Okay, so the day started when we were all meeting at the meeting place to get people put into the vans to go on the trip. We were supposed to meet at 7:00 and be out of the school by 7:15. When more than half of the team wasn't at the turnaround by 7:20, we started calling people to wake them up. One particularly problematic member, Bridget, didn't wake up to her alarm or her roommate's repeated entreaties to get out of bed. So we had to drive over and forcibly yank her out of bed. When we got back to the turnaround, everyone else was there, but by the time everyone else was there it was 7:40. So we were already half an hour behind. Not a problem, since Julia, our travel chair, had budgeted in an extra hour of travel time for getting lost, encountering construction, etc.
So we travel south out of Appleton, towards Oshkosh, and we get on the highway. About ten minutes in, the van starts to shake and vibrate. Rachel was a little concerned, and found the van starting to get hard to drive, when all of a sudden "FOOM!!!" And the driver's side rear wheel exploded into about 12 pieces across the roadway. We had been in the left lane trying to get past some slower cars on the right when the tire blew up, so we pulled off to the left. The van that had been in front of us didn't know that anything was wrong, so they continued on their merry way. There had been one van traveling behind us, with a bunch of men inside, so they pulled over to see if they could help us out. Which was nice of them, but they had one of the earliest races that day.
So I call coach and school security, who tells us to put the spare tire on and call physical plant (which is the division of the school that handles trips for all of the clubs and teams). Rachel started trying to call them while everyone else tried to locate the spare tire underneath the brand-new Enterprise rented van. Once we pulled out the manual and figured it out it wasn't so bad, but then Coach called me back and tells me to ask the men's van to take off. Which was fine, we didn't really need their help once we found the tire and the jack.
So I jack up the car and start to loosen the nuts on the tire to get it off (using my entire body weight, I kid you not), when a state trooper pulls to the side of the road. It was sure nice of him to check on us, but I was feeling rather in control of the situation and he takes a look at the little wrench for the tire nuts that came with the jack and he runs to his car to get his tire iron. I had all of the nuts loosened already except for one, but I guess he was feeling macho or something because he decided that he had to loosen them all again anyway.
So we get the spare on (oh, did I mention it was a half-sized spare and only good under 55mph?) and head out again. Rachel had been on the phone with Physical Plant a couple of times, and they were being rather unhelpful. They decided to call the rental company who called us, except that they decided to hang up on me while they were talking. So we get to a gas station a couple of exits down the road, and decide to wait for coach to double back and get the two of us who also had early races and take us with her, while we wait for the enterprise company to call back. Well, while I was sitting in the van thinking, I decided it was worth a shot to see if the gas station had a phonebook, which they did. I called the enterprise company in Oshkosh to see if they would be any more helpful, which they were. In about 3 minutes I had a place to go get the tire changed, which was only about 10 minutes away from where we were. Since coach had been WAY ahead of us when she decided to come back and grab a couple of us, we called her and sent her back.
So we waited at the goodyear to get our tire changed for about half an hour, which at this point meant that we were already an hour and a half behind schedule. Coach called me not long after we got back on the road to say that we were going to have to scratch one of my races, the women's openweight four, because there would be no way we could get there in time. I was all right with that, because we had only rowed the boat once during practice last week, I already had another race to do, so it was fine. SO...anyway, after we get back on the road we successfully get to the Wisconsin Dells, where the regatta was supposed to take place. Except we couldn't find the race site. We ended up driving 20 minutes out of town because the directions that the trip coordinator gave us were pretty crappy. Anyway, once we finally found the race site, the novice that had been in our van had to jump out and literally run over to her boat so that the novice women's four could launch for their race. They made it to the start on time, thankfully. But as soon as the novice women were seen off, the varsity women had to grab the 8 for our race, so I didn't have time to do much except help put the boat together and take off my shoes.
Next in the cycle of fun, I find out that we're wet-launching. That means that you have to put the boat in the water and also get into the boat while you're standing thigh-deep in really, really cold water. To top it off, the water was really murky and it was the site of some abandoned train tracks, so there were a lot of sharp pieces of cement hanging out on the bottom, which made trying to walk in the water really, really uncomfortable. It was pretty obvious at this point that the organizers of this "riverfest regatta" hadn't ever been rowers.
The first 8 race was okay; the starting official didn't know what he was doing so our oarblades weren't actually in the water when he called out the start. We were neck and neck with NMU for a good while, but then the frantic pace of the first few hundred meters finally caught up to us and we settled down a bit. The rest of the race went really smoothly, even if we didn't quite catch up to NMU.
After we finish the race, wet-dock the boat and walk it the three blocks back to the team's area, coach asks our boat if one of the starboards will volunteer to row in the men's 8 (since they only had 7 men who were available to row at the race this weekend). I volunteered of course, since I'm always up for an extra race.
All that meant was that I didn't really have much time to recover, but that's all right. I just hopped right over to the men's 8 to get it ready to carry down to the launching area. There are a couple of problems when small women carry large men's boats rowed by men; mostly that I wasn't supporting the boat in any way shape or form as they were walking down to the launch area; boats are typcially carred on shoulders when transported to docks etc. for launching, and my shoulders were a good four inches lower than most of the other men's shoulders. They didn't complain about it though, which I thought was super nice. Coach put me in the bow of their boat, which is fine; I got to row behind Nate Goodson-Gregg. The only part about that race that wasn't fun was having to use men's oars; the handles are a lot bigger on men's oars than they are on women's oars, and my forearms were a bit tired by the time the race was done. The race itself was really, really fun. I've rowed in men's boats a couple of times before, but they're sooooo fast. I had a lot of fun with that.
Then as soon as we got off the water I had to help launch a couple of the other boats, and then it was time to row the women's 8 again. The second race was just a time trial, which was a lot of fun. It was a really strong, even race, and that made it feel much better. There's a guy on our team named Jake, who is a bit of an oddball. He tends to rub people the wrong way a lot, but he's an okay guy. Anyway, I would say that the majority of the women's team doesn't really care for him and our coxen told us at one point to take out our feelings towards him on our oars, and holy cow, the fastest ten strokes in that boat all day.
After the women's 8 raced for the last time, there were two more men's boats (a men's pair and the novice men's four), and the men's pair did specatcularly. They kept up with the other men's fours the entire race, which was really cool to see. After they boys got off the water, we put the boats back on the trailer and prepared to go home. One of the vans had taken off as soon as we were done with the trailer, and so they were way ahead of us. The last two vans took off shortly after the trailer and proceeded to get us lost for almost an hour. We ended up in this town called "Adams" instead of a town called "Portage." Not a total loss, because we ate subway for dinner. We found a map at a gas station not too far away, and discovered that we were a good 50 miles away from the road that we should've taken, but it was all right because if we kept following the road we were on, we'd hook up with state highway number 21, which would eventually take us to 41, just outside of Oshkosh.
The rest of the trip was uneventful, except for just outside of Oshkosh in a little town called Omro, we were driving through at 25, the speed limit, and I swear I witnessed a young guy pay for a prostitute. He had a wad of cash in his hand, and he handed it to a curly-haired lady wearing a black dress and a black cape, and then she took his hand and they got into his car. And when we passed the exit that we had stopped short of yesterday morning, we also passed a piece of our tire from that morning lying on the side of the road. A very circular day.
Dustin also had a trombone "sectional" party last night, which was extremely loud. Despite this, I slept through the whole thing except for the time when Dustin came in and woke me up to ask me if they were being too loud.
And we're all sunburnt.
An epic day, indeed.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
busy
chipper
calm
tired
determined
poetic
bouncy
annoyed
groggy