Last Day in the South

First off, apologies for the lack of a blog post on Friday evening, there was a certain lack of internet at our hotel that evening.

                Friday morning we awoke to a cloudy and somewhat windy morning. The planned workout was 2x2km time trials/races, thus that is what we did. Fortunately for us, the wind was blowing from the start line towards the finish line, which gave us a nice tailwind push during the pieces. It also created rather large waves from about the start line to the finish line. Oh well, we got the pieces done and had a good workout. Admittedly, by the time we got back to the dock, we were all a little cold and wet.

                Before the second workout we found ourselves again at WalMart. This time around, we didn’t get any ‘talking to Americans’ style questions, however we did pick up a fairly large amount of ‘travel snacks’ as well as some Vanilla and Cherry Coke, and who could forget a little more Fat Tire Beer (needed to bring some back to share). Also there’s just the joy/entertainment of WalMart in the US, so much more awesome than the ones here in Canada.

                Soon enough it was back to the lake for a final row. The wind was still there, but had come down a bit from what it was in the morning. Because it was our last row, we went up the river beyond the start line for a nice cat 6. After being out on the water for about 75 minutes, it was time to call it quits because we needed to load the boats back onto the cars for the journey home. This time around, boat loading took considerably less time than before mainly because it wasn’t snowy and cold, and everyone was there.

                As it was our last dinner at the all you can eat buffet, there may have been a little bit of extra enthusiasm in the eating. This was heightened when one of the cafeteria workers came out and told us if we wanted we could have all the extra pizza they had because we were the last ones there and the cafeteria was closing for their reading week the next morning.  This made us all quite happy, particularly Jerome, who has been known for his feats of eating exceptional amounts of pizza.

                Shortly after dinner, the van driven by Mark and Dave left to drive overnight back to London, in order to be able to arrive on time for and be rested for a Swedish House Mafia concert in Toronto on Saturday night (which we are all kind of Jealous we couldn’t have gone to. The boats they had on the roof of their car were back at the boathouse when we got there to unload last night, so we believe that they made it safely back.

                We (my car) left Georgia at just after 4 am Saturday morning headed back to London. Unfortunately it was not such a starlight voyage through the Smokey mountains. It was a rather rainy, foggy and dark trip through the mountains. This made the first three hours of the drive slightly less fun than they could have been. And by slightly rainy and foggy I mean wipers on full speed, reduced driving speed and fog lights on. The early departure made the first few hours back on the interstate better driving because there was much less traffic than normal on the road. We arrived back at the boathouse around 6pm, and everyone was back at their homes by 7.

                Two hours later (9pm), we learned that Matt’s car was just crossing into Canada (an hour from London). This put us about 3-4 hours ahead of them, though they did leave Georgia an hour behind us; and then stopped at Waffle House, and Chipotle (ok we stopped there too, but who wouldn’t), and Denny’s, and for various additional gas stops. Anyway, everyone is home safe.

                This effectively concludes the Georgia Trip Blog for 2013, stay tuned over the next week or so though, I hope to post a summary video shortly – and I will try to make it better than our Harlem Shake video. Thanks for reading, hope it was enjoyable.

Where's my lung gone?

Finally we’re here, the final team bio! He’s pretty tall. Based on information from Andre I’d say definitely tall enough to party, because he’s taller than Andre. He’s kind of quiet and sometimes he’s kind of awkward, but sometimes he’s kind of not quiet, and other’s he’s not too awkward. Thus it was difficult to come up with a good biography for him. What I do know is that enjoys changing Wendy’s signs. His ipod is known to have the best if sometimes oddest music mixes for the erg room. He comes from the lovely clean air and pleasant vistas of Hamilton, Ontario. He has collapsed his own lung - twice. Some say that he once hid in a bush for two hours in order to try and surprise someone – which he didn’t manage, and that when he’s not rowing, he’s rowing. All I know is, it’s Dave LaRiviere.

Out of all the pictures of Dave I found, I like this one best.

Underwater Adventures

                This morning was the warmest, brightest and earliest morning we have had on the trip thus far. We set off earlier because, even though we only had one row scheduled for today, we also had volunteered to put in a couple hours of work around the rowing club – similar to last year except for we hoped for no black widows (or ‘y’all aren’t afraid of black widows are you’ sort of jobs).  When we started doing the work, I was at first made a bit of fun of for bringing out some rubber gloves, shortly after we started doing the work, that ended. We had the joy of reaching into the water and fishing out logs, then lifting them up and making a big wood pile. This resulted in some ‘gondolaing’ of one of the docks to ferry logs to an easier location for pickup. That was actually quite fun. After that took place, we somehow ended up moving the swimming lanes again. I say again, because those of us who were on the trip last year got a strange sense of deja-vu while performing this task. The sense of deja-vu was heightened by the fact that the swim ropes were fairly clearly in the exact same arrangement that we put them in last year during our training camp. Oh well, we got it done.

                After that, we headed back to the hotel to change quickly before lunch. A quick lunch and eight of us found ourselves on the way into Atlanta, either to the aquarium, or to simply explore the city downtown. The aquarium trip was, as with last year – awesome. This year we also indulged in the dolphin show at the aquarium. It was entertaining, and the dolphins were very talented. However, the story that went along with the show was a touch too kiddy for most of us – Matt really enjoyed it though.

                Jill, Alex and Lenore went on a little walking tour/expedition around downtown Atlanta while Matt, Kat, Maria, Andre and I were at the aquarium. Fortunately, they managed to safely make it back to the car without anything happening to them. They did admit to happening upon a street/neighbourhood which was ‘less than friendly’.  They also managed to find a picture of Volker’s Olympic team from 1996, which is pretty cool.

                This evening we went out to the ‘2 Dogs’ restaurant for a team dinner. The food was quite good, Mark managed to win the coolest looking dinner award because he ordered an entire cooked flounder stuffed with crab cakes. It was a pretty nice dinner and resulted in us getting back to the hotel slightly later than usual. Oh well, we don’t start until 9 am tomorrow and besides, is there really a better way to prepare for 2x2km than a nice pre-race beer (we walked to the restaurant) or two? Maybe I’ll go crush some leg weights after this as well.

                Tomorrow is our last day here in Georgia, I only have one more athlete bio to complete! I hope I will be able to get this done tomorrow afternoon. Worst case I will post one shortly after we return to London.

                Did I mention, on the way back from the aquarium Jill was very not impressed to be woken up to the fairly loudly played musical notes of her favorite song – Call Me Maybe.

                May all your seas be smooth and all your starlit voyages end happily!

Ladders and HoneyBadgers

Well, it’s Wednesday. We’ve made it through more than half of the training camp already. Kind of alarming when you think about how fast time is going by. But at the same time, my body and hands have been reminding me that it’s not a bad thing we’re already this far through the camp. I have started to help sustain my energy levels by the usage of multiple Starbucks Frappuccino’s every day (the bottled kind you can buy from WalMart, I’m not that rich). Fortunately, they are not ‘light’ on caffeine, and so provide a nice amount of wakefulness – until the crash.

                This morning it was nice and sunny when we set out to the lake. Yet again there was debate about taking this afternoon off instead of tomorrow, due to a warm day forecasted for tomorrow. We are not doing this, we are sticking to our workout plan. The 12x250m ladder was pretty well run this morning, given a spread of abilities from novice all the way up to ‘been rowing since the dawn of time’.

                We have received a number of comments via facebook about our Harlem Shake video, or as it was also put ‘the worst Harlem Shake video ever’. What I can say is this: by the standards of my youtube account views, 200 views in less than one day is pretty much viral. So thank you for watching.

                Continuing with our usual tradition, I felt like I was driving behind Sebastian Vettel while following Matt from the boathouse to lunch at the Brenau University cafeteria. While there, as per usual, we all stuffed ourselves an awful lot, Matt specifically likes to enjoy an ice cream cone to cap off a filling meal (they do have waffles there but he manages to resist that during lunch and dinner). The cafeteria staff don’t seem to mind the way most of our team virtually runs into the dining hall to eat.

                The afternoon rolls around and I find myself sitting down here in the lobby while the others do things like nap, homework, nap more, watch tv, film random videos, do whatever the lightweight women are always doing while definitely not studying, napping or watching tv. I have heard rumours of pillow fights and crock-pot cooked food in their room.

                For the trip back to the lake for second practice, my car was again invaded by Alex and Lenore. The result – DMX and Ke$ha blasting through the stereo (not at the same time – boy that would be a weird mash up). This also meant multiple selfies and dance parties, etc were taking place while I was driving down to the course.  

                It had unfortunately clouded over and gotten a little windy by the time we reached the lake. Fortunately not windy enough to force us off the water.  After a quick row it was off to dinner. Dinner was the usual entertaining smorgasbord. This evening, those of us who had the pleasure of sitting with Matt got to enjoy a discussion on HoneyBadgers, and other things of that nature. 

From the town Soon to be Renamed 'Harperville'?

He asked to be described as ‘tall enough to party’. I’m not really sure what that means, whether he’s implying that short people can’t party or if he’s trying to insinuate something associated with being tall. This is his first year rowing for Western, which seems fairly logical given that this is also his first year at Western. Hailing from the capital of Canada, he has been rowing for quite a while and is currently gunning for a place on team Ontario for Canada Summer Games this summer. He chose not to respond to the questionnaire for the athlete bios, so I am working with whatever information I can creep/glean from facebook, and that’s pretty much it. Being from the Ottawa rowing club, he is likely to overdo it a Henley and enter himself in something like 7 events. Not specifically referring to him in that one. I have just been informed that he looks like one of the characters from Warm Bodies. He, like Matt, deeply enjoys waffle creations. Some say that . . . , ah fuck it, it’s Andre.

Selfies and Circuits

Derek’s Log:  Stardate -310136.41

This morning we were greeted by some very British Columbian skies. For those who are unsure of what that means, it means cloudy, grey skies and of course rain. Fortunately, the rain stopped before we got out on the water, so we didn’t all get soaked while on the water. Well Jill did get soaked, but that may have been courtesy of the person she was rowing behind. Instead of doing leapfrog like last year (or more accurately ‘ridiculously unfair leapfrog’ like last year), we did 2’ on 2’ off. This made for some fun pieces.  During this workout, I was running my GoPro in various different locations on my boat to create some different shots. All I will say about the footage is that you can take video-analysis to a new level. One of those things that will make Volker say ‘ach so, this thing I like very much’. Some of that video will hopefully be posted as part of a compilation video in a couple days.

Lunch was spent debating over the merits of the movie ‘parent trap’ and discussing the fame, fortune, etc associated with the Olson twins. A bunch of scholars we are. At least making bad Star Wars, Star Trek and Transformers references, we were not. There is/was (well technically is because I’m writing this part this afternoon) some debate about switching the free afternoon to today because of high wind predictions. As of yet I don’t know when if or when we will be rolling out for our second practice.

As it turns out, we did end up heading for the boathouse this afternoon. It also turned out to be too windy.  Some of us (Mark, Dave, Jerome and Sara – to be specific) decided to head for an actual gym, while the rest of us went an did a core circuit workout, and then played ‘ultimate ball’. The circuit was fun/challenging enough. Ultimate ball is just Matt’s way of having us play ultimate Frisbee without actually having a Frisbee. This is a good thing seeing as we are rowers and so have abysmal hand-eye coordination. Even when using a big, soft ball, we still have terrible hand eye coordination. Suffice to say I shouldn’t have tried that trick shot, it didn’t go so well – to say the least.

Also worth mentioning is the number of odd pictures/videos that were taken in my car between the park where we played ultimate ball and the dining hall for dinner. I believe there may also have been a Dancing Queen video. Not 100% sure on that one, trying to stay focused on driving.

Below are links to three videos, the first one is a 20 second teaser video for the big video from the trip that we’re working on. The second is our attempt at a Harlem Shake video. The third is a core strength competition as prescribed by Dr Dan Bechard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhJ82rbeQQ8&feature=youtu.be – teaser video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDDy3Qa5egU&feature=youtu.be – Harlem Shake

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3ix4YWHLRU&feature=youtu.be – Core Strengt

Also, I actually looked up the stardate, it is accurate for 7:00pm on the day of posting.

Tall, Polish and Not Rabalski

This member of our team is about as tall as the burj khalifa. He is fluent in both English and Polish, which can sometimes make it difficult to follow conversations when around him and his parents due to random switches in language. A die-hard believer in five dollar footlongs. It is worth noting that a high level of caution needs to be exercised when erging near to him due to the likelihood of slipping in the rather large lake of sweat which can usually be found beneath his erg. As he is from London, he can be called a townie, but for some reason I think of him more as ‘Dawidek’ not a townie. That sounds kind of odd, but it is what it is. Similar to a T-Rex, if you remain still the likelihood of him being able to see you is pretty low, due to the fact that he spends a lot of his time squinting. Some say that he once spent a summer teaching dance at a camp in the Catskills and that his Ferrari is the colour of a rowing boat. All I know is, it’s Mark Dawidek.