Weekend Recap

Now that I've been home for a day and had a good night's sleep, I'm rather less wired and jumpy and might actually be able to make some kind of sense in recapping the weekend in Boston.

By the time we picked up the rental van and the other passengers it was just before 5pm when we hit the road. Naturally we hit some traffic but on the whole it was a good trip and we made decent time getting to Boston. The only hiccup happened once we got off the highway (too early) and proceded to lose ourselves on the seemingly unnamed streets of Boston. Eventually though, and after asking for directions twice (both times wrong!), we found the hostel and got settled.

Saturday morning was a lazy start. We had time for breakfast and took the subway over to the race site. We did our two time trial races and somehow managed to finish in first place by a large margin (about 3 seconds ahead of team two and 5 seconds ahead of team three). Once those two races were done we were finished for the day and could enjoy the city, warm weather and getting to know the rest of the team. We went out for a great sushi lunch and then broke off into smaller groups. I went for a long walk with a few of the others and we made our way over to Boston Common park and then over to Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market where we ended up having dinner.

Sunday was a much earlier start. We had to check out of the hostel and load up the vans. We drove over to the Festival site so that we'd be ready to hit the road once we were finished.

Race 1 - 9:00am: we finished first - a whole 7 seconds before the next team.
Race 2 - 11:45am: we finished first - again a whole 7 seconds before the next team.
Race 3 - 12:36pm: Photo finish. We only get 2nd place - 2:17:480. Winners finished at 2:17:380. We get silver for Out Of Town teams.
Race 4 - 2:48pm: Semi finals - We win but no times available as starter lost power or something.
Race 5 - 4:36pm: Finals - we finish FIRST with 2:17:490 (second place was at 2:18:920).

Shortly after 5pm they had the awards ceremony and we were presented with the Boston-Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival Cup. We each received a Chinese kite and our first place medals. As part of the prize, they are also paying our entry fee to the New York Dragon Boat Festival in August.

It was after 7pm by the time we started the trip home and it was made longer when we forgot to take the I-89 home, which meant taking the I-93 a little too far east, and ending up in Magog when we came through the border. By the time we dropped off the other team members on the South Shore, it was 2am when I unlocked my front door.

A long and exhausting weekend but fun and exciting too. The competition in New York will be at a higher level so even though we did well this weekend, we will have our work cut out for us.