ti 2015 review 2

ti sunday morning we headed out a bit later than saturday as the whole house overslept, lol. i was hoping to get into the finish line / judges' tent but that stuff is pretty sensitive so i didn't think i'd get the chance to, and i didn't get to. which is fine since i've never done that at lb anyway, and we have a totally different camera / computer system.

anyway, most of the morning i worked at the registration tent signing in volunteers and such. that was interesting because after two minutes of training, the lady walked away to do her other stuff. lol.

later, i got to work marshaling, which is where you call teams to wait in the tents before they go over to the docks to load onto the boats. marshaling can be pretty frantic, but it's much better at ti than at lb. a lot of that has to do with venue, i think, how there is a lot more room to space things out. anyway. so there is, like, the marshaling tent with two staff there who count wristbands and such, and there is a single marshaller who calls teams over. i hesitate to call anyone the head marshaller, because it's not quite clear at ti who's in charge. anyway, so i was the marshaller who was alone. of course. because why wouldn't i be alone in a key position after only minimal training? lol, i also tried to tweet out the heats, but for some reason we couldn't figure out the password and such so we abandoned that. i would have loved it tho since i manage the tweets for the scdbc, haha. working this department was so good tho. marshaling is where i think we most need to improve at lb. (excluding behind the scenes stuff where we could improve the absolute most) but anyway, i have a few ideas about noise control which might help the lb situation. hopefully i'll be able to play around with things here.

after the tourney we helped pack up a little and at night we went to the unofficial paddler's party. i got drunk, lol. i didn't even really know until i looked back on my goodnight texts to rip. sheesh. but basically, i played a drinking spin game on a phone with some totally random people and had a bunch of beer. blech.

monday morning i spent with thaddeus helping with a little tear down. we visited two cdba practice sites: lake merced and jlac. so great that i finally got to see these place he's been talking about for years! he also gave me a tour of their equipment storage where i got a few ideas. it was very useful.


all in all i had an amazing time. i learned so so so much! the stuff that won't translate to lb is fine, because i learned how ti does it and that's a great thing anyway. i'm told that eventually i'll take over the scdbc. which is not something i'm looking forward to, but even i have to agree that currently there is no one else available, or even seemingly interested. most of our staff do their own thing and kind of keep their head down. i'm always interested in learning all i can, and i'm constantly looking for feedback. i actively want to improve our club and our tournaments. and i don't think there's anyone else as outwardly aggressive as me in wanting those things at lb.

ti 2015 review 1

ti was great. seriously. I've been wanting to go as a volunteer for a couple years now and this year I actually did. why did i want to go volunteer? ti has an excellent reputation for being well organized etc, lb does not. so i wanted to see what i could learn and hopefully bring back some changes to lb. thaddeus (cdba safety director) and I talk a lot and have been talking about cdba / scdbc steers reciprocity and he primarily came to BLB this year to volunteer steer so this was an excellent year to go up and volunteer. even better, I could leave sf directly to start my China trip a little early!

so, friday I drive up with xg. friday night was mostly the paddlers' party then some planning with thaddeus on guest steers for saturday. it was my first time going to the ti paddlers party and it was at a very pretty rooftop bar. great because I got to meet a lot of cdba people. thaddeus was staying at mabel and ben's house for the week. mabel is cdba and ben, her husband, is renegades(?) team chef. anyway, they were so kind to let me stay with them as well! it made more sense that I stay with thaddeus rather than the team at the team hotel because as volunteers our schedules are different than paddlers'. we even got our own rooms at ben and mabel's!

saturday!! we woke up DAMN early (earlier than i ever do for scdbc races, ha) and got to the site. in the early morning i worked the registration tent handing out paddlers wristbands and checking in volunteers. after the captains meeting i headed over to the dock to help out there. i'd met kerry, the dockmaster (at several well respected tournies, actually), before and he vaguely knows me (we're fb friends and he actually pm'ed me fairly recently) but i was really surprised how much trust he placed in me. i figured i would be helping people in and out of boats, easy stuff, while keeping an eye on operations in general, but instead he introduced me to the crew as co-dockmaster! pretty nice what the "safety director" job title will get you, huh? anyway, kerry explained that icdbf training is where they basically just drop you into the situation and get very little pre-training. so he did the first race, and from there i basically took over all major duties for the next 10 heats with him supervising, then he left, i think. lol. it was pretty crazy! i mean, jesus, thank god i have enough leadership skills and a strong enough personality where this worked, but i can see this type of training completely backfiring on, i think, most people!

but that's the great thing. dockmastering is a complicated job that i will not be needing with scdbc likely ever. our venues are drastically different and unless we change locations it's just not a skill that i'll need. also, i'll likely never be docking/marshalling again since i'm "moving on up." honestly, marshalling is not the hardest job. it's generally where you place the least experienced volunteers. lead marshalling and dockmastering is, of course, much harder, but i've moved away from that department. but anyway, the great thing is what i learned, and that's that this type of training is NOT an effective one. i've been to ti a couple times, but years ago, and well before i got involved with race officiating, so i don't remember the dock process very well. being thrown into the fray the way i was, meant that i learned a lot, but it was mostly me doing it as i would do it, with parameters. but since i didn't really get the chance to observe beforehand, i didn't have any time to come up with a good system, it was just figuring it out on the fly. and there's incredibly little down time, so i couldn't work out a better system. also, i'm very aware that this isn't my tourney, and i know they do things a certain way already so i didn't know how much leeway i had to change things. kerry told me that certain boats were to load from or off certain gangways so i followed that. if he hadn't given me that directive, i would've for sure done it differently. there were inefficiencies in the system that i would have fixed if i knew i were allowed to. but, again, it's not my tourney, and he has to dockmaster the rest of the weekend, so i don't feel comfortable "training" the teams to do a certain thing when he's going to do it a completely different way the rest of the time. i want to be respectful of the system already in place. but, yeah, i learned a great lesson in leadership that morning.

after lunch i was on the starter's boat with kim. who is practically "famous" for her skills as a starter. she's amazing and i learned a shit ton. i didn't get to actually do starting, but she answered all my questions in such a thoughtful way. even better, these skills will directly affect me since i'm a starter at baby and big lb. i'd never gotten any training as a starter, so this was a super valuable experience. i know i'll be better for it, and in turn, our tournies will be better too. and that was the whole point!!
furthermore i learned her philosophy about officiating which i think will be the biggest lesson i take away from this weekend. 

saturday night was mostly just resting, hahaha. 

(i didn't go too much into what i learned about specific tourney things, let's be honest, most of you don't care)

china 2 - tourney

competition was much like any other competition. lots of confusion not much organization. oh well, we're used to it by now. this year's teams included us, harvard, toronto, kenya, "congo," russia, "europe," "korea," new zealand, china, singapore, and probably a few other asian teams. teams in quote marks are teams that are actually exchange students studying in china.

there was also TONS of cameras this year. cctv had like 18 cameras or some nonsense like that. and there was the other media on top of that. the girl we had chosen to be "media" person was suddenly camera shy so i ended up doing most of the interviews. bah. but at least we had a couple non-chinese kids who didn't mind being on tv so i'd always try to drag someone out with me. one of these kids, who is 1/8th chinese and doesn't look it at all, speaks some chinese so that was super great. (let's face it, chinese looking person speaking chinese poorly does not make for good tv [talking about me, btw])

the tourney venue was beautiful. the fen river and the surrounding area was very pretty. one of the nicest venues i've raced at. the weather also cooperated fully and it was sunny (hot and humid goes without saying) all tournament. fun fact: tournament was on 6/12-13. 6/12 was actually duanwujie. i made sure to have a zhongzi that morning!)

racing itself went pretty smoothly. there was a foul up regarding our first 200m race, which i ended up missing because i was at the opening ceremony (as a flag bearer, not just cause i wasn't paying attention). but the rest of our 200m and 500m went well (two races each). we did not get to race genders this year, which sucked, but at least it meant our kids weren't super tired. thursday was 2000m day. one race and done! it's a pursuit race, but fastest boats are released first and in 30 second intervals so there's pretty much no passing. also, we were released first. hahah. but our kids did pretty well (4th of 8).

 

after races were done was the craziness of team photos. something weird this year, i'm apparently considered quite pretty in this province. i got A LOT of personal attention this year. some guy even ran up to me and rambled off his name and phone number asking me to call him. i said no, in english, no less. but there were lots of personal pictures, which is a very weird thing for me. china has become a bit of an ego boost for me, looks department wise, haha.

that afternoon the tournament people organized a trip to jinci temple for the racers. that was really great of them to do so! i probably wouldn't have gone myself since it was a bit far outside of the city and i think a lot of the foreign teams didn't get much sightseeing time so this was really thoughtful of them. but there was another foul up there with one of harvard's paddlers missing our 5pm leaving time so most of the north american teams went to the banquet / awards ceremony dirty and unshowered (we were on the same bus). (btw, our hotel sucked. we were pretty much without water for two days. one of our kids [bless his heart!] wrangled a couple rooms in the other hotel tower for us to shower in)

banquet this year was much like last year's with the craziness of teams wanting to swap jerseys and take pictures... not much drunken debauchery this year, however, thank goodness. though of course there was too much food. they also hired a few performers, all singers i think. or lip syncers at least. at least one of them must be semi-famous because some of the chinese girls went crazy over him.

afterwards we went back to the hotel. some people went out to buy drinks (of course) and i think nearly everyone did a shot or two. most of cali stayed in to play cards so i joined them, while some of the rest of cali (along with harvard and toronto) went out to karaoke and drink some more. eventually a few of us ended up at kfc where were couldn't order a bucket of chicken. it was kind of funny cause the manager told us that "no one does that." our guy ordering for us, who was probably a bit drunk still, told him that "i'm from america and we do have chicken in buckets!"

coach scott with our 3rd place trophies & medals (500m mixed)

i was kind of sad i wasn't leaving with everyone the next morning (north america was once again traveling together and they were all talking about what they were going to do in beijing). but they were to be in the lobby by 5:30am and this was finally my chance to sleep in so i wasn't too upset to be alone.

sf

backdrop to the races. pretty nice, no?

went to sf a few weeks ago with the team. then stayed a few days afterwards to hang out with chang. a few highlights of the trip:

gangnam style costumes

twas pretty cold there!

1. i actually cried after a race, which i've never done. i was stroking white boat, which was full of newbies. newbies tend to get excited during races and lose control, which is exactly what happened in our first three races. after the start we'd be in the top three and over the next 400m we'd drop to like last place (out of six). it was heartbreaking because it was no one's fault but our own! it was incredibly frustrating to me because even the other stroke was rushing me during each piece (i was lead stroke). for our finals race, most of us switched sides, so the other stroke was then on her "on" side and was lead since i was now on my off-side. and guess what? the whole boat kept it together and we finished in 3rd! :) i was just SO happy that we finally got it together for our finals race that i cried after. hahah. pretty crazy.

at black sands

i couldn't roll up my skinny jeans, so i just took them off!

2. annie and i went to many new places: black sand beach, chapel of the chimes (which was designed by Julia Morgan [she did hearst castle too]), mountain view cemetery, and point bonita. i love that every time i go to sf i see new things. eventually i'll do golden gate park. 

at the chapel. those "books" are actually urns!

not the only pyramid. and certainly not the fanciest mausoleum.

a few other fun things worth mentioning, but not worth going into detail about: space taking the tourney (finishing an amazing season where we took every tourney we were in [minus portland, which doesn't count cause that was a roving tourney]), gangnam style flash mob, drinking (not drunking!) 7 days in row which beats my old record by ~4 days, eating lots of good food (charcuterie, fried crawfish, also sea urchin for the first time...), discovering the panoramic function on my cell camera, scaring off the gay couple having sex at black sands (which is a nudist beach, btw. but anyway, underwear is like bikini bottoms, there was no one there, and my jacket pretty much covered everything).

otw back from point bonita lighthouse (which was closed)

long beach '12

this past weekend was our annual long beach dragon boat tournament. and while normally it's a lot of hard work, it's still a ton of fun. this year, tho... i'm undecided. we're always short volunteers, and since we had an excess of paddlers for socow i decided to marshal saturday rather than paddle. i'd already brought socow co-captain song in with me to handle our corporate team boston sci so i was expecting to mostly marshal and maybe call the occasional race. turns out ripple effect (space dragons' sister team) needed me to paddle their women's boat, so i did get a 500m in with them.

friday set up

sunday i also arrived super early (mostly to give kim a ride), and found out that alex (who does a ton at marshaling) had really bad food poisoning the night before and was not going to come that day. !!! so i decided to give up my morning 500m socow race and help marshal until the uci volunteers showed up (they were supposed to come at noon). 

marshaling. ;)

things were supposed to be fine. but my co-captain was running late so i had to get boston sci together myself for heat 60. which would've been easy enough, except that i was also supposed to paddle heat 57. ...i asked rip to help me and there was some drama there and just... the situation managed to work itself out, as things usually do. but rip ended up talking to me for the rest of the day (actually, it's thursday night now and he's still not talking to me. anyway...).

lucy took photos of me!

later the uci volunteers were a bit late, but eventually i did manage to make it back to the socow tent and have a late lunch and paddle our 200m with them too. for the whole weekend, i probably spent a total of 1.5 hours with the team.

boston sci with song on the bow

at sunday's banquet i felt like i was trying to play catch-up, but still unable to keep up. now everyone's pictures are up on fb and i'm in hardly any at all. i dunno, i just feel really sad. i got into paddling because of the social aspect of it. which i'm now totally missing out on. i don't regret volunteering because lord knows we need as much help as we can get. and i in particular am useful because i paddle so i catch things non-paddlers have a harder time with. i also know nearly all the steerspeople so i can find you a steer last minute and i can also get steers' attention faster cause i know most of their names. and i can drum. but still...

socow 2012

sunday night after banquet i (and two socow'ers) went to club ripples to meet up with space and ripplefx. we got there pretty late tho, and after like 30minutes both teams went home. i did go out with the two socow'ers to another bar tho, and we had fun getting to know each other better.

korean bbq for dinner. rudy (far right) is a vegetarian, lol.

i think it's all harder because of the fight with rip. this is the 2nd time this month he's gotten mad at me to the point of not talking. we normally fight this "badly" only once or twice a year, and for 2012 this is our 3rd time, and it's only july!

anyway, i'm unsure of what's going to happen with rip, or with lb next year. i think i'm going to try to stick with the same plan: volunteer saturday, paddle sunday. i think it would've been better (for me anyway) if i had managed to stick to that but things come up... i know i personally have mixed feelings about lb this year, but honestly, it was a great tourney. we were only a few minutes behind (until that one boat huli'ed and didn't come back to the shore for nearly an hour), didn't have too many serious accidents, alex ended up coming, we got more volunteers sunday afternoon, and all the teams i'm involved with had fun. some even came away with medals (5 of the 6 space teams placed into div 1a, and space red was first in the 500m and 200m.). i just need to focus more and pay attention to those closest to me, rather than get distracted with the association stuff. it's hard tho, cause i feel very responsible about certain things, and generally when i know i can help, i do. anyway, here's to 2012, and here's hoping that it's even better next year.

jiaxing

this was my first real international tournament (alcan doesn't count, cause vancouver is pretty much just like the united states.) i went with the uscdbc team as their caller and "chaperon" for lack of a better word. honestly, they didn't need any looking after, but i did a lot of headcounts and and made sure everyone had their meal tickets for every meal, lol. the "real adults" (dr. chen, mike, mary) stayed at the officials hotel while i stayed with with the team in the paddlers' hotel.

official team picture (i'm even paler than dr chen who doesn't paddle!)

wednesday night was spent in shanghai at our first banquet dinner with dr chen and assorted vips, then amy, mary and i went out walking, first to the bund then to xintiandi. the next morning, we had brunch of xiao long bao and more at a restaurant in yu yuan. (i got to tell you tho, the xiao long bao were just okay. i much prefer those at din tai fung.) the whole morning was pretty rushed, but it was nice to be able to walk around the city some more. after brunch we were whisked away by bus to jiaxing (our race city).

shitang, jiaxing

that night a few of us had to go to the captains' meeting at the officials' hotel. and goddamn that was the most boring meeting i've ever been to (kam actually fell asleep). worst yet, nearly all of it was in chinese. i actually switched seats with nick so i could translate for the new zealand team. about 1.5 hours into it, they suddenly announced that they had translators for those who couldn't understand chinese. ...um, thanks? when the four of us got back to the hotel (nick, kam, amy, me) we couldn't find the rest of the team. we figured maybe they had went out and decided to stay up to wait for them. kam fell asleep first, i about an hour later, then nick shortly after. i think amy stayed up until 3am or something. at that point nick and amy went knocking on doors, and wouldn't you know, lol, the whole team had been in one room, sleeping the whole time!

photo credit: john lian

the next morning we had to wake up early for the opening ceremony. we found out that we wouldn't get getting any real practice time, so i held the flag and mary took our spot on stage. the team went out on the water and waited and waited... turns out they only had like 15 minutes of paddling time and an hour of "sitting in the boat time." we did get a bit of practice in with the toronto team tho (with whom we did all our gendered races). (their coach blake actually recognized me from that paddler's clinic a couple years ago). that afternoon larry's cousins, who were with us pretty much the entire weekend, took us to shitang, an old town. we finally go the chance to sight-see, eat local foods, and shop. we were so lucky to have them! they even bought us dinner on friday and lunch on saturday! (we all felt pretty bad that they spent so much time and money on us. but we didn't really have anything to give in return [they wouldn't accept out money, not even cab fare]. thankfully at dinner on saturday night with the relatives, i received a number of gifts, including a set of beautifully boxed plums. we gave them a box and i gave dr chen the other. i do wish i had gotten to try a plum tho. they should've been pretty good, being in a fancy box and all. but oh well.)

2000m race that i bowed out for

race days were race days. the usual disorganization, boredom, and then intense rushing around. it rained a bit saturday, which turned everything to mud and caused some really gross bugs to come out. bleh. i can't remember how many races we did on saturday, but we did all the 200m and 500m for men's, women's, and mixed (maybe 11 races per person?) the "highlight" (if you can call it that) on saturday was the main official telling us that "no offense, but you've been here for two days, so it's your fault the translators weren't doing their job." i yelled at him. seriously. i was fucking pissed. you hired, trained, assigned these translators. it's an international tournament and your fucking rules say that everything will be announced in english. how the fuck is this our fault your staff is crap? he said something about how everyone there is a volunteer so i can't expect much. to which i replied that hey, our race is also volunteer basis and we aren't nearly as disorganized as this tourney is. anyway. i realized that this asshole wasn't about to take responsibility for anything, so i walked away from the conversation. whatever.

my favorite photo of the trip

saturday night i went out to dinner with my relatives. my great aunt, her husband, their daughter, her husband, and a bunch of other people including the former mayor of jiaxing. it was fancy. it was in a BEAUTIFUL hotel and omfg i wish i had a chance to take pictures during the day cause all my night ones didn't really turn out (it was raining and it's not a great camera and let's face it, i don't really know how to use it to full capabilities). i also had lunch with them the next day after we finished our 2000m and the awards ceremony. also fancy. and they made me eat snail. bah. a couple kids wanted to party that night so we went to a grocery store in the afternoon and bought a bunch of alcohol. dinner that night was banquet style. TONS of food. most of which did not get eaten. :( in any case, after dinner we went upstairs to pack. then we partied or should i say they partied? i, being the "chaperon", did not party. not that i would've wanted to, esp after what happened in portland! actually, to be precise, a couple of our kids partied, while the rest got scared and made sure everyone was alright. the malaysian team went nuts, and the singapore team also. i'm not terribly sure of what happened cause i left pretty early on to go ktv with toronto and harvard, who also went a little wild, lol. (i maybe should've stayed but i know i would've wanted to control the situation if i had [which was not my place to do so], so i left). ended up exploring the dark parts of the hotel and getting devoured by mosquitoes. it was an interesting night.

sunday's banquet   photo credit: lisa chou

the next morning we woke up early again and got on a bus to west lake in hangzhou. we also spent a little time shopping there after having lunch at kfc (i know. seriously. it wasn't my idea is all i can say). there was a bit of drama with that too, actually. the driver wouldn't take us shopping, when that was all the team really wanted to do. he didn't seem to understand we didn't really care to look at pagodas and stuff. so amy (who has the best chinese on the team) started yelling at him in high-pitched and fast chinese. "are you so stupid that you don't understand that all we want to do is buy souvenirs?" she's ballsy! (in case you don't know, however, yelling at people in china isn't the big deal it is over here. it's not great, but it's not horribly insulting.) we only had a couple hours there before we took the bus back to the the airport.

west lake, hangzhou

the only real downside of the trip was that it was way too short. all told, i was out of the house for about a week, but after adding travailing time, i had only about 5 days in china. the trip was pretty much all tournament, with very little time to sight-see. i'm lucky i've been to china before (and both shanghai and west lake) or i would've felt more disappointed that we didn't get much outside time. tho i still super regret not having extended my trip. bah!!

have about 30 mosquito bites, and like 20 on my right arm alone :( 

honestly, it was a great trip. the whole time, i kept thinking "i'm so lucky." and i know the whole team felt the same way. periodically someone would say "we are so spoiled." me, even more so. dr chen paid for my flight (and all other major transportation) and the city of jiaxing comped all our rooms and food. i spent ~$40 the whole week i was there (and the bulk of that went to my sim card and the kfc lunch, when mike and i treated the team). i also met my relatives, whom i've never before met, and whom showered me (well, my parents) with gifts and took me out to some of the fanciest chinese meals i've ever had. we were also so fortunate to have larry's cousins, who took us out to a place they'd just been the day before.

people kept telling me that this trip was dr chen's way of thanking me for the work i've put in for the scdbc over the years. but i'm totally blown away by his generosity (and everyone else's!). i hope i never forget how lucky i am to be a part of this sport and organization. seriously.

portland

space dragons' roving tourney this year was to portland. this was the tournament that i'd been waiting for us to get back to. they went my first year, but since i only joined a month or two before, i didn't feel strong enough to go. and i've regretted it ever since. so why is the portland race so awesome? because it has flag catching!

our finals race, which we won!!

no, that is not me flag catching in the photo, tho i did get to do it once. and it was fucking AWESOME!!! i was really worried i would miss the flag tho. it was pretty far left as we were approaching, and i was thinking that if it came down to it, i would jump off the boat to get it. there's no way i had made my team paddle 530+ meters only for me to miss the flag. but in the last few seconds our steersman pulled thru and got me close enough to grab it. :D

i have an evil stache, btw, like v from "v for vendetta"

other than the flag catching, the portland race was pretty awesome. yes it rained, and yes there was a ton of goose poop all over the place. but the teams were all really friendly. there were four cali teams: light wave, dragon warriors, our sister team: ripple effect, and us. at some point or another, the officials screwed every one of us. guess they just don't like cali. the portland teams, however, really liked us! we were our usual obnoxious selves: mass zumba stretching, face painting, loudly singing along to every song we heard, chasing after firemen, violently playing red rover, crashing other teams' hokey pokey circles and just being noisy and stupid. it was fun!

yup, that's space for you!

best part was probably getting to hang out with the team. we went to voodoo donuts, had stumptown coffee, went to powell's bookstore, and many many bars. i stayed with jill and makiko, neither of whom i knew very well before this race. and most of the time, our team hung out in a pack, which was nice since most of them live in la so i don't get to play with them much. we also hung out a lot with our sister team, which was really great too.

all in all, a really fun trip (though i don't think we'll be going back for the tourney anytime soon because we got screwed by race officials so often) and i'm incredibly happy i went. i think next on my db tourney checklist is boracay, in the philippines. it's tropical, gorgeous, and open water!

(btw, i didn't take any of these photos. i think all of them came from james nguyen, or at least his camera) 

sd 09 recap

oh man this was a good year! i don't know how many races or medals we won (i'm not one to keep track, or to even really care about medals), but i do know that we've done really good! for our last competitive tourney (treasure island) we brought up 6 boats: red, blue, white, women's, men's, masters. and of those 6 i think 5 of us made some sort of finals (tho we didn't win any medals). can you believe that? we are freaking awesome!

also chang started coming out to practice. and reep, russ, and louise joined sd. :) yay!

sd sf

reep and i got to sf early friday morning and proceeded to have the best day ever! swasti took us to the airport for our 7.30am flight, which was delayed a little bit by weather. we checked into the marriot by 11am, took a nap, went out and ate at dotties, came back for another nap, woke up to meet mr and mrs greenleaf for drinks and apps at the cosmopolitian, and then dinner and dessert at mangarosa. it was fabulous!

the weather was great the whole weekend. nice and sunny if you can believe it! our host team ripple effect, btw, if freaking awesome. they actually cooked for us! they made like three kinds of pasta; it was so good. i napped three times on saturday. at night reep, russ, louise and i went to dinner at mochica, which served peruvian food. also very good.

sunday was another day of competition. i think 5 of our 6 teams made some sort of finals, which is unbelieveable! i think i only took one nap that day. but it was a really good one. janice and jason made me a "bed" and the three of us slept for maybe 45 minutes? twas awesome.

that night we went out wit the team to o'neill's irish pub with the team. while reep and i didn't participate in any boat races, we had fun nonetheless. a member of our team got pretty drunk and ended up passing out next to us in our booth. baaad idea, lol. we didn't do anything really mean (well, i didn't anyway) but whipped cream was involved. :)

anyway, it was a great weekend. and probably my funnest tourney ever. twas a super great way to end the season.