TimsterC

Well I’m here in Orlando at Lotusphere 2009, a few beers last night helped me sleep a bit longer. Two laps of the hotel walkway helped me burn off some of the beer from last night. Jogging that early in the morning is really good fun, the steam rising from the swimming pools and the mist along the river are great mood setters. Listening to Lilly Allen on the iPhone seemed to work this morning, some nice rhythms to run too. Not too fast and nothing slow that has you walking.

I’ve decided not turn on the mobile phone reception on the iPhone this week.  I don’t want lots of charges for calls to me at 09:00 GMT arriving at 04:00 EST, and then more charges when they leave you a message. I still don’t get how the mobile phone companies get away with that roaming charges stuff. It’s pure criminal from a customers point of view.

Looking forward to the rest of the day, I have 45 laptops to check and make sure they are working and then lab staff to assist with whatever problems they find if they come in to check their labs. After that is the mandatory staff briefing for all our lab staff at 6pm followed by the Beach Party by the poolside of the Swan and Dolphin hotels. We’ll probably follow that with a little karaoke in Kimonos before heading back to the hotel for another fitful nights sleep.

That is of course if all 45 laptops work. If they don’t it’s a case of keep going until they do work…… RedBull and ProPlus anyone?

An overcast and chilly lunch time greeted us as we left Camberley to get to BI’s clubhouse. 1 hour and 45 minutes later we arrived a little tired from the drive. That did not dampen our drive to put the first win on the sheets for the season.

Having been given a generous four minutes to warm-up we them got right into the game.

The first half could have been a familiar start for us with BI making a break through out bank line and heading for the corner. Joffer did a great job of tackling the guy into touch and we won the lineout to take us back up the pitch. It was fairly even in the first half, they go pinged for offside a whole bunch of times and we got nervous with the ball in hand and just made handling errors that saw us pushed back. Half time score was 0-0. Hardly the result we were looking for, but they hadn’t scored against us and hadn’t looked like they could either.

Seconds out round two. Started on a much more positive note for us we got over for a try from Smithy. converted like all the rest by Stuart from a drop kick, 0-7. We then got another try when Chris ran in from the 22, 0-14. the tide had turned and we were on a roll. A little bit of frustration and the ref pinged us with a penalty. A great kick saw it over the posts and BI heads are up again. 3-14. With our newest player now taking the field and the scrum uncontested we changed the scrum every time to make sure we could use the position we were in. They got past us and tired legs meant that we didn’t chase it as well we might and they scored a try, but not the conversion, 8-14. There was still plenty of energy left (I wish) and I got hold of the ball about 10 metres out from their line. Ran into the tackle and tried to stay up. The maul then got pushed over the line and John (newest player) grounds the ball for his debut try. converted by Stuarts boot again the score finished 8-21.

We are rightly proud of our game but realise we have stuff to work on. Guildford next week will not be easy.