Marcus drove Megan and I to the airport. He then had to high tail it back to Oxley to take Chris to the BGS rowing shed where a bat christening was taking place. Chris hitched a lift home with the Clarks.
Meanwhile Megan and I were winging it down to Melbourne somewhat late. This was tempered however with over wing exit isle seats. A huge improvement in leg room. A couple if Sudokus and a couple of wines and we landed in Melbourne. Late as. I was expecting us to land around 9 but it was 10ish as I recall.
$17 ea got us a Sky Bus to Melbourne city and a free shuttle to any down town hotel. As we were arriving after check in, Megan had arranged for the key to be in a little key safe near the door. We had to type in a code to retrieve the key. Megan announced she was hungry. We deposited our bags and went in search of food.
Spied and indeed entered a 7-11 but this is Melbourne. Surely we could do better. U turn and out we walked. Up along "Little Collins St". past a people queuing for a night club. A friendly garbo pointed us in the direction of China Town. We found ourselves eating special fried rice and Kebabs upstairs in a little Vietnamese restaurant at midnight.
Walked back to our room and a good nights sleep.
FRIDAY
Up at a pleasant 7:00am and met with some others from our group. We walked down Little Collins St. Melbourne seems to have a variety of street sizes. We have Collins St - several lanes in each direction and then Little Collins St that runs Parallel to it and is only one lane in one direction. Then there are numerous lane-ways that lead off at right angles from little Collins and I assume other streets too. Our group chose one of these lane-ways filled with cafes in which to get breakfast. After some deliberation we chose a cafe and headed in to order and blow me over if another member of our crew (Tony) and his wife were already there.
We ordered and sat outside. Tony and Karen joined us and Megan took a photo.
Cafe Segovia in "The Block" lane-way
9:30am we met in the foyer and walked to the river.
Unloaded the boats off the trailer and bolted them together.
launched and rowed up river.
This was to check out the course. The start line is about 200m upstream of where we launced and the finish line was the Horthorne rowing club. Down here they launch their boats from slopey board thingos at the side of the river. Not from pontoons as we are used to in Brisbane. We have yet to work out how to effectively and smoothly land on these things.
Someone bought some beer. - VB - Hey when in Rome. We sat on the boardwalk holding the boat with our feet and drank the beer. Another Grammarians crew - The Honey Badgers - arrived and did likewise. I also saw Lachie who is a BGS coach but here he is in the guise of a cox for a womens eight.
We rowed back. Took the boat out of the water and placed it on a rack. It is going to be very busy around the launching area tomorrow. There are 186 eights in this race. It could be carnage.
This picture was a screen grab from my fake go pro little camera that I mounted on the boat. It seems that as it gets humid, the moisture condenses inside the lens and the bright picture elements start to glow.
FRIDAY NIGHT
All three Grammarian crews and their partners are going out to dinner at The Pop Restaurant
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