" Yes, it would appear that snake eyes were watching us, on the first roll, which is a bad thing. But on the plus side I now understand what this means, rather than assuming it to be a reptile infested convenience store, so it was all win for me.
I wonder if Claire was like Vince Vaughn in Dodgeball and put all our money on us to win the dragon boat festival. I hope not.
Fourteen! What le coq! Pardon my French.
My mind was filled with many a thought along the lines of: "Where is everyone these days? Where on earth have they gone? Not to dragon boating, that's for bloody sure!" Rach was one of those missing but she wasn't very well, so that was a fair reason to miss out. And I bet everyone else had a good reason too, but we only had fourteen! As a team we were all such eager beavers at the start too, the very first practice session of the season we even had a spare paddler. We sat lower in the water back in those days too, although that just made getting the paddle out of the water harder.
Fourteen! That's the number of paddlers we had for practice on the 10th of February. Fourteen! Seventeen was bad, but fourteen! I'm not sure how many paddlers you can go out with but fourteen seems like it should be the minimum to me. Of course, the boat was somewhat spacious with six missing crew, which gave me plenty of room to slide around in. Sorry, I got carried away there, I just can't stop going on about it... Fourteen!
Heading out of the lagoon (with only FOURTEEN paddlers) we went left, as usual, towards the start line but instead of ending there Hayden turned us around and took us back across to the other side of the harbour again. Obviously he considered this was a good time to warm up with a double traverse of the harbour, our previous best distance being one traverse. Zoiks. It wasn't easy but I astonished myself by being able to manage it, even at the slow pace we took up to carry it out with. I wonder if it was this dawdling that inspired Hayden to turn us around and keep going, rather than our usual "stop, ponder, go" regime. I expect the distance we did was something like three quarters of a kilometer and I think I was probably on the edge of my endurance. One of the other sweeps once told me that, when he was paddling, they used to go around the fountain and back for their warm up, which I think must be somewhere between 2 and 3 kilometres. I couldn't be more thankful that I didn't have to do the round the fountain race.
Whatever the motivation for the extra distance, Hayden's hope was clearly to toughen us up for race day and with only a few more practices left I guess every minute of our precious hour long session really did count. To help get our race spirits going we cruised up alongside another boat, full of competitive looking schoolkids and Hayden challenged them to a race. What? No! Racing! That's madness. I have little idea how the race went but we lost, although not by too much. That was no shock at all but, in a rare moment of weakness, Hayden told us we did well for a bunch of unfit old folk of reduced numbers - I think the actual quote was "You did well against them, you really did, they were younger and fitter." I was so taken aback that I think I might actually have said "thank you" out loud.
The following Saturday was our super gambleathon casino night. Each of us had been charged with flogging 5 tickets at a cost of $25 each, nearly all of us failed. Personally, I thought I had a really good chance of shifting them in a workplace of 100 guys but the fact that it landed on Saturday the 13th of February may have been an issue: "Come on love, I've got some tickets for a posh doo, get your best togs on and let's go play poker." Actually, that doesn't sound too bad to me, but I guess it was a tricky sell on the home front. However, we had some good friends cave in to our ticket peddling so, including the tickets we sold to ourselves, we shifted 60% of our allotment. Even telling people at work that we needed the money to buy paddles, which was true, didn't raise the sympathy bar, although the idea of us competing sans paddles did raise a smile or two. Bastards.
With four unsold tickets I had to pop down to the Four Kings to turn the tickets in for door sales. Walking into the pub I stuck with my previous week's form and completely failed to recognise (less bad) Clare outside of training. Actually, that's not 100% true, I thought it was her but I looked over and, she claims, she looked back and smiled. I contest this version of events m'lord. For sure, I looked over, and for sure she reacted but I say her face was more one of "who's this pervert looking at me?" Luckily, as I went sailing past, trying to be nonchalant in the face of the strange look LBC (I have no idea of the origins of the nickname) had cast in my direction I was called back by both her and Captain Claire. As I was already in for a feeling foolish penny it soon became obvious that there was a feeling foolish pound that I had been put in for too. I rue the moment I said "I don't have to go for half an hour." A tutu was produced from a bag, as was a long, flowing blonde wig, and some Dragon Flys deely-boppers, which I had to put on. I was then sent forth onto the streets of Wellington to hand out fliers for our evening of gambling, in the hope of generating door sales for our bulging stack of spare tickets. I'm not convinced that the wig and tutu combo was really the right message to be sending out. People looked at me rather strangely and as soon as they did I would swoop on them to stuff a flier in their mitts. As an illustration of how this costume may have been slightly off topic, one of the people I bumped into was Lorna, one of our own team and I couldn't convince her to come.
All the time I was doing this I was fairly confident that Claire, Clare, Jenna and Siobhan were probably having a lot more success than me at drumming up genuine business, rather than simply being an "I got this flier off a bespeckled boy in a wig and tutu" tale to tell down the pub (one without a casino night, I presume) later.
After picking up Rach and Ronel and returning to the pub I was pressed, once again, into walking the streets but this time I was not alone, as I was in the company of Claire, Clare and Siobhan, who, it turns out, possibly weren't any luckier than me. As a pack we had one success, where Siobhan collared a guy, got him interested then pretty much pushed him down the steps to the gambling. I'm not sure if he stayed or not.
Down in the gambling den however, things were pretty interesting. For the cost of a ticket we got a bunch of chips and a drink. Pint in hand I set out to find what I could lose my chips on: There was one roulette table, with a wheel of such incredible miniatureness it was hard to see where the ball was landing. There was also two blackjack tables, which were fairly popular, and two poker tables, one of which looked very serious (not a wise option for me) and one of which looked more inviting. In the middle of the room stood a craps table. I rejected the blackjack because there weren't any seats and the poker because I get lost in the betting. This left me to wander over to the craps table, where the croupier was trying to explain the game to one lone potential punter. Me and the other punter stood there for minutes trying to get a handle on the rules. Eventually the croupier gave the other punter a chip to place an opening bet so he would roll the dice and we could learn on the job, as it were. Once we were playing it became much easier to pick up and a crowd started to appear, including our good friends Pete, Gareth and Dorit. Gareth and Dorit had a little blast on the craps but were soon drawn away by blackjack. Me and Pete though, well, we were kinda welded to that table all night. I had great luck as a roller and my games went on for ages, although there was still plenty of opportunity for losing chips - one guy lost over 8,000 on one of my rolls. At ten dollars for 10,000 worth of chips that's a bit over a pint's worth! Heady bets for sure.
But why care how many chips you have left? Well, there were ten prizes that night, each in a sealed envelope. The ten players with the biggest haul at the end of the night got to choose an envelope each. Of the prizes on offer the best were the three cash prizes, two of 100 dollars and one of 200 dollars. Of the ten top gamblers three were Dragon Flys. Can you guess where this is going? All three cash prizes went to the Dragon Flys contenders! What are the chances of that happening?
However, the evening wasn't an unmitigated success, because it cost money to put it on and we pretty much sold enough tickets to cover the cost of running it, perhaps even a slight loss. Claire may have known on the night, but she didn't tell. As Lemmy once sang "Seven or eleven, snakes eyes watching you!" Yes, it would appear that snake eyes were watching us, on the first roll, which is a bad thing. But on the plus side I now understand what this means, rather than assuming it to be a reptile infested convenience store, so it was all win for me.
I wonder if Claire was like Vince Vaughn in Dodgeball and put all our money on us to win the dragon boat festival. I hope not.
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