Eventually, I would have to write a blog about rowing...and how much New Jersey sucks.
So here it is:
Before I left Rochester, I coxed a lot for Will Greene's masters, learn to rowers and rec rowers (it actually got to be rediculous, like 3 times a week if I had time). Will coaches the University of Rochester's crew team as well as the local club at Genesee Waterways (in case anyone didn't know that). So when I left the ROC, I figured I wouldn't be involved in crew at all this summer.
Silly Me! ....not that i'm complaining at all...i love it
So sometime around the middle of July, I get a phone call from my friend Lisa (who rows for UR, which is how I originally got involved) asking me what I was doing the weekend of August 11th-13th. As it turns out, I wasn't doing anything. The following is the play by play of the last weekend of Canadian Henley (originally posted on my myspace): **disclaimer...the following excerpt contains a little bit of bed hopping... I assure you that nothing major happened, never-the -less..if you are under the age of 18, a future prospective employer, or just plain don't want to know about it.. please skip over the last part of thursday night. thanks.
I went up to the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta in St. Catharines Ontario. On the way I stopped in Rochester to visit.... It was the ultimate in nomadic debachery... many thanks to everyone that I free-loaded off this past weekend:
Wed night- Drove in to Roc for crew practice at 5:45 thursday morning.... bed= Coach Will's spare room.
Thursday- practice, hung out by Will and Laura (his wife)'s pool all afternoon, showered at Jen's, went out with Jen and Dee, left my car at jen's, met up with the boys at Daisy Dukes, somehow thought it was a good idea to ride the mechanical bull, ended up sleeping at Rick's house, in his housemate's bed, [fill in the blank].
Friday-bummed around rick's, rescued my car from jen's house (no parking ticket.. woohoo!!), brought jen to the airport, ate taco bell, hung out at rick's house with Katie and Kate, passed out on the futon in the living room.
Saturday-practice at 7am, drove up to henley with a couple of my rowers, helped will and some of the girls haul tree branches that he was chopping down at his parent's house (lauren needs a bandaid part 1 of saturday night), and had a fantastic meal there!!, drove up to canada with lisa sal, and 2 of the other rowers sat night, stopped at duty free to get booze, got hassled at the border, drove to henley island, got yelled at by security, managed to get on the camping list for the boat compound, walked to the bars in downtown st. catharines, ran into the pointy ass light reflector on the trailer (lauren needs a big fucking bandaid part 2 of the night) passed out at like 3 am under a tarp in the fairport boat trailer.
Sunday-got up at 5:30am, was out on the water by 6:45, raced 4 times, left by 2:30, came back to roc, got some noodles from Ming Noodle, passed out on Rouse's couch, until this morning.
all in all I'd say it was a good weekend.
So that was that.... coinincedentally, one of the GWC W4+ took home Henley Gold... So jealous of Lisa :), Thats ok though, I got mine too.... Jump to this past weekend (Sept 7-10) at the World Masters Regatta in Princeton, NJ. I coxed this regatta in the same fashion as Henley... Phone rings, Lauren picks up, "hello" , "what are you doing such and such weekend?", "I don't have any plans yet", "want to cox a few races in Princeton?", "Sure". end phone call.
Turns out that a few races turned into like TEN. Will pimped my coxswaining services to a few other clubs that were borrowing GWC/UR boats (apparently the coxie comes with the boat). Anyways, I drive down to Princeton Junction, NJ to Mercer Lake (which is where the US national team trains... REALLY FUCKING COOL!) Too bad New Jersey sucks at road signs and making sure that they are readable, and too bad that mapquest sucks at giving directions to back ass places and has a nasty habit of leaving out one or two crucial instructions.
Needless to say, I made it in time for 2 races and a couple practice sessions on Thursday. Had 3 races on friday (including the WB8+.. which took home a GOLD F'ing MEDAL!!!!!!!! )plus 2 practice sessions on Friday night too.
Saturday I had 5 races (FIVE!!!). (including the cutest old man 4 ever....the boat avg. age was 75... hip hip hooray! -no seriously, every boat in that heat said that at the end, I almost died it was too cute)
Three of which I had to hot-seat, and the 5th one, I was not supposed to cox. I finished my 4th race, after being on the water for like 4 hours straight, took off my spandex and put on some real clothes, went down to bring oars to the last 4+ racing that day.... (in hind sight, this was a bad idea). Apparently my name was still on the boat line-up sheet that the officials had (even though Will said he changed it, oh well) so I get down there and they are not letting the boat on the water because its the wrong coxswain. I was like well who's supposed to be coxing if it is not Eva (the supposed coxswain), and the "dock master/nazi" showed me the list... sure enough, that was my name.
Me:"Oh crap, that's me"
dock lady: "well you have to cox then"
Me: "But Will changed the line-up to Eva this morning, that doesn't make sense?"
dock lady: "Well I don't have that change, you have to do it"
me: "fuck, ok, Eva switch shirts with me and give me your cox box...sorry"
however before Eva could even get her racing shirt off to give me, one of the Masters Rowers, Nancy (who is like 60-ish) takes off HER shirt in front of like a million people and hands it over. I have no idea whats going on, she grabs my shirt and puts it on meanwhile everyone else standing in the area is staring mouth agape in that "I can't believe that just happened" expression before busting out laughing and the dock lady is yelling at me to get going because by now we're running late, had to rush up to the start, my brain is fried, and I fucked up the start because of it and we lost the gold by like 4 seconds.... FUCKER!
Thank god I didn't have any races on Sunday... and I hid anytime need of a coxswain was mentioned.
Needless to say, it was a good weekend....and I decided to screw mapquest and find my own way back....without incident.
There is a lesson to be learned here: don't trust mapquest!
Also, this random pizza joint in Jersey, the guy's cousin was from Utica... sometime I will go into more detail on the "Utica Connection"
Before I left Rochester, I coxed a lot for Will Greene's masters, learn to rowers and rec rowers (it actually got to be rediculous, like 3 times a week if I had time). Will coaches the University of Rochester's crew team as well as the local club at Genesee Waterways (in case anyone didn't know that). So when I left the ROC, I figured I wouldn't be involved in crew at all this summer.
Silly Me! ....not that i'm complaining at all...i love it
So sometime around the middle of July, I get a phone call from my friend Lisa (who rows for UR, which is how I originally got involved) asking me what I was doing the weekend of August 11th-13th. As it turns out, I wasn't doing anything. The following is the play by play of the last weekend of Canadian Henley (originally posted on my myspace): **disclaimer...the following excerpt contains a little bit of bed hopping... I assure you that nothing major happened, never-the -less..if you are under the age of 18, a future prospective employer, or just plain don't want to know about it.. please skip over the last part of thursday night. thanks.
I went up to the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta in St. Catharines Ontario. On the way I stopped in Rochester to visit.... It was the ultimate in nomadic debachery... many thanks to everyone that I free-loaded off this past weekend:
Wed night- Drove in to Roc for crew practice at 5:45 thursday morning.... bed= Coach Will's spare room.
Thursday- practice, hung out by Will and Laura (his wife)'s pool all afternoon, showered at Jen's, went out with Jen and Dee, left my car at jen's, met up with the boys at Daisy Dukes, somehow thought it was a good idea to ride the mechanical bull, ended up sleeping at Rick's house, in his housemate's bed, [fill in the blank].
Friday-bummed around rick's, rescued my car from jen's house (no parking ticket.. woohoo!!), brought jen to the airport, ate taco bell, hung out at rick's house with Katie and Kate, passed out on the futon in the living room.
Saturday-practice at 7am, drove up to henley with a couple of my rowers, helped will and some of the girls haul tree branches that he was chopping down at his parent's house (lauren needs a bandaid part 1 of saturday night), and had a fantastic meal there!!, drove up to canada with lisa sal, and 2 of the other rowers sat night, stopped at duty free to get booze, got hassled at the border, drove to henley island, got yelled at by security, managed to get on the camping list for the boat compound, walked to the bars in downtown st. catharines, ran into the pointy ass light reflector on the trailer (lauren needs a big fucking bandaid part 2 of the night) passed out at like 3 am under a tarp in the fairport boat trailer.
Sunday-got up at 5:30am, was out on the water by 6:45, raced 4 times, left by 2:30, came back to roc, got some noodles from Ming Noodle, passed out on Rouse's couch, until this morning.
all in all I'd say it was a good weekend.
So that was that.... coinincedentally, one of the GWC W4+ took home Henley Gold... So jealous of Lisa :), Thats ok though, I got mine too.... Jump to this past weekend (Sept 7-10) at the World Masters Regatta in Princeton, NJ. I coxed this regatta in the same fashion as Henley... Phone rings, Lauren picks up, "hello" , "what are you doing such and such weekend?", "I don't have any plans yet", "want to cox a few races in Princeton?", "Sure". end phone call.
Turns out that a few races turned into like TEN. Will pimped my coxswaining services to a few other clubs that were borrowing GWC/UR boats (apparently the coxie comes with the boat). Anyways, I drive down to Princeton Junction, NJ to Mercer Lake (which is where the US national team trains... REALLY FUCKING COOL!) Too bad New Jersey sucks at road signs and making sure that they are readable, and too bad that mapquest sucks at giving directions to back ass places and has a nasty habit of leaving out one or two crucial instructions.
Needless to say, I made it in time for 2 races and a couple practice sessions on Thursday. Had 3 races on friday (including the WB8+.. which took home a GOLD F'ing MEDAL!!!!!!!! )plus 2 practice sessions on Friday night too.
Saturday I had 5 races (FIVE!!!). (including the cutest old man 4 ever....the boat avg. age was 75... hip hip hooray! -no seriously, every boat in that heat said that at the end, I almost died it was too cute)
Three of which I had to hot-seat, and the 5th one, I was not supposed to cox. I finished my 4th race, after being on the water for like 4 hours straight, took off my spandex and put on some real clothes, went down to bring oars to the last 4+ racing that day.... (in hind sight, this was a bad idea). Apparently my name was still on the boat line-up sheet that the officials had (even though Will said he changed it, oh well) so I get down there and they are not letting the boat on the water because its the wrong coxswain. I was like well who's supposed to be coxing if it is not Eva (the supposed coxswain), and the "dock master/nazi" showed me the list... sure enough, that was my name.
Me:"Oh crap, that's me"
dock lady: "well you have to cox then"
Me: "But Will changed the line-up to Eva this morning, that doesn't make sense?"
dock lady: "Well I don't have that change, you have to do it"
me: "fuck, ok, Eva switch shirts with me and give me your cox box...sorry"
however before Eva could even get her racing shirt off to give me, one of the Masters Rowers, Nancy (who is like 60-ish) takes off HER shirt in front of like a million people and hands it over. I have no idea whats going on, she grabs my shirt and puts it on meanwhile everyone else standing in the area is staring mouth agape in that "I can't believe that just happened" expression before busting out laughing and the dock lady is yelling at me to get going because by now we're running late, had to rush up to the start, my brain is fried, and I fucked up the start because of it and we lost the gold by like 4 seconds.... FUCKER!
Thank god I didn't have any races on Sunday... and I hid anytime need of a coxswain was mentioned.
Needless to say, it was a good weekend....and I decided to screw mapquest and find my own way back....without incident.
There is a lesson to be learned here: don't trust mapquest!
Also, this random pizza joint in Jersey, the guy's cousin was from Utica... sometime I will go into more detail on the "Utica Connection"
posted by laur @ 2:10 PM
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