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March 14th, 2005
 | 08:10 am - More about yesterday's fencing ...
I forgot to mention anything about getting there and back, or the venue.
The drive over was quick and painless - at 7:30am there isn't much in the way of other traffic to get in the way, and the only problem was driving
toward the rising sun. Took about 55 minutes from our place to the venue.
The drive back ... was not so quick. We left the venue at 4:45, thinking (or hoping) that we'd avoid the post-rugby crowds. All seemed to be going ok getting from the venue to around Haymarket station on the A8, but then we found the crowd ...
All. Of. It.
We were stopped there for around 25 minutes watching seemingly endless hordes of rugby fans stream past, carrying flags, giant inflatable daffodils, sheep, and other fannish items, and wearing kilts and brightly coloured wigs. We considered taunting them with our Australian flag (we ... errr ... "happened" to have one with us, because we were thinking of putting it up at the fencing, but didn't quite get around to it), but we figured
they could easily form a mob and roll our car over or something.
Finally we got moving again, slowly, and crawled our way past the exit to Murrayfield stadium. The crowds got a bit thinner after that, but then we caught up with the traffic, and crawled our way out of Edinburgh in a speedy 30 minutes or so. Finally we reached the M8 and got moving reasonably quickly, although again, there were occasional slowdowns with blocks of traffic along the way. 2 hours after we set out, we reached home, and dived for shower and bath and flung sweaty horrible fencing gear all over the floor.
I also forgot to mention the venue in the report - it was a sports centre which followed what is starting to seem like the standard pattern for these places over here - a confusing twisted warren of passages and halls, with fencers and pistes scattered all around the place. I'm sure they could design these places more sensibly ...
Finally, this is a very cute game.
Current Mood:  calm
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![[User Picture]](https://l-userpic.livejournal.com/9981444/483526) | | From: |  hnpcc |
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| Date: | March 14th, 2005 01:45 pm (UTC) |
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The rugby crowd reminds me of the first time I drove to Sydney back in 1995. We came off the tollway which wasn't on our map into the suburb where we supposed to be - and suddenly hit a wall of people (not literally). They were swarming the streets, dancing and yelling.. and we had absolutely no idea what the hell was going on.
It turned out it was NRL grand final day and the team that won was from that part of western Sydney and had beaten Manly or someone from Eastern Sydney. 40 minutes later we were still sitting in the car, but by now we were just about yelling:
"We're Victorian! We don't friggin' care!! Get off the bloody street!" |
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