England wins the Ashes!

Dear England, I'm pleased to say that yesterday your cricket team won the Ashes! What are the Ashes I hear you cry? Well, every year since 1882 England has played Australia at Test cricket. England usually lose - so much, in fact, that between 1989 and 2004 Australia won all the matches - yes, all 16. That was quite a team.

But things are changing now. After Australia won again in 2006/7, it looked for a moment like histroy was repeating her cruel loop. But yesterday at the Oval, England did it again! In a very close Test series that has attracted a lot of televised and emotional attention in the UK (and somewhat less in the US!), cricket might just be coming home.

The name the Ashes tell a curious story. "The Ashes" are thought to be the burned bails from the top of the wickets from the original game, the England-Australia clash of 1882. And if you don't know what bails or wickets are, you might want to check out cricket a little more online! The wickets are the 3 sticks that the bowler has to knock down - and the bails sit on top of them (technically the bails only have to be nudged off, and the wickets can stay upright, and the batsman is still out). There are of course, many ways to get a batsman out...see here!

Howzat!

Oxford & Cambridge Boat Race 2009!

The Oxford & Cambridge Boat Race takes place today at 3.40pm on the Thames. The race takes about 20 minutes from Putney Bridge to just beyond Barnes Bridge, given no sinkings. Hold the line coxswain!

Above is this year's Oxford crew. (Go Oxford!) Here's the history of the race too, including those above mentioned sinkings, and rebellions!

Marine Corps Marathon

Not long to go now!

With just over two months before I attempt my 3rd marathon, I have begun my training in earnest! I even went running at 6:30 this morning, which was lovely and cool. I trotted along the trails and streams of Rock Creek Park and it was 72 degrees when I got back at 7.20 - already getting hot!

Anyway, I've now reading Haruki Murakami's great little memoir about running and writing: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. It's a little gem! The Japanese writer most famous for his novels of love, loss and pop music takes us back over his 20-plus years of running, starting with his first marathon distance - when he ran from Athens to the town of Marathon (the orifinal race run by Pheidippides after the ancient Greeks beat the invading Perisans at the Battle of Marathon).


Murakami only discovered afterwards that the distance from Athens to Marathon is technically 25 miles, a mile or so short of today's marathon distance! Oops!

England World Cup qualifiers!

Dear England, Here are the England World Cup qualifying matches between now and the World Cup, South Africa 2010!

06/09/08 20:00 Barcelona: Andorra v England
10/09/08 21:00 Zagreb: Croatia v England
11/10/08 17:15 London: England v Kazakhstan
15/10/08 Minsk: Belarus v England
01/04/09 TBA: England v Ukraine
06/06/09 TBA: Kazakhstan v England
10/06/09 TBA: England v Andorra
09/09/09 TBA: England v Croatia
10/10/09 TBA: Ukraine v England
14/10/09 TBA: England v Belarus

As you can see, the first two matches are next month!

Before then, of course, it's the Olympics 2012 - in London!

Fishing!

Recently, I had my first experience of real fishing - fishing off a boat into the Chesapeake Bay!

The cat is out of the bag (fish off the line) - we had a little help from the Captain, a former Vietnam Vet!

Rockfish and Bluefish for supper tonight! Nice!

UK Olympic medal count!

The UK's medals so far are 18 Gold, 13 Silver, 13 Bronze. Total of 44. In terms of gold medals, we are in 3rd place. Pretty amazing - the rowers, swimmers are cyclists are really coming through!

Check out the full table of countries here!

Ozzies and Brits fight it out!

The Olympics is starting to look like the Ashes!

I have to include this picture because there are so few occasions!

Check out this article!

Beijing Olympics Medal Count!

Dear England, As you can see from this chart we're not doing bad in the medal count so far!

The UK has 2 gold, 2 silver and 3 bronze, putting us in 10th place! You can see the breakdown for our Gold (Cycling and Swimming), Silver (Cycling and Canoeing) and Bronze (Horse riding x2 and Swimming) at this link.

Come on England!

Shouldn't that telephone box be red?

As telephone boxes are fast disappearing from the UK altogether, they're surviving on the campus of George Washington University - albeit in blue. Dear England, we miss our red telephone boxes!

Is that my Dad in a Ferrari or what?

Dear England, A lifetime ambition, a few weeks ago my Dad got his boyhood dream realized - he got to drive in a Ferrari!

This took place on a F3 course, and in my Dad's own words, "I'll never buy a Ferrari, but the drive was brill......top speed on the back straight...153mph...fastest bend 92mph...I even impressed myself....and for the last 2 laps the instructor went quiet!"

Glad to hear they both made it back! Apparently the road Ferrari has an annoying design where the gear changes are not on the steering wheel - as they would be in the Formula One car. Clearly these road cars weren't made for 153mph race courses!

Watch out for those cones!

You can just see him behind the wheel in this one - next stop Beijing!

Chess boxing?

Only in...Germany! Who else other than our German cousins could dream up the intense spectacle of playing chess and boxing as part of the same competition? And I don't mean play a game, go home, and box the next day. No, brand new "X-treme sport" chess boxing is here, as the picture shows, and no, it's not late night TV for lonely men in tracksuits. This stuff is serious!

Here's the lowdown http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing

Every four-minute chess round is followed by two minutes of boxing. Kind of disorientating to say the least! I wonder which bout is more painful, the chess or the boxing.

Best of all, competitors can win by either knockout or checkmate!

Home of Snooker, Sheffield

It never ceases to amaze me, England, that the home of that gracious and genius-inspiring game, snooker, is actually a little humble theatre in Sheffield, former home of the British steel industry (remember "The Full Monty"?). Somehow this makes the whole occasion must more special, that moments of true theatre are played out in such a quietly

The funniest thing about going to see a snooker match - as I remember from seeing Peter Ebdon, Matthew Stevens, and Ronnie the Rocket about 6 years ago (although I can't remember exactly who was playing who), is the snippets of applause between the shots. The audience has to time them to perfection like at Wimbledon, so not to distract the players. But the intensity of watching these men pot these little balls on the table, and then a ripple of applause from around the arena (as though it were a child's game - thought clearly it's not easy!) is one of the strangest things. Funny, and seems to sum up the amusement of not really knowing what life is all about. Is it important the blue goes in the middle pocket to get back on the third red? Well, of course it is!

By the way, I've no idea who that bloke is in the picture. Clearly a besotted fan of snooker and not the theatre!

Oxford Cambridge Boat Race

Ah, the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, that excuse for drinking Pimms along the Thames riverbank, hanging from the outdoor pub balconies, and generally pretending to wait for the boat to appear.

Well, this year was Oxford's turn for revenge, and now they've taken 3 of the last 5 years. will this endless battle ever end? Will the rest of the world outside London and the two cities ever show any interest?

Anyway, clearly the Dark Blues are the ones to watch. If I may say so, come on Oxford!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Cambridge_boat_race

For the rowing nerds out there, Oxford took the race because they upped the rating to 36 when 2/3rds into the race, and according to the official report, "the Cambridge men had no response." for a history of this delightfully gentlemanly river bash, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Cambridge_boat_race

Nationals Park - brand new Washington baseball stadium!

So here's the new stadium for the Washington Nationals baseball team, built about as fast as the Empire State Building in New York City, and if you know your history, that's fast.

So Washington has now gone from having no baseball at all in the 1970s (the Senators left and became the Texas Rangers), to playing at RFK Stadium and sharing that stadium with DC United soccer team (the pitch/diamond literally revolves to change the sport), to having their own swanking stadium! That's not all. Now DC United wants a new stadium, presumably to be built on the same spot as RFK after it's demolished. Who doesn't want a new stadium?

Anyway, go Nationals (not Senators), and go United (DC and Manchester)!

For a history of baseball in DC, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Washington,_D.C._professional_baseball

Baseball in a glove!

Snooker v American Pool

This comparison says it all. Table bigger, pockets and balls smaller, pocket mouths narrower, and you need a one foot on the floor rule. Clearly pool is a lot of fun, but nothing beats smashing a ball full-length of a snooker table, and being amazed when it actually goes in!
Check out this great site for all the official dimensions and comparisons http://www.pooltableplans.com/pool_vs%20snooker.htm

Capital Rowing Club

Check out my new rowing club, Capital!

The club shares a boathouse - the trusty Anacostia Community Boathouse - with other clubs, but this doesn't stop any of the fun. Rowing is every night Monday to Thursday which makes it really flexible, but I can't help thinking that my Oxford days were far more competitive. There are regattas that I'm looking forward to, but it's a bit confusing to have the people in the boat change, and your own position in the boat change, every time. I miss knowing where I sit! That's the price, I guess, for trundling down to the boathouse only when you feel like it...anyway, I ordered my T-shirt so I gotta keep rowing!


Last night I had to cox for the first time, though, which was a minor disaster. I make three errors, all of which I excuse for my novice status. It's hard enough to steer and put your arm in the air to tell the coaches you can hear them. Anyway, I had to steer around a battleship and go through a bridge, but I swung close to the ship, then crossed the river, basically not hearing the coach properly. Then we did an "all 8" only to snag some guy's fishing line from the bank quite spectacularly, dragging it maybe 100 feet, until he was calling out. I could see it stretched out, very thin and green-looking, along the river, and it must have snapped and flung back or something. Anyway, the next moment we're off and I was supposed to overtake the boat in front - a dawdling 4 - riverside, but it swung out and I decided to undercut it (rather than swing further into the river). My mistake. The 4 should have stayed close to the bank, but with him edging in the river, and with the bridge coming up, we had to "way enough" or "easy oar" as I would say, confusing anybody.

So what happened? well, they had to swap me out of the boat. Kind of humiliating! But they put me in as a rower for compensation I guess, but on the other side. I've never rowed starboard before! (bow side). As you can see, all the rowing terms are different between the UK and US as well, and that doesn't help. suffice to say, I took it easy (universal term) rowing strangely with my right arm, and made it back. I just wanna row stroke-side!


Anyway, it doesn't always look like this, but when you cruise steady after a tough piece of rowing, and the boat sits up, it can feel like this.

Where was that picture taken anyway, the Amazon?

Ronnie O'Sullivan in the final!

Meet Ronnie "the Rocket" O' Sullivan, America. Ronnie is the current World Snooker Champion as of last weekend, the May bank holiday in England. After sweeping the former 6-times champion, ol' moody Scot Stephen Hendry aside in one of the biggest routings of Hendry's highly successful career, Ronnie went on to win the final against Ali Carter 18-8 to take his third World Championship crown in Sheffield.

Snooker is noticeably absent in America, where pool is king. No doubt there is something old-fashioned about the game, but this is its glory. The modern game no longer takes endless days and literally hundreds of "frames" (individual games) to play. But it does take long sessions that are no doubt to an American sensibility and need for speed! It's a bit like the cricket to America's baseball, although arguably snooker is a game of genius, where pool is game of fast wrist-snapping talent - the way it's played in the States at least. In the old days (the 70s!), snooker was a gentleman's game played by thugs, while the modern game is so fast with so many breaks it's more a thug's game played by clean-cut gents. But back in the days of Alex "Hurricane Higgins" things were different...America, you need to check out the big daddy of all pool games, the vast green baize of the snooker table!

Paula Radcliffe, London Marathon 2008

Here is Paula Radcliffe, an incredible athlete success story if ever there was one. Her career is quite incredible, not taking up the marathon until late, and then blazing a trail for all women distance runners everywhere. I was disappointed to see her drop out of the London Marathon 2008 on Sunday 13 April. But Paula will be back. She seems to specialize in dropping out through no fault of her own, only to come back and win. That's a champ.

Check out her cool website at http://www.paularadcliffe.com/ where you can see her brilliant smashing of the world record at the Chicago Marathon in 2002 http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/athletics/2324197.stm Good luck in Beijing next month!

P.S. I just signed up for the London Marathon 2009. Go Fullerty!

Tailgating USA!

American Beauty!

In the words of Pele, if football is "the beautiful game" and the world's game, there is nothing more beautiful to an American than American football!

Ann Arbor was a pretty college town. Lots of ice cream places and book shops! We went to the football game, which was Americna in the extreme - a brass band, cheerleaders, and 105,000 people. Apparently it was the most attended game of the whole season, and the stadium is the biggest in America. So I got the full experience!

The sky was blue, and I really felt I was at the ends of the earth, watching this game that means so much in America (and so little everywhere else)! Before the game we "tailgated" which basically means opening the back of the "truck" and sitting around drinking "Coors Light" from 9AM until the game at 12PM. That was a bit strange, especially as it took place on a golf course where people were playing "Bocce" - the American name for boules - on the grass!

Michigan football colours are yellow and blue just like both my college and grad school colours, strangely enough. Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford is yellow and blue, and George Washington University proudly hails what it calls "the buff and the blue"!

Go figure!