Day 3
I guess today is Thursday, but you lose track of time when you’re on tour. All I know is that we get to go into Edinburgh today!
A lot of people had trouble sleeping last night – the rooms are really hot and I think our sleep schedules were off because much of the team went to sleep early and got a lot of sleep that first night. Annie (Collier) woke up at 2am wide awake and couldn’t go to sleep until 4pm. That kind of stuff will really affect you on tour, and you get more and more anxious when you can’t fall asleep and how it’s going to screw you for practice and then it keeps you from falling asleep even more. Anyway, today was standard breakfast from 7:30-8 (poached eggs, beans, toast, ham), meeting from 8-8:45 to talk about slow ball and defense and then off to practice from 9-12. The fwds practiced their scrimmaging- wheels, pivots, crabs, lock-outs, second shove, etc. while the backs worked on their defense. We came back together to walk through scenarios of slow ball and what to do – our options were rockit, scoot, decoy, and power-ups. The next drill we did is my new favorite: live offense and defense, starting at a breakdown, Kathy tells the defense how to line up at a breakdown and she wants the offense to read it and choose the correct tactic. Very helpful for SHs – basically when there’s space outside the “guards”, SH should run a scoot. If the defense is lined up, then either a rockit or a decoy. We went live for a while on this drill, playing several phases and figuring out where the fwds should stand and how to recognize what to do in a given situation. That helps with pattern recognition and then when we see the situation in a game hopefully we’ll run it automatically. After that, the team with the bright green/orange contact suits (team melon!, not starting on sat) would give them some situations for counterattacks.
Tina, Claudia, Kathy and I stayed a little later to work on the “flick” from the back of the scrum if there’s a lot of pressure. Tina and I ended with a cool down stretch and walked back to our dorm. When we got there, everyone had already showered and changed to go into the city and were leaving for lunch which was ending in 15 minutes. We ditched the shower and ran to eat. After a quick lunch of soup and grilled cheese and tomato (by special request), Tina and I (and Keenya, who was also running late) ran back to change so we could meet the bus at 1:30. Keenya did a “power shower” and we all jogged to the bus and managed to get there on time. The managers, Shouse and Katie P, did a great job of getting us transportation to the center of the city – right to Princes Street by the train station. Keenya and I planned our afternoon strategy of where to go. As we came off the bus, we started hi-tailing it to a bank to get some pounds but ended up with a relatively large group in tow on our way the rugby store next to the trainstation from last year. We find a bunch of our teammates already there and Keenya, Claudia, and I buy screw-in cleats because it’s so muddy (I spent 40 pounds – basically $80). After spending way too much time in that store, we buy some postcards, pick up some stamps and Keenya and I decide to see a church down the block. The others don’t want to join, so we’re on our own. The church was cool but pretty standard. After that, we walk back towards the center of town and see a whiskey store. With some hesitation, we enter and a very nice guy helped me buy some gifts and spent way too long gift wrapping my present to Rob. Keenya and I both wanted to go to a café and have some tea, so he pointed us towards The Elephant House, which is where JK Rowling worked on Harry Potter. We didn’t fully trust the directions that he gave us on a hand-drawn map with no street names, so we asked a few interesting locals for directions. Keenya’s favorite was the snaggle-toothed guy who was the perfect model for Scotland. Btw, from our random sampling of 2-3, not many of the locals know where this place is. Anyway, this guy is asking us question about USA rugby because we’re wearing our big jackets. He may have been drinking, but with his 1 toothed smile asks us if there are any blondes on the team. He was really funny and Keenya and I laughed hard in the many retellings of the story.
Once we finally got to the Elephant House at the top of the hill, it was a decent café, but we have much better ones in the states… It was nice that it didn’t turn into this commercial Harry Potter destination and was still just a regular coffee shop. With some chai and a croissant we realized that it was 5:45 and we had to get back to the bus by 6. Not sure if we could make it, I propose a short cut to save us from having to go around the bend. Thankfully there are stairs that lead us right to the bus stop and even get us there early! Since half of the people took an earlier bus (5pm), we don’t know who to wait for. There are some groups that have made it onto the bus but the driver says that he can’t stand there. Keenya gets out to wait for stragglers as we make a (long) loop. We come back to find Candi, Dr. Bartoli and Michelle Carrone having sprinted back from dinner which was also a great story where Candi basically sprinted the whole way back with her bad hip and all. They were so funny in retelling the story and we all just kept bringing it up the whole bus ride back to the Caledonia.
We get back just in time for dinner and Hedwig was exceptionally happy because they had jelly donuts and pudding (although she informs us that it’s really custard because it’s more liquidy) and we head back for the meeting at 8:30. At this meeting, we’re told the unfortunate news that on the flight to Ireland on Sunday, we can check in 30 lbs in luggage and 20 lbs in carry-on. Almost all of us have 2 big bags that weigh at least 70 lbs combined. Shousie explains the option of freight-shipping our stuff over there but it wouldn’t get there til Tuesday. Everyone starts freaking out and it’s bedlam in the meeting with questions. We talk about the schedule for the next few days, sing to Dude for her birthday today, and run out to start packing. In that time I propose to Shouse that it might be cheaper to ship it back home so she looks into it and it becomes the cheapest option. She comes back to tell everyone just as people have started packing that we can send a bag home to the US and everyone gets a bit restless from packing and re-packing. As we all pack to send stuff home, we all realize how much we overpacked, but we didn’t know what the weather would be like. If it had rained the whole time, I would have needed a lot more of that stuff. All in all, everyone got to bed later than they wanted to and some are a bit miffed by the situation. I was really happy because it means I don’t have to lug my stuff with me for the rest of the tour. Oh yeah, and Tina did laundry and put in most of my stuff too. This made me a really happy camper because clean clothes are a luxury on tour. Now it’s super late - 1:30 and I’m gonna only get 6 hours of sleep. Bummer, but I think I’ll be happy about keeping this journal in the end.
I guess today is Thursday, but you lose track of time when you’re on tour. All I know is that we get to go into Edinburgh today!
A lot of people had trouble sleeping last night – the rooms are really hot and I think our sleep schedules were off because much of the team went to sleep early and got a lot of sleep that first night. Annie (Collier) woke up at 2am wide awake and couldn’t go to sleep until 4pm. That kind of stuff will really affect you on tour, and you get more and more anxious when you can’t fall asleep and how it’s going to screw you for practice and then it keeps you from falling asleep even more. Anyway, today was standard breakfast from 7:30-8 (poached eggs, beans, toast, ham), meeting from 8-8:45 to talk about slow ball and defense and then off to practice from 9-12. The fwds practiced their scrimmaging- wheels, pivots, crabs, lock-outs, second shove, etc. while the backs worked on their defense. We came back together to walk through scenarios of slow ball and what to do – our options were rockit, scoot, decoy, and power-ups. The next drill we did is my new favorite: live offense and defense, starting at a breakdown, Kathy tells the defense how to line up at a breakdown and she wants the offense to read it and choose the correct tactic. Very helpful for SHs – basically when there’s space outside the “guards”, SH should run a scoot. If the defense is lined up, then either a rockit or a decoy. We went live for a while on this drill, playing several phases and figuring out where the fwds should stand and how to recognize what to do in a given situation. That helps with pattern recognition and then when we see the situation in a game hopefully we’ll run it automatically. After that, the team with the bright green/orange contact suits (team melon!, not starting on sat) would give them some situations for counterattacks.
Tina, Claudia, Kathy and I stayed a little later to work on the “flick” from the back of the scrum if there’s a lot of pressure. Tina and I ended with a cool down stretch and walked back to our dorm. When we got there, everyone had already showered and changed to go into the city and were leaving for lunch which was ending in 15 minutes. We ditched the shower and ran to eat. After a quick lunch of soup and grilled cheese and tomato (by special request), Tina and I (and Keenya, who was also running late) ran back to change so we could meet the bus at 1:30. Keenya did a “power shower” and we all jogged to the bus and managed to get there on time. The managers, Shouse and Katie P, did a great job of getting us transportation to the center of the city – right to Princes Street by the train station. Keenya and I planned our afternoon strategy of where to go. As we came off the bus, we started hi-tailing it to a bank to get some pounds but ended up with a relatively large group in tow on our way the rugby store next to the trainstation from last year. We find a bunch of our teammates already there and Keenya, Claudia, and I buy screw-in cleats because it’s so muddy (I spent 40 pounds – basically $80). After spending way too much time in that store, we buy some postcards, pick up some stamps and Keenya and I decide to see a church down the block. The others don’t want to join, so we’re on our own. The church was cool but pretty standard. After that, we walk back towards the center of town and see a whiskey store. With some hesitation, we enter and a very nice guy helped me buy some gifts and spent way too long gift wrapping my present to Rob. Keenya and I both wanted to go to a café and have some tea, so he pointed us towards The Elephant House, which is where JK Rowling worked on Harry Potter. We didn’t fully trust the directions that he gave us on a hand-drawn map with no street names, so we asked a few interesting locals for directions. Keenya’s favorite was the snaggle-toothed guy who was the perfect model for Scotland. Btw, from our random sampling of 2-3, not many of the locals know where this place is. Anyway, this guy is asking us question about USA rugby because we’re wearing our big jackets. He may have been drinking, but with his 1 toothed smile asks us if there are any blondes on the team. He was really funny and Keenya and I laughed hard in the many retellings of the story.
Once we finally got to the Elephant House at the top of the hill, it was a decent café, but we have much better ones in the states… It was nice that it didn’t turn into this commercial Harry Potter destination and was still just a regular coffee shop. With some chai and a croissant we realized that it was 5:45 and we had to get back to the bus by 6. Not sure if we could make it, I propose a short cut to save us from having to go around the bend. Thankfully there are stairs that lead us right to the bus stop and even get us there early! Since half of the people took an earlier bus (5pm), we don’t know who to wait for. There are some groups that have made it onto the bus but the driver says that he can’t stand there. Keenya gets out to wait for stragglers as we make a (long) loop. We come back to find Candi, Dr. Bartoli and Michelle Carrone having sprinted back from dinner which was also a great story where Candi basically sprinted the whole way back with her bad hip and all. They were so funny in retelling the story and we all just kept bringing it up the whole bus ride back to the Caledonia.
We get back just in time for dinner and Hedwig was exceptionally happy because they had jelly donuts and pudding (although she informs us that it’s really custard because it’s more liquidy) and we head back for the meeting at 8:30. At this meeting, we’re told the unfortunate news that on the flight to Ireland on Sunday, we can check in 30 lbs in luggage and 20 lbs in carry-on. Almost all of us have 2 big bags that weigh at least 70 lbs combined. Shousie explains the option of freight-shipping our stuff over there but it wouldn’t get there til Tuesday. Everyone starts freaking out and it’s bedlam in the meeting with questions. We talk about the schedule for the next few days, sing to Dude for her birthday today, and run out to start packing. In that time I propose to Shouse that it might be cheaper to ship it back home so she looks into it and it becomes the cheapest option. She comes back to tell everyone just as people have started packing that we can send a bag home to the US and everyone gets a bit restless from packing and re-packing. As we all pack to send stuff home, we all realize how much we overpacked, but we didn’t know what the weather would be like. If it had rained the whole time, I would have needed a lot more of that stuff. All in all, everyone got to bed later than they wanted to and some are a bit miffed by the situation. I was really happy because it means I don’t have to lug my stuff with me for the rest of the tour. Oh yeah, and Tina did laundry and put in most of my stuff too. This made me a really happy camper because clean clothes are a luxury on tour. Now it’s super late - 1:30 and I’m gonna only get 6 hours of sleep. Bummer, but I think I’ll be happy about keeping this journal in the end.
posted by Lee Knight at 8:21 PM
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