Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Oops... Give Credit Where Credit is Due

After getting the race results for Rumble in the Jungle today via spreadsheet, it would appear that mathematical errors and confusion will make my first place a second place. Apparently, I was mistaken for Julie Busskohl and she for me. As Julie is a few years older than me her time handicap got applied to my time giving me a few more seconds of handicap than I should have. Thus making it so I was 5.5 seconds behind the ZLAC rower.

A bit of a letdown but I'll certainly make up for it the next time I race! That being said--I'm removing my medal smiling picture!
I'll try and get one at a later date : )

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Rumble in the Jungle!

It was my first real race in my single and my first row in my single not on Tempe Town Lake. I think it turned out quite well. The weather was perfect and I had some good results. The first race I did was the Women's 1x Open. That means all age groups and the gal that won was 16 years old. However, she's been rowing for awhile and rowed in Sweden. I finished a distant 2nd to her. My traveling sculler, Julie B put in a good effort and we shared some somewhat scary moments while discovering that we were maybe a bit to far into the ocean on our way from the LMU dock to the UCLA boathouse. Needlesss to say we handled some much bigger waves and I don't think we'll complain about waves on Tempe Town Lake any longer! Below are some of the race pictures. For a few more pictures CLICK HERE.


Julie and I leaving the LMU dock to head to the race spot on Ballona Creek and the UCLA dock.

Rowing by the marina area to the race. On the way back I was accompanied by a seal swimming alongside me. That was really cool!

E races!


Towards the end of the masters race.

Here's Julie B. racing.

By the way, everyone knew I was from Arizona with the Arizona Outlaws garb on. I had nice conversations with lots of California rowers. My first interests in the sport came when Matt and I stayed at a condo on Pacific Beach. In the morning the rowers from ZLAC were out in the bay. I told Matt that I thought it was a really cool sport and wouldn't it be nice to live by water to row. After discovering Tempe Town Lake and the City of Tempe rowing program--it was kind of nice that the person that finished 1st in my 2nd place race result was a ZLAC rower.

Saturday, June 24, 2006

LMU Boathouse, Marina Del Rey


Matt and I are in Marina Del Rey--not far from LA as you'll notice by the early morning haze in these pictures. We went to the LMU boathouse with Julie Busskohl and her husband Craig, to see if we could figure out the logistics of getting our shells where they needed to be by racetime. Julie had bought a used set of oars back in February from Patrick Kelly who happened to be the contact person for the event. He was very nice to us, allowing us to store our shells on 2 open rack spaces inside the LMU boathouse. We'll row from their dock down to the UCLA boathouse in the morning for our first race at 8:14 a.m.


We were waiting to talk to Patrick at the boathouse and I snapped a picture of Matt watching the scullers and rowers on the water.


Matt noticed a familiar name on the LMU rowers board. His brother Dan's friend, Frank Kennedy rowed for LMU for 4 years.


Julie cartopped our shells (which I'm so grateful for). Julie and Craig prepping before we took our boats into the boathouse.


Julie checking out the race schedule and notes.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

My Oars Get Personalized

My sculling oars were a sparkling orange color, however, the sparkle was fading fast with all the time in the water. I decided to make my next paint job a bit more personal. Although, admittedly, I took a shortcut to have my oars nice and fresh for my Regatta this weekend (At Marina del Rey, CA). I had my design made into a vinyl decal and they got put on today. Then I put a coat of clear acrylic paint of paint over them so hopefully they will stay around for awhile. The design is on the front and back of the oars. More on the Regatta after this weekend!

Saturday, June 17, 2006

Dan & Matt Sr's Helicopter Debut

Today Matt spent the day taking pictures and video taping the big helicopter debut. Dan and Matt Sr's helicopter had it first start up after almost 2 years of repair. Pretty soon they'll be flying around giving traffic reports... To bad there's already a "Detour Dan" in town with that job.

There's many more pictures and video. You can see more pictures on my iWeb photo page. Or click here to view the movie of the actual start up.

You'll see no Matt Sr. pictures--he's off on a Cruise to Russia, Finland and more...