I've been kind of neglectful of this blog, but I figure I should give one last update about the end of my summer.
My last week in philly was relatively uneventful, I can't really remember specific details about most practices, so I won't give the usual rundown. I did completely tear apart my hips bowing the barb & izzy for the first time in about a month (which concerns me for the size of my hips, because I didn't really have a problem in that boat before, lol). It hurt a lot. The scrapes just healed two weeks later.
Anyway, so we were leaving for canadian henley on monday, and katie was rowing with us in canada (a double with me, and the quad) but she had been in columbus, so she was flying out on friday to at least practice with us for a few days before canada. On friday morning, I was rowing a double with Audra, and we did 3 2ks, at a 26-32. Katie arrived just for practice on friday afternoon. And surprise, since she hadn't been there for the morning practice, what did we do that afternoon? That's right. 2 more 2ks. So much for a taper.
Katie was living with me for the weekend since I had an extra bed after my roommate moved out, and we spent the rest of the evening going grocery shopping, and then laying on my floor chatting, laughing way too much, and eating cherries. I'm pretty sure that the 3 days katie spent living there were the funnest days of the summer, love that girl.
Katie didn't have a bike, so we spent the next few days running to and from practice every day. Considering the one round trip is what most people would consider a sufficient workout already, 2 round trips (or over 10 miles) per day, on top of our actual practices wasn't really the funnest adventure ever.
On saturday night, we decided to make s'more stuffed cookies for dinner. They kind of exploded and were ultra gigantic but still delicious. On sunday afternoon after practicing, and derigging and loading (which turned into more babysitting than anything), we walked way into west philly to get sushi for linner, then we walked all the way to center city to go to annies for dinner. She made homemade pizza. Dana showed up with charlotte and I got to say goodbye to little chip. Its sad because next time I see her, she will be an entirely different person, she's growing up so fast. Coincidentally, today is her 1st birthday :)
We got back, I packed, and being the stubborn person that I am, insisted that I finish my jigsaw before going to sleep. All that remained was a mountainside of yellow flowers, which gave me bad ptsd of becky's spring break field of yellow flowers jigsaw. I finally finished it at around 1am, and went to bed.
Way too early the next morning, hank came by and picked us up. Despite the fact that we had warned him in advance that I was taking everything that I own with me, he seemed surprised by the amount of stuff I had. We swung by and picked up annie and molly, somehow fit all of us and all of our stuff into his car and were off on our way out of philly...
...except that about 5 minutes later, we realized that we had no idea where the seats were for our double. We were supposed to take them home with us after rigging on sunday but we had apparently forgotten, and while they had probably made it onto the trailer, we didnt really want to take the chance, so we turned around, went back to bachelors, and katie ran in and grabbed some seats from a different double. Which probably made some masters angry when they took the boat out and discovered it didnt have seats.
Our drive through philly and new york was relatively uneventful. We stopped up in syracuse at some supposedly famous bbq place. It was pretty good, I'll give it that. We were making good time, and hank even made the mistake of making the statement "This drive isn't so bad. At least we will be there by like 6, and not have to pull in when its dark and we're all grumpy and tired like in indy"...yeah, definitely jinxed us.
We made it to the border, and pulled into the parking lot by the duty free shop to search for our passports. 3 seconds later, we turn around and see a car backing into us. Annie was driving at the time, and tried to honk, but nothing, the car backed straight into us.
Hank hops out of the car, and a woman gets out of the car and starts yelling at hank about how we hit her and she has children in the car. Clearly incredulous at this (seeing how our car was in park when she backed into us) his only response was "what the fuck is wrong with you?". Apparently, she was caravaning with two other cars, because within seconds, we were surrounded by about 5 adults and 9 children. After a long argument in which she made statements such as
"I did look while I was backing in, you weren't there"
"I was looking backwards, my head was just facing forwards"
"No logical person would back into a parked car"
"Just because I hit you, doesn't mean it was my fault"
"Its clearly your fault, look how much more damaged my car is"
Hank decided that the only way to deal with his was to call the cops and get them to write up a report. So he called the buffalo police. And we waited. And we waited. And we waited some more. Finally, 3 1/2 hours and 4 calls to 911 (one of them made by a border patrol officer) a police officer finally showed up, made the report and we were on our way. She hit us at about 5:45. We left at 9:50.
So much for making good time. We had originally planned on practicing at 7 that night. Nope. After waiting a long time at the border, we got into canada where we were all promptly informed by our phones that we would be charged $0.20/text, $0.49/minute and $10/MB. Muh. We set off to find our hotel. It was called Niagara Residence and Conference Center. It had gotten decent reviews online. We should have known something was wrong upon first figuring out that it was located on Niagara College campus. We checked in and realized that it was just shitty renovated dorms. We got in our rooms, got ready for bed (all in long pants and sleeves because we were kind of afraid to touch the sheets and bedspreads. It wasnt until i got into bed that I realized that the entire floor under the desk next to my bed was covered in mold. Yeah, that was the last straw, it was too late that night, but we were getting out of there promptly the next morning.
Annie and hank left early the next morning to rig boats, register and practice. They got back, picked us up and we hightailed it to Days Inn in St. Catherines. We were fairly surprised upon checking in to find that of all the hotels in the area, all of Penn AC, Vesper, Malta, and Crescent were staying in the same hotel. And they were the only rowers staying there. In other words, we managed to take all of boathouse row, and relocated it from Philly to Days Inn in St. Catherines.
That afternoon, we went out to the course, rigged, and I took off for the afternoon with my parents, stopping by at Niagara Falls for fun. We practiced Tuesday night, during which Katie hurt her rib on the first half pressure start we did. Considering that she has broken 5 ribs in the past year, there was a bit of concern that we wouldn't be able to race the next day, but the pain seemed to subside a bit.
After getting back to the trailer, we discovered that katie's bag, which held her wallet, phone, passport, and my wallet and phone, was missing. Her friend, lindsay was on the Penn AC juniors program, and her parents were still at the course and helped us search for the bag. After about an hour and no luck, we decided just to head back to the hotel, when one of the Penn AC coaches informed us that one of the juniors had picked up the bag by mistake, and of course, lindsay had the bag. Yeah. That happened.
Wednesday was our first race day in the Double. We had every intention of practicing that morning, our double and annies single, and the 3 of us an hank all got up at 5:15, got dressed and ready, took the elevator downstairs, took one step out of the elevator and saw what was going on outside. It was pouring rain and gusting. Without a word to eachother, we all turned around, went back upstairs, and got into bed for 3 more hours.
To our pleasant surprise, when we woke up it was sunny and nice out. We got ready and headed down to the course, and it wasn't until we were making our way up to the practice area that it started getting over cast. As we were doing some practice starts in the warmup area, we felt it. First it started drizzling lightly, then it started picking up steadier and steadier. As we were waiting to start, we were desperately trying to bail our boat out with our tanktops which we had worn up to the start, and it was almost working.
By the time we were locked on to the stakeboats though, it was pouring so hard that we couldnt even see the 500 meter from the start, and we were rapidly accumulating water in the boat. Heck, we could barely see or hear the starting officials for that matter.
There were 7 boats and we needed to be top 3 to advance to semis. Seeing how the first time we had practiced together was friday, we weren't really holding out much hope. But though two boats had taken off behind us, we were holding even with one all the way in lane 8 (we were in lane 2) until about the 1000. It was about there that they slowly started walking away from us and for the 3rd 500, while I was working hard, I had come to terms with the fact that we werent qualifying. It was much to my surprise then that at about 600 meters to go, I started seeing the stern deck of lane 3 creeping into my peripheral vision. Upon seeing this, Katie and I both picked it up, and they seemed to die more an more, to the point that we fully walked through them in no more than 10 strokes. This put us solidly in 3rd place and with momentum. We started creeping back up on 2nd, the double in lane 8 that had walked away from us, and finished the race less than a second behind them. Much to our surprise, we were in semis. We were also slightly grumpy because it stopped raining about 30 seconds after we stopped racing.
The following day, we actually made it up and to practice. We had had the intention of practicing the quad, but the team we were borrowing the quad from had apparently made it to finals that day and were planning on taking it out themselves, so we were back in the double for practice. We really only barely made it up for practice as we had gone to bed still undecided, and when the alarm went off both katie and I remained in bed. She had apparently looked at me to check if I was awake and getting up, realized that she couldnt see me and put on her glasses. I saw her putting on her glasses and took it as a sign that she was getting up and decided to get up. She saw me getting up and decided to get up. Yeah, that happened.
Our first race of the day was the quad. Seeing how we had never practiced in it before, our hopes werent super high. It didn't help that by the time we got on the course, the wind had picked up to the point that it was white capping, and it was legit not even choppy anymore, but there were actual swells. The only other times I remember that happening were dad vails freshman year, and that one practice where we went out in the 8, and then promptly turned around and headed back in and went for a run instead. But much to our surprise, races kept going (though massively delayed since the pairs that were racing in front of us kept flipping or swamping). Our race went about as well as we could have hoped it to go. It was a bit of a mess. We ended up in 4th out of 7, had to take top 3 to qualify, but we weren't really that close.
That afternoon was the double, and somehow now that we were out in a smaller boat, the water seemed to have gotten even worse. Having been dubbed the derpy double at some point, we jokingly practiced our starts in the practice area, saying "derp" at every finish. We had discovered early in the week that while our starts weren't that great, our flying starts were pretty awesome, so we decided to do them in the race, and with our prerace advice from hank being "don't come off the water feeling as though you could have done anything more to advance" we took this to mean, "don't come off the water feeling as though you could have done any more flying starts during the race".
After a messy first thousand, where we felt as if we were being literally tossed around in the waves, the water calmed down a little. Unfortunately by this point, we were far down enough that hope of us qualifying for finals seemed slim. We needed to be top 2, and two boats had taken off already. We were pretty close with a nyac double, and were walking very quickly away from a st. catherines double behind us. So katie decided we were going to just have fun and try to open up as much water as possible between us and st. catherines. As we crossed under the 1000m wire, she called us up for a flying start into a "derp 20". Then, as we heard, molly and hank cheering for us, she turned to them and blew a loud raspberry. I was pretty confused, just laughing, and fortunately for us, the regatta photographer managed to capture this moment. After a 2nd and 3rd flying start (during both of which we managed to hit a 40) and bringing it up for a sprint, we finished in 3rd place, didn't qualify, but we sure as hell had fun.
After letting the other boats go ahead to the dock, we were sitting in front of the grandstands, and realized that this would be our last time racing together. Just for fun, we decided to do a start 5, high 10, in front of the spectators. We paddled it out afterwards, and then did 2 more flying starts before getting to the dock. Ridiculous? Yes we are.
After getting back, we decided to go to dinner with hank and molly. Annie was racing the next day and wanted to stay in, but offered to drive us there and pick us up. Having eaten nothing but a banana and energy bar, being massively dehydrated and having raced twice, Katie and I then managed to get seriously drunk off of just two beers with dinner. Good news.
Because I was done racing, I was leaving the next day. But apparently canada didn't want me to leave. When my parents came to pick me up, we spent a full hour searching for my passport. It never turned up. We then went to the us consulate website to see what to do, and were told to make an appointment. First available appointment? August 18th. Yeah. Major problem. We decided just to go to the border and see what to do with me. Much to our surprise, getting there, the guy asked a few questions, told us where to go to report a missing passport, and let us through, no problem. Despite the fact that the consulate had told us specifically that we wouldn't be let through, no exceptions. Yeah. And multiple hours later, I was home.
No more rowing until preseason now, though i majorly miss it already. I miss philly too, as being back in the suburbs is far duller than living in the city.
There are pictures that are supposed to accompany this post, btw, but I've already spent so long typing this that I don't really feel like uploading them, so you'll just have to look at them on facebook.
I guess that ends my summer of rowing and this blog. It was a lot of fun.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Friday, July 22, 2011
I'm melting...
So I'm a bit too lazy to write up detailed descriptions of practices so this is what you get:
Tuesday Morning: Steady state row. I was stroking the quad (...audra and I switched. I was originally in bow. Slightly hate that I've become the default bow seat. How'd that happen). I was kind of getting beat up the slide every stroke so it wasn't the most fun row ever. Plus even though I had had two full days off of exercise and I can't honestly remember the last time I had that, though it might have been winter break, I was beyond sore from the car ride.
Tuesday Afternoon: We lifted since we had missed our usual monday afternoon lift.
Wednesday Afternoon: Went out in the quad again. I don't remember what we did but I was back in bow.
Thursday Morning: Went out in the double with audra (surprise. I'm bowing). Did 20 on 20 off at around racepace for almost 9 miles. I almost passed out because even though it was morning it was SO hot.
Thursday Afternoon: Went back out in the double with augusta (oh hey, I'm bowing again). Steady state row because that was honestly all we could manage. I'm pretty sure dana was suffering delusions from the heat because he was being stranger than usual.
Friday morning: Upon waking up at 7:20 and checking the weather, the heat index was already over a hundred. By the time I got to the boathouse, I was dripping wet. After sitting around and dreading going on the water, we convinced Dana that we should just lift.
Afternoon practice cancelled because the heat index is supposed to be over 120.
I have no air conditioning, so I'm currently camped out in starbucks because I can't even bear to be in my room right now. This afternoon, I'm going to be making an apple pie and then going to Annie's for a pot luck. I'm going to try to stay there overnight because my house is getting pretty unbearable to sleep in.
Tuesday Morning: Steady state row. I was stroking the quad (...audra and I switched. I was originally in bow. Slightly hate that I've become the default bow seat. How'd that happen). I was kind of getting beat up the slide every stroke so it wasn't the most fun row ever. Plus even though I had had two full days off of exercise and I can't honestly remember the last time I had that, though it might have been winter break, I was beyond sore from the car ride.
Tuesday Afternoon: We lifted since we had missed our usual monday afternoon lift.
Wednesday Afternoon: Went out in the quad again. I don't remember what we did but I was back in bow.
Thursday Morning: Went out in the double with audra (surprise. I'm bowing). Did 20 on 20 off at around racepace for almost 9 miles. I almost passed out because even though it was morning it was SO hot.
Thursday Afternoon: Went back out in the double with augusta (oh hey, I'm bowing again). Steady state row because that was honestly all we could manage. I'm pretty sure dana was suffering delusions from the heat because he was being stranger than usual.
Friday morning: Upon waking up at 7:20 and checking the weather, the heat index was already over a hundred. By the time I got to the boathouse, I was dripping wet. After sitting around and dreading going on the water, we convinced Dana that we should just lift.
Afternoon practice cancelled because the heat index is supposed to be over 120.
I have no air conditioning, so I'm currently camped out in starbucks because I can't even bear to be in my room right now. This afternoon, I'm going to be making an apple pie and then going to Annie's for a pot luck. I'm going to try to stay there overnight because my house is getting pretty unbearable to sleep in.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Club Nats (Day 3.5 through 5) and trip home
I'm sure I'm forgetting some great stories but the details are getting kind of blurry.
Friday night we went out for practice in the intermediate quad. If I remember correctly it was relatively successful, minus the fact that I accidentally ran my oars into a styrofoam distance marker. Whoops. I never claimed to be a great bow.
So we did a lap and were trying to decide if we wanted to do a second lap, and decided to go for an extra half lap. Now, there werent a lot of boats out, we rowed down to the 1000 meter mark, turned 90 degrees and were about to pull over a lane when an official pulled up to us and starts yelling at us that no crossing is allowed there. Which is dumb because there wasnt a single boat around us. So meghan, in all her badassery, turns to the official and goes, straight poker face, "we have a really serious cramp, we need to go in, its an injury", and the official looks at her and goes "these rules are for the safety of all the boats that don't have any problems".......wow. Asshole. Nice try though.
Saturday morning
We went down to the course to watch the senior double and senior single. I wasn't in either. Unfortunately we didn't qualify in either.
Afterwards, we went to bob evans for breakfast and my parents had driven up. It was nice to see them.
We headed back to the racecourse for the afternoon, intermediate quad race. We ended up in lane 7 because we had taken 3rd in the heats after a grueling day. If i remember correctly it went nyac lane 1, penn ac 2, vesper b 3, syracuse dev camp 4, vesper a 5, steel city 6, and us in 7. We had a pretty good start, after the first 15 we were tied for first with syracuse and vesper a, a few seats up on steel city and nyac, and about half a length up on penn ac and vesper b. A few strokes later, we clipped some buoys on starboard which affected our boat speed a little. After clearing and straightening back out, syracuse and vesper had gained some distance on us, we were even with nyac all the way in lane one, and still a few seats up on steel city. It stayed in this rough configuration for around the first thousand, though syracuse and vesper definitely opened up a little bit more distance. After the thousand, nyac started fading a bit, they fell to about half a length back and we walked a few more seats on steel city and then they held. This was the situation coming into the last few hundred meters. I was a bit nervous, because while everyone had a good view of steel city on our port side, I thought that nyac might start walking up and nobody in the boat would notice, but to my pleasant surprise as we kept going, they just kept fading more and more. Steel city fought tenaciously, but they never made up any distance on us. And that was how it finished. Bronze medal. Whoo.
Sunday
I wasn't actually racing on sunday, but we had a few more races left as a squad. We ended up with another bronze in the senior quad, and after having had a disappointing finish in the senior single (she didn't qualify for finals because her semi was WAY more loaded than the other one), annie won the open single dash with a super impressive last 200 meters.
We packed up, loaded the trailer (scored a free volunteer t-shirt) and took off, with me, Audra and Hank in one car, and Annie and Katie in the other. Starving and wanting to watch at least some of the soccer game, I found a sports bar right off the highway, called champions. Much to my surprise, I was hit with a strange sense of deja vu upon getting there. I quickly realized that out of all the places I could have picked to eat, I picked the only place I've ever been to in the city of Indianapolis before, that was located in the hotel where I had once stayed for volleyball. Lulz.
After having a DELICIOUS, but unfortunately expensive burger and watching the beginning of the game, we headed back out. We drove a few more hours and arrived in columbus where we were spending the night at katie's parents house.
We had a really fantastic dinner, which involved more burgers and cheesy potato goodness, and decided that we need to start a twitter feed for Hank which will feature such great things as
I really like maroon 5. Actually I just really love adam levine. #IAmAMan
I don't listen to Justin Beiber, but I LOVED the beiber glee episode. #IAmAMan
I would kick all your asses at girly movie trivia. #IAmAMan
Yeah, we went to sleep in different places, but all 3 of us guys woke up on the futon. #IAmAMan
Yeah. We love hank, but we give him a hard time. He's really a great assistant coach who is not getting paid to work with us all summer and does way more than he needs to. At some point during club nats, me and audra came up to him and were like "You know, we really appreciate all that you do for us, and we know that you don't have to be here and you don't have to help us like you do", and his response was "Aw, but I love you guys!"
Anyway, after dinner and some fun ("...where do rich people put their garbage?") we headed out for the night (but not without road beers, handed to us by Katie's mother). We were going to some girl Emily's 21st. We showed up at what I think was her appartment, hung out for a while, then went down to a bar called the Out-r-Inn, where fun and shennaniganery were had by all.
We came back and crashed for the night, woke up in the morning, had a FANTASTIC breakfast and fresh squeezed orange juice and headed back out again. This time less one katie, one car, but plus one bryce. I somehow ended up in the backseat with cuddly pair of audra and bryce.
We definitely had less adventures than on the way to indy, but we had fun. We played Stupi which was great, we played the movie game, where one person names a movie, the next names an actor in that movie, then you name another movie they were in and so on. So to make it fair, we were playing Bryce vs. Hank vs. The team of me, Audra, and Annie. Yeah, our team may have had 3 times as many people but we still lost. My favorite was when we were challanged to name another billy crystal movie, and this is a condensed version of the convo between my team (which really lasted a few minutes)
"OH, that one, the rom com where he makes the speech, at the baseball game"
"...Wait. I think I know what you're talking about. Sleepless in seattle. No. Wait. No"
"Uhh, It has whatsherface. Meg ryan"
"Yeah, sleepless in seattle."
"No. Definitely not"
"Oh, not it has names I think. Frank and...frank. No."
"Bill and Ted"
"NO!"
"uh.....Harry. No. Yes. Sally and Harry"
"When harry met sally!"
So yeah. We got there eventually, but the guys gave us a lot of shit for it. We also lost on easy things like Tommy Lee Jones.
A little later in the afternoon we pulled into a rest stop near pittsburgh, and parked and looked over next to us, and notice that the car has a hudson single on top. Annie looks at it and goes "Oh my god, thats my mom's car". Yeah. Her parents were driving from michigan back to baltimore today and we randomly ran into them at a rest stop near pittsburgh. Only because hank had to pee. Lol. The look on her mom's face when annie walked up was priceless.
Anyway, eventually we got home and all was good. And now i'm back in philly. Yay.
Friday night we went out for practice in the intermediate quad. If I remember correctly it was relatively successful, minus the fact that I accidentally ran my oars into a styrofoam distance marker. Whoops. I never claimed to be a great bow.
So we did a lap and were trying to decide if we wanted to do a second lap, and decided to go for an extra half lap. Now, there werent a lot of boats out, we rowed down to the 1000 meter mark, turned 90 degrees and were about to pull over a lane when an official pulled up to us and starts yelling at us that no crossing is allowed there. Which is dumb because there wasnt a single boat around us. So meghan, in all her badassery, turns to the official and goes, straight poker face, "we have a really serious cramp, we need to go in, its an injury", and the official looks at her and goes "these rules are for the safety of all the boats that don't have any problems".......wow. Asshole. Nice try though.
Saturday morning
We went down to the course to watch the senior double and senior single. I wasn't in either. Unfortunately we didn't qualify in either.
Afterwards, we went to bob evans for breakfast and my parents had driven up. It was nice to see them.
We headed back to the racecourse for the afternoon, intermediate quad race. We ended up in lane 7 because we had taken 3rd in the heats after a grueling day. If i remember correctly it went nyac lane 1, penn ac 2, vesper b 3, syracuse dev camp 4, vesper a 5, steel city 6, and us in 7. We had a pretty good start, after the first 15 we were tied for first with syracuse and vesper a, a few seats up on steel city and nyac, and about half a length up on penn ac and vesper b. A few strokes later, we clipped some buoys on starboard which affected our boat speed a little. After clearing and straightening back out, syracuse and vesper had gained some distance on us, we were even with nyac all the way in lane one, and still a few seats up on steel city. It stayed in this rough configuration for around the first thousand, though syracuse and vesper definitely opened up a little bit more distance. After the thousand, nyac started fading a bit, they fell to about half a length back and we walked a few more seats on steel city and then they held. This was the situation coming into the last few hundred meters. I was a bit nervous, because while everyone had a good view of steel city on our port side, I thought that nyac might start walking up and nobody in the boat would notice, but to my pleasant surprise as we kept going, they just kept fading more and more. Steel city fought tenaciously, but they never made up any distance on us. And that was how it finished. Bronze medal. Whoo.
Sunday
I wasn't actually racing on sunday, but we had a few more races left as a squad. We ended up with another bronze in the senior quad, and after having had a disappointing finish in the senior single (she didn't qualify for finals because her semi was WAY more loaded than the other one), annie won the open single dash with a super impressive last 200 meters.
We packed up, loaded the trailer (scored a free volunteer t-shirt) and took off, with me, Audra and Hank in one car, and Annie and Katie in the other. Starving and wanting to watch at least some of the soccer game, I found a sports bar right off the highway, called champions. Much to my surprise, I was hit with a strange sense of deja vu upon getting there. I quickly realized that out of all the places I could have picked to eat, I picked the only place I've ever been to in the city of Indianapolis before, that was located in the hotel where I had once stayed for volleyball. Lulz.
After having a DELICIOUS, but unfortunately expensive burger and watching the beginning of the game, we headed back out. We drove a few more hours and arrived in columbus where we were spending the night at katie's parents house.
We had a really fantastic dinner, which involved more burgers and cheesy potato goodness, and decided that we need to start a twitter feed for Hank which will feature such great things as
I really like maroon 5. Actually I just really love adam levine. #IAmAMan
I don't listen to Justin Beiber, but I LOVED the beiber glee episode. #IAmAMan
I would kick all your asses at girly movie trivia. #IAmAMan
Yeah, we went to sleep in different places, but all 3 of us guys woke up on the futon. #IAmAMan
Yeah. We love hank, but we give him a hard time. He's really a great assistant coach who is not getting paid to work with us all summer and does way more than he needs to. At some point during club nats, me and audra came up to him and were like "You know, we really appreciate all that you do for us, and we know that you don't have to be here and you don't have to help us like you do", and his response was "Aw, but I love you guys!"
Anyway, after dinner and some fun ("...where do rich people put their garbage?") we headed out for the night (but not without road beers, handed to us by Katie's mother). We were going to some girl Emily's 21st. We showed up at what I think was her appartment, hung out for a while, then went down to a bar called the Out-r-Inn, where fun and shennaniganery were had by all.
We came back and crashed for the night, woke up in the morning, had a FANTASTIC breakfast and fresh squeezed orange juice and headed back out again. This time less one katie, one car, but plus one bryce. I somehow ended up in the backseat with cuddly pair of audra and bryce.
We definitely had less adventures than on the way to indy, but we had fun. We played Stupi which was great, we played the movie game, where one person names a movie, the next names an actor in that movie, then you name another movie they were in and so on. So to make it fair, we were playing Bryce vs. Hank vs. The team of me, Audra, and Annie. Yeah, our team may have had 3 times as many people but we still lost. My favorite was when we were challanged to name another billy crystal movie, and this is a condensed version of the convo between my team (which really lasted a few minutes)
"OH, that one, the rom com where he makes the speech, at the baseball game"
"...Wait. I think I know what you're talking about. Sleepless in seattle. No. Wait. No"
"Uhh, It has whatsherface. Meg ryan"
"Yeah, sleepless in seattle."
"No. Definitely not"
"Oh, not it has names I think. Frank and...frank. No."
"Bill and Ted"
"NO!"
"uh.....Harry. No. Yes. Sally and Harry"
"When harry met sally!"
So yeah. We got there eventually, but the guys gave us a lot of shit for it. We also lost on easy things like Tommy Lee Jones.
A little later in the afternoon we pulled into a rest stop near pittsburgh, and parked and looked over next to us, and notice that the car has a hudson single on top. Annie looks at it and goes "Oh my god, thats my mom's car". Yeah. Her parents were driving from michigan back to baltimore today and we randomly ran into them at a rest stop near pittsburgh. Only because hank had to pee. Lol. The look on her mom's face when annie walked up was priceless.
Anyway, eventually we got home and all was good. And now i'm back in philly. Yay.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Club Nats (Days 1.5 through 3)
Finally have time to update. We'll begin with the evening of day one.
They open up practice for 90 minutes. We were practicing our intermediate quad. Since annie can't row intermediate, we needed to find another person to row with us, and boy, did dana ever deliver.
He found this girl, Meghan. Meghan may just be the perfect woman. I would marry her in a second if I were single and she would have me. So, a little bit about her. She is around 6'0" and absolutely gorgeous. She's a few years out of college, and works for ESPN. She technically started rowing last august, but just did some masters rowing in the fall, and started really training and sculling in March. She pulls a 6:52. And is just super nice. I like being around her and rowing with her, because unlike a lot of the people I've encountered this summer she isn't jaded at all about rowing.
Anyway, so, as I found out 2 minutes before our practice, our lineup was Audra, Katie, Meghan and me in bow. Surprise, bowing a quad for the first time ever. And to make it better, the toe had been moved up to stroke, which is good for the race, but not for practice.
Anyway, so they opened the course for practice for 90 minutes, and hundreds of boats tried to get out at the same time. It was an absolute mess. It didn't help that because of the sweep rowing, my neck was killing me so turning around was hard, and I was losing my voice because I was sick. Oh, and it was whitecapping. So bowing was an absolute adventure. We pulled off the dock and there were boats everywhere. We pulled onto the course and couldn't really stop so we pulled into lane 4 to adjust, and an official promptly came over to yell at us that this was a southbound lane and we had to get out of it. Keep that in mind. Lane 4
So after we adjusted, we got back into lane 3, and went down. We got to the start line, turned around, pulled into lane 4 and started rowing. We were almost down at the bottom when the same official pulls up to us and goes "You have to get out of lane 4. This is a dead lane"...uhhhhh....thats not what you told us 10 minutes ago. So we did another terrifying lap and went in. We learned that when I am under a lot of stress (for example, when I am bowing with hundreds of frantic boats around me and its whitecapping and I'm in the clubs new hudson quad) I forget which side is which. So there was a few "Check on...uh...shit. Port" calls. So that was that.
Thursday, Day 2 of racing
We got to the course pretty early for, I think, the intermediate double and Annie's single. Annie dominated in the single. She won her heat by 13 seconds. And she rowed the last 1500 meters at under a 24. The Intermediate double also qualified.
We went back to the hotel for a few hours in between racing and hung out. Bryce and Jason, two of the Vesper guys came over.
In the afternoon, we headed back down for the pair and the quad. Now, the pair was at 3:26, and the quad was at 3:54, so it would be a super fast turnaround. Even though we managed to qualify for semis in the senior pair, we didn't in the intermediate pair because there were just so many more boats, and this was now our 3rd time sweep rowing this summer and 3rd time in the pair together. We definitely improved over wednesday though.
After we finished the pair, we booked it back to the hotseat dock, where we expected our quad to be sitting there, ready, with katie and meghan ready to go. Much to our dismay, we got there just as they were carrying our oars down, and wasted a few minutes waiting for the quad to get to the dock. We shoved off the dock at 3:42. 12 minutes before our race. We booked it, almost crashing into the giant 1000 styrofoam buoy. Not my fault. (Well, it would have been. But we didnt). Anyway, we somehow managed to make it to the stakeboat by the 3 minute call, which is fairly impressive if you ask me.
The quad race went well. The vesper quad that went to trials took off a bit, but we were a bit up on the PennAC quad until the last 500 meters when they walked up on us and got us by a little. Audra and I were clearly a bit shot by this point, having raced 20 minutes earlier, so we're not super concerned. We're in grand finals on sunday. Apparently all 6 qualifying times in grand finals were within 6 seconds of eachother, so if we're fresh, we stand a very solid chance of medalling.
Afterwards, we were standing around debriefing when I hear them come over the PA and go "Women's senior double, last call, women's senior double". And in my head, I go, that can't be right, we were just discussing that the women's senior double was straight to finals on saturday. SURPRIZ! Nope. Apparently another boat had entered and now there were heats. So poor Audra (4th race of the day) and Annie had to scramble and get their double ready and get to the start. They ended up qualifying fairly easily, even though Annie later described the last thousand as "rowing a coxed single" because Audra was so dead at this point.
Afterwards, we headed back to the hotel and had cookie bar! Where annie makes cookie dough and we all go to mix fixings in and then we baked them. Bryce came over again, along with Skye, a coach. I sat around with a giant icy hot patch around my neck, so I couldn't turn my head at all or else it would come off, and I they all made fun of me a lot. We all at so many cookies and were just so high on sugar and completely insane, it was great. We hung out for a few hours and then headed to bed.
Friday morning (Day 3 of racing)
Went down to the course this morning for the senior quad, which I'm not in. When we got there, annie got a call that they had delivered the unis to our hotel, so hank and I headed back and I got to pretend to be annie to pick them up from the front desk. After the quad qualified, we finally got to open the unis and have christmas. They look really nice, except that my uni (which should be the same cut as my school one) is a bit bigger, and the cut for the waist is WAY higher. Like its seriously cut at like my ribcage. But they do look nice besides that. And now we look a lot more legit.
Anyway, we raced the pair and we didn't qualify. To sum it up, a quote from the dock after the race: "Well, we're definitely improving a lot. Just not fast enough". We didn't hit a single buoy this race. And were significantly more set. So improvement. Now we're hanging out in the hotel until practice this afternoon when we're taking out the senior quad again.
They open up practice for 90 minutes. We were practicing our intermediate quad. Since annie can't row intermediate, we needed to find another person to row with us, and boy, did dana ever deliver.
He found this girl, Meghan. Meghan may just be the perfect woman. I would marry her in a second if I were single and she would have me. So, a little bit about her. She is around 6'0" and absolutely gorgeous. She's a few years out of college, and works for ESPN. She technically started rowing last august, but just did some masters rowing in the fall, and started really training and sculling in March. She pulls a 6:52. And is just super nice. I like being around her and rowing with her, because unlike a lot of the people I've encountered this summer she isn't jaded at all about rowing.
Anyway, so, as I found out 2 minutes before our practice, our lineup was Audra, Katie, Meghan and me in bow. Surprise, bowing a quad for the first time ever. And to make it better, the toe had been moved up to stroke, which is good for the race, but not for practice.
Anyway, so they opened the course for practice for 90 minutes, and hundreds of boats tried to get out at the same time. It was an absolute mess. It didn't help that because of the sweep rowing, my neck was killing me so turning around was hard, and I was losing my voice because I was sick. Oh, and it was whitecapping. So bowing was an absolute adventure. We pulled off the dock and there were boats everywhere. We pulled onto the course and couldn't really stop so we pulled into lane 4 to adjust, and an official promptly came over to yell at us that this was a southbound lane and we had to get out of it. Keep that in mind. Lane 4
So after we adjusted, we got back into lane 3, and went down. We got to the start line, turned around, pulled into lane 4 and started rowing. We were almost down at the bottom when the same official pulls up to us and goes "You have to get out of lane 4. This is a dead lane"...uhhhhh....thats not what you told us 10 minutes ago. So we did another terrifying lap and went in. We learned that when I am under a lot of stress (for example, when I am bowing with hundreds of frantic boats around me and its whitecapping and I'm in the clubs new hudson quad) I forget which side is which. So there was a few "Check on...uh...shit. Port" calls. So that was that.
Thursday, Day 2 of racing
We got to the course pretty early for, I think, the intermediate double and Annie's single. Annie dominated in the single. She won her heat by 13 seconds. And she rowed the last 1500 meters at under a 24. The Intermediate double also qualified.
We went back to the hotel for a few hours in between racing and hung out. Bryce and Jason, two of the Vesper guys came over.
In the afternoon, we headed back down for the pair and the quad. Now, the pair was at 3:26, and the quad was at 3:54, so it would be a super fast turnaround. Even though we managed to qualify for semis in the senior pair, we didn't in the intermediate pair because there were just so many more boats, and this was now our 3rd time sweep rowing this summer and 3rd time in the pair together. We definitely improved over wednesday though.
After we finished the pair, we booked it back to the hotseat dock, where we expected our quad to be sitting there, ready, with katie and meghan ready to go. Much to our dismay, we got there just as they were carrying our oars down, and wasted a few minutes waiting for the quad to get to the dock. We shoved off the dock at 3:42. 12 minutes before our race. We booked it, almost crashing into the giant 1000 styrofoam buoy. Not my fault. (Well, it would have been. But we didnt). Anyway, we somehow managed to make it to the stakeboat by the 3 minute call, which is fairly impressive if you ask me.
The quad race went well. The vesper quad that went to trials took off a bit, but we were a bit up on the PennAC quad until the last 500 meters when they walked up on us and got us by a little. Audra and I were clearly a bit shot by this point, having raced 20 minutes earlier, so we're not super concerned. We're in grand finals on sunday. Apparently all 6 qualifying times in grand finals were within 6 seconds of eachother, so if we're fresh, we stand a very solid chance of medalling.
Afterwards, we were standing around debriefing when I hear them come over the PA and go "Women's senior double, last call, women's senior double". And in my head, I go, that can't be right, we were just discussing that the women's senior double was straight to finals on saturday. SURPRIZ! Nope. Apparently another boat had entered and now there were heats. So poor Audra (4th race of the day) and Annie had to scramble and get their double ready and get to the start. They ended up qualifying fairly easily, even though Annie later described the last thousand as "rowing a coxed single" because Audra was so dead at this point.
Afterwards, we headed back to the hotel and had cookie bar! Where annie makes cookie dough and we all go to mix fixings in and then we baked them. Bryce came over again, along with Skye, a coach. I sat around with a giant icy hot patch around my neck, so I couldn't turn my head at all or else it would come off, and I they all made fun of me a lot. We all at so many cookies and were just so high on sugar and completely insane, it was great. We hung out for a few hours and then headed to bed.
Friday morning (Day 3 of racing)
Went down to the course this morning for the senior quad, which I'm not in. When we got there, annie got a call that they had delivered the unis to our hotel, so hank and I headed back and I got to pretend to be annie to pick them up from the front desk. After the quad qualified, we finally got to open the unis and have christmas. They look really nice, except that my uni (which should be the same cut as my school one) is a bit bigger, and the cut for the waist is WAY higher. Like its seriously cut at like my ribcage. But they do look nice besides that. And now we look a lot more legit.
Anyway, we raced the pair and we didn't qualify. To sum it up, a quote from the dock after the race: "Well, we're definitely improving a lot. Just not fast enough". We didn't hit a single buoy this race. And were significantly more set. So improvement. Now we're hanging out in the hotel until practice this afternoon when we're taking out the senior quad again.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Club Nats (Days -2 through 1)
Sunday
Sunday afternoon, I came down to the boathouse and we were rowing the quad with a girl, Liz, who apparently went to Boston College, graduated a few years ago. She's going to be rowing in our senior quad at club nationals, but katie wasn't here so I got thrown in it, sitting 2-seat (officially my least favorite seat in a quad. My voice doesn't really carry so I was like losing my voice by the end). We did a lot of 30 strokes on and 15 strokes off, so I had to count also, and trying to think about my technique on top of it was pretty hard. But it was fun. At one point we were supposed to be at a 32, and we came down from a 30 that felt fairly easy, and our stroke was like...yeah...we were at a 35. Sorry.
Afterwards I went to radioshack and got myself a new phone. Samsung Galaxy S. Its preeeeetttty.
Monday
Monday morning we headed down to the boathouse to derig and load the trailer for club nationals. We were only taking a few boats (Annie's single, Dana's single, a double, a pair/double, and the new quad which we managed to wrestle away from the masters women) so we were just putting our boats onto somebody elses trailer. I was naturally running late because I had put off packing and was running around at the last minute throwing stuff into my backpack.
After what seemed like way too long loading the trailer, as usual, we were finally ready to go. Except first, we had to go to go back to the Penn area to my house and Hank's house to pick up our things from our apartments, to center city to get Annie's things, and then up to East falls to pick up Dana and Audra's things. And naturally Dana wasnt done packing yet, so we got to hang out with Charlotte, who was in a particularly jealous mood. Whatever anybody else had, she wanted. We also got to meet his mom and his two dogs, who were cute.
FINALLY at almost noon, we were ready to leave. We got out fairly quickly and were making good time. Dana and Hank were in the front, and (after a long argument over who would have to sit bitch), Me, Audra, and Annie were crammed in the back.
It was at some point here that Dana announced to Audra that he had a surprise for her. But wouldn't tell her what it was.
During this first leg of the trip, we learned that Dana is way too competitive about the whole holding your breath in tunnels thing, and Audra makes really strange noises when doing it, to the point that we all ended in hysterical laughing fits.
We were about 3 hours into our drive when we unfortunately missed the cop that was sitting on the side of the road, going 87 in a 65. Yeah. Dude pulled us over and gave Dana massive attitude for having Philly plates and a Michigan drivers licence. And then we had to wait almost 20 minutes for him to write up the ticket, which was 172 bucks, which is a bit ridic. Anyway, we headed off a bit slower and more cautiously.
A few hours later we discovered what the surprise was when we pulled into a Cabela's in West Virginia. Yeah. I don't know. Apparently, Dana had a gift card for it. So while he looked at guns and shorts, we wandered around and took in the sights, and trust me they were plenty.
Afterwards, we went to cracker barrel for dinner. Taking off again, we were all reenergized. It didn't take long for us to all be in hysterial fits of laughter again. Why? Because we were comparing wenis sizes. This was to the point that we were in tears and it hurt to laugh more.
We were supposed to meet Katie in Columbus and we were trying to decide where to meet her, and Audra decided that since it was free slurpee day at 7-11, we should meet her at a 7-11, so we found the 7-11 that was closest off the highway and went there. Only minor problem, there wasn't really a 7-11 there. It was now a Dairy Land, which according to their sign sells "Beer, Wine, and Dairy Products". Super classy. Deprived of a place to meet (not to mention free slurpees), we pulled over to the side of a fairly busy road and ended up having a pow-wow on the side of a highway for a while, while a storm rolled in. When it finally started getting scary looking, we split up into cars again, Audra splitting off to go into Katie's car, and took off.
With Audra gone, it seemed much quieter. The four of us watched the truly epic lightning storm outside. After a few hours, when Dana seemed to be almost falling asleep at the wheel, he pulled off the highway with no warning, and pulled into a Dairy Queen. Apparently, he really needed a blizzard. After getting our ice cream fix, we switched drivers and headed back out.
After a lot more hours of driving, all of us almost falling asleep, we finally got to our hotel in indianapolis. We went to check in at the front desk, we were supposed to have a suite with 2 rooms, and we were informed that there were no more of those left. So instead we got split into two single suites. Me, Audra and Hank went into one and Katie, Dana and Annie went into the other. Audra and I took the bed, and Hank ended up on the couch, which pulls out but we were all too tired to bother pulling it out so he just crashed on it.
Tuesday
So sharing a bed with Audra. Wow. What an adventure. I woke up in the middle of night curled up on about a foot of the bed and Audra was sprawled across the entire bed. And the best/worst part about sharing a room with Audra is that she will be dead asleep and then 30 seconds later, BAM, AUDRA. We woke up this morning back to back, and she quickly announced that our butts were touching and she was laughing hysterically. Then 30 seconds later, she launched herself on Hank on the couch and 10 seconds later, he was on the ground.
We headed down to the racecourse this morning, got our gear off the Sykes trailer, and rigged. We managed to spend most of the day there, and Audra and I eventually went out in the pair which we are racing tomorrow despite the fact that we've never been in a pair together before, and neither of us have swept all summer (Audra hasn't swept since last fall). Yeah, it was an absolute mess. Tomorrow morning might be embarrasing.
After we got off the water, it was nearly 3, we hadn't eaten all day except for one tiny bowl of cereal, and I was so hungry I was starting to get lightheaded. So after a lot more standing around, we headed out and headed to the grocery store, and have since spent the entire rest of the day in the hotel eating and watching cash cab.
Tomorrow, we race the Senior pair. It will be ugly. We're racing 4 pairs from various dev camps so they probably have a lot of sweeping/pairs experience. We're treating it as a warm-up for the Intermediate pair, pretty much. Lol.
Wednesday
First day of racing. Yeah, our pair was the only race of the day. We didn't exactly have high hopes for it, but we only needed to beat one boat to qualify for semis, so there was a chance. Though we weren't really sure if we wanted to qualify for semis lol. We got on the water and did some starts which were slightly cleaner than yesterday, but not much, and the water was really in much worse condition. We were nervous though because there were definitely some big girls around and they all looked like they had at least been in the pair together before, unlike us.
This Minnesota pair was going around to everyone asking if they had an extra pop-out, and we were all like...uhhh, why would we have an extra pop-out. The only people they didn't ask was the coxswains in the fours around us who might actually have one. Anyway, they were in our race. Audra joked that they were just trying to psych out the competition and were really super fast and just going to take off.
So our race. So our start, not awful, but not exactly what I would call clean, or quick or super powerful. By some miracle and much to both of our surprise, after the first 5 strokes, we were even with the first place boat, and half a boat up on everybody else, and walked away from the other boats a bit more in the next 20 (the first place pair just took off), and then held them for a while. We were in second place through the thousand when the water got a bit choppier, and our lack of set started costing us more boat speed. By this point though we were massively ahead of that same pop-out-less Minnesota pair and took it fairly easy for the rest of the race. We brought it up a bit for the sprint but not significantly. We finished in 4th place, beating the Minnesota pair by over 40 seconds. So now we're in the semis of the senior pair on Friday.
After the race, Marie Warshauer took us to go weigh our boat in :)
Spending the rest of the day dicking around the hotel.
Tommorow we're racing the intermediate pair. In our heat we're racing 2 of the boats that beat us today, the wisco dev camp F boat, the minnesota pair, and boats from TBC and Essex that we know nothing about. We have to beat 2 boats, so hopefully we can beat the F boat and we'll be set. We are also racing the intermediate quad with a girl we don't know but apparently pulls a 6:52, so we should be pretty fast, considering I'm both significantly the slowest and least experienced sculler in the quad.
Sunday afternoon, I came down to the boathouse and we were rowing the quad with a girl, Liz, who apparently went to Boston College, graduated a few years ago. She's going to be rowing in our senior quad at club nationals, but katie wasn't here so I got thrown in it, sitting 2-seat (officially my least favorite seat in a quad. My voice doesn't really carry so I was like losing my voice by the end). We did a lot of 30 strokes on and 15 strokes off, so I had to count also, and trying to think about my technique on top of it was pretty hard. But it was fun. At one point we were supposed to be at a 32, and we came down from a 30 that felt fairly easy, and our stroke was like...yeah...we were at a 35. Sorry.
Afterwards I went to radioshack and got myself a new phone. Samsung Galaxy S. Its preeeeetttty.
Monday
Monday morning we headed down to the boathouse to derig and load the trailer for club nationals. We were only taking a few boats (Annie's single, Dana's single, a double, a pair/double, and the new quad which we managed to wrestle away from the masters women) so we were just putting our boats onto somebody elses trailer. I was naturally running late because I had put off packing and was running around at the last minute throwing stuff into my backpack.
After what seemed like way too long loading the trailer, as usual, we were finally ready to go. Except first, we had to go to go back to the Penn area to my house and Hank's house to pick up our things from our apartments, to center city to get Annie's things, and then up to East falls to pick up Dana and Audra's things. And naturally Dana wasnt done packing yet, so we got to hang out with Charlotte, who was in a particularly jealous mood. Whatever anybody else had, she wanted. We also got to meet his mom and his two dogs, who were cute.
FINALLY at almost noon, we were ready to leave. We got out fairly quickly and were making good time. Dana and Hank were in the front, and (after a long argument over who would have to sit bitch), Me, Audra, and Annie were crammed in the back.
It was at some point here that Dana announced to Audra that he had a surprise for her. But wouldn't tell her what it was.
During this first leg of the trip, we learned that Dana is way too competitive about the whole holding your breath in tunnels thing, and Audra makes really strange noises when doing it, to the point that we all ended in hysterical laughing fits.
We were about 3 hours into our drive when we unfortunately missed the cop that was sitting on the side of the road, going 87 in a 65. Yeah. Dude pulled us over and gave Dana massive attitude for having Philly plates and a Michigan drivers licence. And then we had to wait almost 20 minutes for him to write up the ticket, which was 172 bucks, which is a bit ridic. Anyway, we headed off a bit slower and more cautiously.
A few hours later we discovered what the surprise was when we pulled into a Cabela's in West Virginia. Yeah. I don't know. Apparently, Dana had a gift card for it. So while he looked at guns and shorts, we wandered around and took in the sights, and trust me they were plenty.
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| Hank being a polar bear. |
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| Can you check out guns from the gun library and return them 2 weeks later? |
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| Audra's an elephant? |
We were supposed to meet Katie in Columbus and we were trying to decide where to meet her, and Audra decided that since it was free slurpee day at 7-11, we should meet her at a 7-11, so we found the 7-11 that was closest off the highway and went there. Only minor problem, there wasn't really a 7-11 there. It was now a Dairy Land, which according to their sign sells "Beer, Wine, and Dairy Products". Super classy. Deprived of a place to meet (not to mention free slurpees), we pulled over to the side of a fairly busy road and ended up having a pow-wow on the side of a highway for a while, while a storm rolled in. When it finally started getting scary looking, we split up into cars again, Audra splitting off to go into Katie's car, and took off.
With Audra gone, it seemed much quieter. The four of us watched the truly epic lightning storm outside. After a few hours, when Dana seemed to be almost falling asleep at the wheel, he pulled off the highway with no warning, and pulled into a Dairy Queen. Apparently, he really needed a blizzard. After getting our ice cream fix, we switched drivers and headed back out.
After a lot more hours of driving, all of us almost falling asleep, we finally got to our hotel in indianapolis. We went to check in at the front desk, we were supposed to have a suite with 2 rooms, and we were informed that there were no more of those left. So instead we got split into two single suites. Me, Audra and Hank went into one and Katie, Dana and Annie went into the other. Audra and I took the bed, and Hank ended up on the couch, which pulls out but we were all too tired to bother pulling it out so he just crashed on it.
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| First thing in the morning with Audra |
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| Yeah, she won. |
So sharing a bed with Audra. Wow. What an adventure. I woke up in the middle of night curled up on about a foot of the bed and Audra was sprawled across the entire bed. And the best/worst part about sharing a room with Audra is that she will be dead asleep and then 30 seconds later, BAM, AUDRA. We woke up this morning back to back, and she quickly announced that our butts were touching and she was laughing hysterically. Then 30 seconds later, she launched herself on Hank on the couch and 10 seconds later, he was on the ground.
We headed down to the racecourse this morning, got our gear off the Sykes trailer, and rigged. We managed to spend most of the day there, and Audra and I eventually went out in the pair which we are racing tomorrow despite the fact that we've never been in a pair together before, and neither of us have swept all summer (Audra hasn't swept since last fall). Yeah, it was an absolute mess. Tomorrow morning might be embarrasing.
After we got off the water, it was nearly 3, we hadn't eaten all day except for one tiny bowl of cereal, and I was so hungry I was starting to get lightheaded. So after a lot more standing around, we headed out and headed to the grocery store, and have since spent the entire rest of the day in the hotel eating and watching cash cab.
Tomorrow, we race the Senior pair. It will be ugly. We're racing 4 pairs from various dev camps so they probably have a lot of sweeping/pairs experience. We're treating it as a warm-up for the Intermediate pair, pretty much. Lol.
Wednesday
First day of racing. Yeah, our pair was the only race of the day. We didn't exactly have high hopes for it, but we only needed to beat one boat to qualify for semis, so there was a chance. Though we weren't really sure if we wanted to qualify for semis lol. We got on the water and did some starts which were slightly cleaner than yesterday, but not much, and the water was really in much worse condition. We were nervous though because there were definitely some big girls around and they all looked like they had at least been in the pair together before, unlike us.
This Minnesota pair was going around to everyone asking if they had an extra pop-out, and we were all like...uhhh, why would we have an extra pop-out. The only people they didn't ask was the coxswains in the fours around us who might actually have one. Anyway, they were in our race. Audra joked that they were just trying to psych out the competition and were really super fast and just going to take off.
So our race. So our start, not awful, but not exactly what I would call clean, or quick or super powerful. By some miracle and much to both of our surprise, after the first 5 strokes, we were even with the first place boat, and half a boat up on everybody else, and walked away from the other boats a bit more in the next 20 (the first place pair just took off), and then held them for a while. We were in second place through the thousand when the water got a bit choppier, and our lack of set started costing us more boat speed. By this point though we were massively ahead of that same pop-out-less Minnesota pair and took it fairly easy for the rest of the race. We brought it up a bit for the sprint but not significantly. We finished in 4th place, beating the Minnesota pair by over 40 seconds. So now we're in the semis of the senior pair on Friday.
After the race, Marie Warshauer took us to go weigh our boat in :)
Spending the rest of the day dicking around the hotel.
Tommorow we're racing the intermediate pair. In our heat we're racing 2 of the boats that beat us today, the wisco dev camp F boat, the minnesota pair, and boats from TBC and Essex that we know nothing about. We have to beat 2 boats, so hopefully we can beat the F boat and we'll be set. We are also racing the intermediate quad with a girl we don't know but apparently pulls a 6:52, so we should be pretty fast, considering I'm both significantly the slowest and least experienced sculler in the quad.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Theres a reason that rowers row...
After sleeping in until the glorious hour of 10:50, I bummed around the house most of the morning. We had the day off, and then headed out early afternoon to go "frisbee" with the team at a local park. It was me, Audra, Molly, Hank (one of the coaches) and Bryce (rows for Vesper...maybe?). We tossed the frisbee around for probably a half hour and then got hot and bored so after some general shenigannery:
...we decided to call it quits. Somebody suggested we go to Wawa, so we walked up there only to realize that none of us had money so this was a pointless suggestion. At this point, we were about a block from my house, so, despite my resistance, they insisted that I show them around. I steered them away from the more disgusting parts (...the kitchens....).
We headed out again, back to Hank's place which was a few blocks down and nicely air conditioned, and after bumming around there for a while, we headed down to Mikey's, a bar and grill on the lower level of his apartment. I had a giant quesadilla and a beer, which was really fantastic at the time, but in retrospect, a mistake. After growing bored of sitting around and watching the Phillies game, much to Hank's disappointing, we decided we would head to center city and bum around there. But first, we had to go back to the park, because I had left my bike locked up there.
When we got to the park, there was a small group of people playing ultimate frisbee, and being the athletic and outgoing people that some of us are, we asked to join in. Yeah, I am proud to say that I scored the first point. But all in all, the combination of the quesadilla and the fact that this was the most running I've done in a long time made it a bit rough at times. Either way, it was kind of a blast. Even though I constantly had to guard Bryce and he decided that he was just going to make me sprint the field. And he whacked me in the face once. On accident.
Anyway, afterwards, after all cleaning up, Audra and Bryce headed back to East Falls, we were joined by Hank's ex-girlfriend, and we headed to World Cafe Live, which was unfortunately crowded and some band was playing a show for which tickets were 13 dollars that we weren't willing to shell out. So instead we headed into center city. We initially went to Roosevelts, but had to leave because Molly is about a month short of 21. Boo. Instead we ended up at this great pizza place called Mix on the lower level of Annie's apartment complex, while we waited for Annie, who was in theory supposed to meet up with us but was being unresponsive. We hung out there for a long time, but then Molly had to leave and I was left with Hank and his ex (and I feel really bad that I can't remember her name. She was really nice). Feeling like the awkward third wheel, I headed home.
But walking home 19 blocks by myself in the dark with no phone isn't super fun. But at least the weather was fantastic, and Philly and the Schuylkill are gorgeous at night.
 |
| Hank and Audra practicing their lifts |
We headed out again, back to Hank's place which was a few blocks down and nicely air conditioned, and after bumming around there for a while, we headed down to Mikey's, a bar and grill on the lower level of his apartment. I had a giant quesadilla and a beer, which was really fantastic at the time, but in retrospect, a mistake. After growing bored of sitting around and watching the Phillies game, much to Hank's disappointing, we decided we would head to center city and bum around there. But first, we had to go back to the park, because I had left my bike locked up there.
When we got to the park, there was a small group of people playing ultimate frisbee, and being the athletic and outgoing people that some of us are, we asked to join in. Yeah, I am proud to say that I scored the first point. But all in all, the combination of the quesadilla and the fact that this was the most running I've done in a long time made it a bit rough at times. Either way, it was kind of a blast. Even though I constantly had to guard Bryce and he decided that he was just going to make me sprint the field. And he whacked me in the face once. On accident.
Anyway, afterwards, after all cleaning up, Audra and Bryce headed back to East Falls, we were joined by Hank's ex-girlfriend, and we headed to World Cafe Live, which was unfortunately crowded and some band was playing a show for which tickets were 13 dollars that we weren't willing to shell out. So instead we headed into center city. We initially went to Roosevelts, but had to leave because Molly is about a month short of 21. Boo. Instead we ended up at this great pizza place called Mix on the lower level of Annie's apartment complex, while we waited for Annie, who was in theory supposed to meet up with us but was being unresponsive. We hung out there for a long time, but then Molly had to leave and I was left with Hank and his ex (and I feel really bad that I can't remember her name. She was really nice). Feeling like the awkward third wheel, I headed home.
But walking home 19 blocks by myself in the dark with no phone isn't super fun. But at least the weather was fantastic, and Philly and the Schuylkill are gorgeous at night.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Rain
Things I've learned this summer: Mosquito's have an apparent fixation to my toes. Seriously. Every single day.
This morning, I randomly woke up at 5:37am. I know what time it is because I checked on my phone, which was charged and functional. After putting benadryl on a mosquito bite on my toe (the first of 3 I would get just today), I went back to sleep. The next time I woke up was 9:43. This is a problem considering I had practice at 8. I checked my phone and it was dead. That means that between 5:37 and 7:20 it went into low battery, and then died without me waking up to its annoying low battery beeping somehow. That makes the first practice I missed all summer. Not counting Monday which was an optional lift and in my defense, I tried to get to the boathouse, I really did.
Sitting in the house waiting for afternoon practice, I was rather pleased to see it was getting overcast. Maybe we wouldn't have another stifling hot row. As of 2:30, it was still overcast. However, by 2:39, when I left the house, it was pouring torrentially. And I don't say that lightly. I mean, can-barely-see-3-feet-in-front-of-you torrential. There were maintenance guys standing on my porch watching the rain and I think they thought I was completely insane when they saw me unlock my bike and leave.
Even though it had only started raining minutes before, there were already rivers pouring down the sidewalks and in the streets. The sidewalks were abandoned. Cars were pulled over to the side of the road with their hazards on, waiting for the rain to stop. I proceeded with caution, seeing how my brakes are not super functional when its entirely dry out, and practically non-existent when its wet at all, so the soles of my shoes got a bit of a workout. I was almost blown sideways off my bike a few times, and at one point considered locking my bike and jogging the rest of the way, but considering I still had 2 miles to go and about 13 minutes, I decided that it wasn't quite worth it. So I proceeded along with a stupid sense of determination: I must make it to practice.
After walking a few of the hills on the trail because I was afraid I would die, and getting a lot of strange looks from people hiding under bridges waiting for the rains to pass, I made it to Bachelors. Much to my surprise, nobody was there. Of course, practice was at 3:30 today. Which I didn't know because I hadn't been at morning practice.
Examining my backpack, I realized that it was entirely soaked through. Checking my phone, it was off and trying to turn it on only resulted in a feeble blinking of the keyboard lights and a faint sizzling noise. This wasn't good.
After lifting, I made it home, now in a much weaker drizzle. I honestly enjoyed the rain today, minus the phone dying and me almost dying bits. It was a nice relief after days of heat. Anyway, thanks to Ben's suggestion, my phone is now sitting in a plate of dry rice. Hopefully it will dry up and be functional again soon. Or ever.
This morning, I randomly woke up at 5:37am. I know what time it is because I checked on my phone, which was charged and functional. After putting benadryl on a mosquito bite on my toe (the first of 3 I would get just today), I went back to sleep. The next time I woke up was 9:43. This is a problem considering I had practice at 8. I checked my phone and it was dead. That means that between 5:37 and 7:20 it went into low battery, and then died without me waking up to its annoying low battery beeping somehow. That makes the first practice I missed all summer. Not counting Monday which was an optional lift and in my defense, I tried to get to the boathouse, I really did.
Sitting in the house waiting for afternoon practice, I was rather pleased to see it was getting overcast. Maybe we wouldn't have another stifling hot row. As of 2:30, it was still overcast. However, by 2:39, when I left the house, it was pouring torrentially. And I don't say that lightly. I mean, can-barely-see-3-feet-in-front-of-you torrential. There were maintenance guys standing on my porch watching the rain and I think they thought I was completely insane when they saw me unlock my bike and leave.
Even though it had only started raining minutes before, there were already rivers pouring down the sidewalks and in the streets. The sidewalks were abandoned. Cars were pulled over to the side of the road with their hazards on, waiting for the rain to stop. I proceeded with caution, seeing how my brakes are not super functional when its entirely dry out, and practically non-existent when its wet at all, so the soles of my shoes got a bit of a workout. I was almost blown sideways off my bike a few times, and at one point considered locking my bike and jogging the rest of the way, but considering I still had 2 miles to go and about 13 minutes, I decided that it wasn't quite worth it. So I proceeded along with a stupid sense of determination: I must make it to practice.
After walking a few of the hills on the trail because I was afraid I would die, and getting a lot of strange looks from people hiding under bridges waiting for the rains to pass, I made it to Bachelors. Much to my surprise, nobody was there. Of course, practice was at 3:30 today. Which I didn't know because I hadn't been at morning practice.
Examining my backpack, I realized that it was entirely soaked through. Checking my phone, it was off and trying to turn it on only resulted in a feeble blinking of the keyboard lights and a faint sizzling noise. This wasn't good.
After lifting, I made it home, now in a much weaker drizzle. I honestly enjoyed the rain today, minus the phone dying and me almost dying bits. It was a nice relief after days of heat. Anyway, thanks to Ben's suggestion, my phone is now sitting in a plate of dry rice. Hopefully it will dry up and be functional again soon. Or ever.
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