Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Last Archery Lesson

Sam and I went to our last archery lesson today. We've both decided that we like it enough to join the club.

Thursday, November 18, 2004

Archery progress

Sam and I had a very satisfying evening at the archery club. This is the fifth of the lessons, but only the third that I've been able to attend. We turned up in time to help set up the targets. I graduated to using the sight on the bow, which I think will help a lot in the long run. Sam put in a storming performance, improving his accuracy a great deal even from last week. We had a little competition for the very first time, 3 set of three arrows each. Sam was beating me for the first two rounds, but I managed to pull ahead with the last three. Given that Sam's bow doesn't have a sight, I think he's going to be beating me soon. For the first part of the evening, I shot on the 'near' target with Sam, but towards the end of the evening, I had a go at the more distant of the 'beginners' targets (the experienced people are shooting at much smaller target than us). The main thing I discovered is that I had to move the sight down a fair bit to compensate for the distance (because moving the sight down means that you end up pointing the bow higher...). This meant that my first two arrows went right under the target... Both Sam and I are both pretty keen to join the club at the end of the beginners' course. Looks like around £70 a year for me and about half that for Sam, plus £3 a week to come along.

Saturday, November 13, 2004

Rochester Fun

Spent a fun week in Rochester. Flying in to Rochester was the first time I've seen a landscape in the USA that looks even slightly like England; rolling landscape and farms dotted around. It was a bit disconcerting to find that the main tourist attraction in Rochester is ... a hospital. The Mayo Clinic takes up what seems like ninety percent of the centre of town. Found an excellent restaurant, the Broad Street Cafe and Bar