Henley Day 2

We returned to Henley on Saturday for the peak day of the event, the perfect combination of great racing and people partying. The stewards enclosure was even more packed, and the outfits even more crazy than last time. We just missed the YWC's race against the Dutch National Team, where they put up a good fight in the semifinal, but ended up losing by 2 1/4 lengths. But we did get to watch Eton College, who would end up winning the Princess Elizabeth Cup on Sunday, and the Brown Freshman including the likes of Peter Woolley and Jackson Dobronyi, and the Cornell Lights.

Even better, we met some people around the racecourse. First, we ran into Sara Locke, here with her team and talked with her for a while. Next we saw James Cracknell, a two-time Olympic Gold Medalist for GB talking pictures with fans. Come to think about it, we were surrounded by the most impressive rowers of the day the entire event. Finally, by virtue of my Yale Lightweight croakies, one of the coaches of London Rowing Club spotted me, and invited Kevin and me to a party with their club after the racing had finished. There we had some free pimms (score!) and talked with a rower from the silver medal pair in London who works at Goldman Sachs, the coach and captain of LRC, and Hubert and his crew. They were a rowdy bunch, playing an interesting drinking "game" that was really just downing a beer as quickly as possible and just having an all around jolly time. Kevin and I even got in the club photo!

We hung out by the river a little longer, with LRC and Oxford, and then explored Henley the city. There are some really quant, old cobblestone roads lined with interesting shops and pubs. We decided on a nice Italian place for dinner, and at the end of our meal we witnessed a guy try to down a pretty big pitcher of beer for 40 pounds, a bet he ultimately lost (but he did get close). 

We made our way back to the river after dinner, and watched the Henley fireworks display from the bridge near the boathouse tents while listening to classic English rock hits from the local pub, an awesome ending to an amazing experience at Henley! Check that off the bucket list and I can't wait to go back!

P.S. We had yet another "adventure" in getting back from Henley to Oxford. We went to the Henley-on-Thames train station, where we played a couple hands of blackjack with a drunk roofer from some city his girlfriend said never to visit because it is a "shithole." Then we boarded the train to Twyford and were determined to take the right train back this time, but just our luck, the trains had stopped running for the day. So bus it was. After finally finding the "right" bus, I closed my eyes to relax for the 2 hour trip back to Oxford. However, I was soon startled by people yelling "Left, left" as the bus driver had taken a wrong turn. Now that's forgivable, but after he completely missed the first stop, I didn't have much confidence in this guy to get us home. It didn't help that everyone except Kevin and me got off at the second stop (maybe because they weren't too sure about this guy either) and we had no idea how to get back either. Kevin started up a conversation with the driver, and he started off telling some dirty jokes to entertain. I'll write the best one on another blog post. We soon learned about his whole life, and he has certainly had a rough one around England and Scotland, but he believes there's no sense living in the past and he's content with his life now. Oh and we also found out that a bus driver was a dyslexic, Scottish-mouthed chap with 6 driving tickets! That helped with my confidence in him getting us home. We were finally approaching our stop when he received a call from a friend, decided to pull off to the right lane (still in the road) and answer it. He caught up with his mate for about 5 minutes while the traffic light in front of us was flashing green then red then green again... Amazingly we made it to our stop (at about 03:00) and our Henley day story had finally come to a close.