the end

i can't believe that it is already friday afternoon...especially since i haven't posted since sunday night. eek.

anyway, the week is about over. we had our last go on the lake this morning for the varsity scrimmage vs. texas (and the novice had one last practice since they raced the texas novice yesterday afternoon). we raced 3 three and a half minute pieces (nearly equivalent to thousand meter pieces, but much easier to do since the course has been really windy the last few days) down by the texas crew boathouse. regrettably, we lost all three, but we got better and better each time we raced. the first one wasn't very good because we were stuck between the two texas eights so we were stuck in their wake the entire time. our starts were much better on the second two so we were able to keep up with them better than in the first one. the 2nd varsity eight, as well as the novice eight and novice four also lost their races. despite not winning any of the races, i think it was really good practice and we learned a lot from it. and we'll be back to race them again next year.

i've been hearing good things from a few people, but i'm trying not to get my hopes up too much. i'll really have to keep that in mind.

after the race this morning, we had a little bit of fun on the paddle back to our (austin rowing club's) dock. i really enjoyed coxing the varsity eight and four. once we got back to the boathouse, we started de-rigging the boats - three eights, three fours, and four pairs - and waiting around for the novice to finish practicing. after we had all the boats loaded up on the trailer, the novice still weren't back, so me, mo, joey, and heidi started tossing a frisbee around. some of the funniest memories came from those 15 minutes: mo slipping and falling on her ass out of nowhere, and then me sliding on my ass down the hill when i tried to stop because i wasn't going to get to the frisbee. i got a really nice raspberry on my thigh from that and my butt is still a bit sore. great times though.

once the novice got back, we de-rigged the fours they had taken out and then took our team pictures in front of the boathouse. we all piled back on to the bus and dropped pretty much everyone off at the hotel, but five of us wanted to go to the texas bookstore, so jerry drove us over there. we all found and bought our texas rowing shirts and then spent ten minutes taking goofy pictures of ourselves with the statues around the football stadium. they should be pretty funny once mo gets them developed.

and now we're back here hanging out at the hotel for a little bit...

the schedule for the next 36 hours of my life:

movie with the team at 3:30 (we'll probably be seeing failure to launch, so i'm pretty excited about that...plus, we'll all be together so that should be fun)
team dinner at joe's crab shack at 6:30 (gonna be a blast to have the whole team at the same restaurant for once)
the rest of the evening: shower, pack up, get ready for tomorrow, sleep
leave for dallas tomorrow morning at 5 am
rig boats in dallas
race SMU at 9 am
de-rig boats, jump in the bus, and head back to omaha

it has been a really fun week despite some of the small setbacks we've come upon while we've been here. i'm definitely glad to be on the team, though i do miss some of my friends on the club team a lot.