Happiness

Helluva weekend. As the quick post stated, it started out pretty well, with things going decently at practice. I was part of a weird switch, me going from 7 seat in the Bish boat to 7 in the Aish boat, but not directly… the 7 in the A (Charlie Cole, Yale) went to 5, and Steve Full (UW), who was 5, went to 7 in the B. Then we won by a good margin even on top of them catching a monster crab (bummer). So that started things off right. Then I came home, had a yummy breakfast and watched Wimbledon while I waited for Caroline to show up. She made it in good time and we went to check into the Hanover Inn and peruse town. The weekend with her was awesome. Mellow, fun, relaxing. Having a home base of the Inn was awesome so that we could be on our own schedule and not really have to worry about anything else. We did nothing and lots at the same time… tried out lots of the different food places around, including an awesome dinner at the Canoe Club on Saturday night. Tons of yummy things… mussels and tomato-basil soup (separate, but shared) to start, then I had yummy raviolis and she had salmon… a pretty delicious and awesome restaurant, comparable to Bainbridge’s Four Swallows. On Sunday we farted around town some more, went to Lou’s to brave the Sunday morning rush and get some awesome breakfast. Hung out in the Green and ran into Mark, Alex, Adam, and Derek there on their way to Ratatouille, which we decided to join in on. Very funny and cute movie, up there with any of the great Pixar flicks. More yummy food and fun but a pretty mellow and early night as I had morning practice today. Got up early today and walked to that in a much cooler morning than any last week. All weekend was kind of blustery an overcast, with the sun poking out for moments of great warmth, then back to cloudy chills. Went to Lou’s again this morning, it was much mellower which was nice. Hung out, cleaned the hotel room, played in the Green with a new Aerobie I bought at a little toy store on Main Street, just chatted and enjoyed the day. Went swimming for a bit, which was pretty chilly on account of the blusteriness but we had a good time. Watched some Planet Earth at the Nelson’s and hung out until it was time or me to go to afternoon practice, and thus for her to head back to Marblehead. Pretty sad to be separated again as it’ll probably be a while before we see each other again, but it was an awesome weekend and I keep assuring her (and myself) that time will go quickly and we’ll see each other very soon.

As far as rowing goes, this morning I started out back in 7 of the B boat, then partway through practice (just a technique practice, no racing) did pretty much the same switch as Saturday morning except that this time Steve was in 3, so Charlie went there. That practice was pretty atrocious, pretty windy and we couldn’t get the Hudson to set for shit. People were just rowing pretty differently and it was frustrating for us as well as Callahan. This afternoon they decided to have the boats practice at different times (B at 3, A at 5… *note* I’m only calling these by letters to make it easer… they seem like A and B boats but with coaches and camps like this I wouldn’t put a label or name in a seat until it’s at the start line at Worlds…). This afternoon’s practice was much, much better. Being the only boat out there made it much less stressful as we weren’t trying to battle paddle or be distracted by other boats but we could just focus on what Mike was telling us and what we were doing. Mike seemed in a better mood and miscommunications were met with jokes and a willingness to try it again as opposed to “Fuck”s and “retard”s. We worked on using strong connection to lead to a solid impulse as everyone swings together, and I felt like we were making some good steps towards having a unified and strong stroke. We did some builders (between 7 and 15 strokes of raising the stroke rating) at different slide lengths, from ½ to ¾ to full. These went ok but not great, and the pieces tomorrow at 36 should be tough. Hopefully we’ll keep the rhythm we started to develop today and really bring some speed that will legitimize this as a worthy boat. Things are definitely coming to a climax as this has kind of been identified as the final selection week… yikes. I won’t predict or expect anything, as I said, I can just hope to keep doing my best and hope that things keep going positively as opposed to negatively. That said, and obviously not finalized at all but obviously of import to many who read this (are there actually people out there? I know Sammy comments… and my dad says he reads it…), today Silas was stroking the A boat and Mark and Alex were 5 and 4 in it, respectively.

Only napped about 5 minutes today so it’s definitely bed time. I did get some nice packages from my mom today with books, though, so maybe I’ll read a little! If I remember how…