Wellington Champs

This year we stayed at home and attended the Wellington Champs. It was a lovely sunny day, and the water was nice for the most part...
It started like any other day, well actually a bit earlier at 5:45 because first races were at 6:45. It was a bit stressful in the boathouse. The first crews rowed their boats over to the racing, and while you gotta love getting out of boating rigging and trailer loading, when some of the boats have problems it's tricky when no one is around cuz they are already at the races.

But man, isn't the harbour lovely early in the morning.
I will so miss this. What makes it even nicer is that you know that you get to share it with people you know, that they are waiting for you while you drag yourself out of bed and down the hill to morning training.

Then comes the heat and waiting around of race day.

Here is our coach giving our new coxswain some pointers.

And we eat...
And at this regatta dogs are allowed... too bad that just about when this photo was taken, Traveler accidentally side swiped one of our rower's parent's cars!

Owen hopped in the boat for a 'dry' row to check his feet. And then they raced in our mighty mixed crew... too bad the officials didn't let them acutally race and they had to race down the outside of the course. There was only one other crew in the final for this one, so rather silly that they were turned away at the start.

And the mighty club women modeling their guns and new crew gear.
Not the best of racing for my crews this day, but I still walked away thinking, Man this is the last time I race on our home water with my crew. It's like senior year all over again. Everything feels like a "last."

Training while on vacation

I am under strict orders from my coach not to over do it while I am in the States because "I'm on vacation" after all... But rowing is my vacation from life, so I've found my own unique brand of adapting my rowing training into a vacation flavoured one.

So I present to you the vacation-erg thanks to my friend who lent me her dusty rowing machine.

And the Oregon flavor beach run
The oh-so-light out 5:40 am departure to boat house
And the Willamette River I have never actually seen from water level before. I had no idea that there were sandy beaches, house boats, and tons of rowers on this river before. Five seat never felt so good!

Living it up

Today I kept thinking - wow I love this life, I don't want a different one, I want this one. This is my home.

The day started off well - a long distant race to Somes Island and back.
For you non-wellingtonians, Somes is the biggest island in the middle of the harbour. We raced there and back 2x. My boat was last, but we were following different rules about which bouys to go around. Ah well, I loved every minute and coming in to the familiar faces looking down from the balcony was extra special: two new friends from Forest Grove, our neighbors, a cool guy from Switzerland, and best of all my parenter of 12 years today - go TRAVELER.



It was a pretty simple race. Hand on club door - run to boat, get sculls in, row to Somes 2x, first to run back to door wins. Uh... yeah we were last but we still went for it and we had our own personal (but oh so challenging) set of rules that no one else was following.

Then I went for a bike ride through the Beloment Regional Park with a bit of hiking thrown in. Hard to beat door-to-door mountain biking after a day rowing on salt water. Really, where in the world can you do that - oh yeah, Italy. Hmmm more on that later. As I said, I am really loving my life here.

Sunday moments

A few sundays ago I brought great joy to a couple boys by delivering a garden cart:

And I learned that not only is a garden cart kind of like a sled in non-snow settings, the wheels can be used instead of braids to pretend to be princess Leah... a stretch I know, but the boys suggested it not me:)
Today I spent my Sunday morning bringing myself joy rowing a quad from Petone across the harbour to Oriental Bay. I finally am starting to get the hang of sculling and find it easier to attempt to do what the coach is asking than I did when I first learned to sweep row. Water like this in the middle of winter doesn't hurt matters!
In other non-Sunday moments I went for a fog walk thinking how much it made the city feel like Oregon at Christmas time,

spotted some striking flatmate searching art

and was struck by how amazing the harbour looks when filled with frothy fog. Trav said 'inversion' and I said 'harbour capaccino' when we saw it on our drive down to the rowing club. I think is is safe to say that he and I sometimes see the world differently!

Rain walk

Today I spent 2 hours wandering the beach with our friends' dog. My brain was pretty still today, but I did have a few recurring thoughts: I love living here. I love being around dogs. I Dogs can be more responsive than people sometimes. I still don't mind the rain. Fetch the stick can provide hours of entertainment for grown ups so long as the other participant shows proper enthusiasm.Playing on the beach with a dog is nearly as much fun as rowing - and completely cleared my mind. I now have two bliss activities - yay me!

Don't worry, I did take advantage of that rowable water and got out in a single for a bit before my walk.

"Wishing and hoping..

.. thinking and praying,  planning and dreaming..."  

But in my case these Dusky Springfield lyrics remind me of how I am thinking about the water this winter.. its  all about the water and the harbour and the weather and trying to sneak down to the club when the water is rowable.

You have nearly rowable..

And then a southerly blows in with hail...

And then you have nights like tonight where the water could have gone any which way, but by the time I was making my way down to the club it already was looking promising


And then it was


Better still I got to got out with 4 really lovely people who focus when rowing  and I was able to leave everything I fret about behind.  Earlier this week I nearly started crying down at the club.  It is hard to explain how this angered me. The rowing club is the one place I can always go to get away from everything.  Some days are more exciting than others. Some days the excercise hurts more than others.  But this weekend was the first time the worries of my everyday life snuck in with me.  Tonight that didn't happen, so hopefully it was only a one time thing.  


Ah.. what a great row tonight!

Mother's Day

This Sunday Traveler got me out of bed... and took me to the water. It was such a gorgeous day with the full moon still above the horizon and the water as still as it could be. By 9 am the winds had turned southerly and all hope of rowing was shot for the next few days, but just before then Traveler and I rowed round and round in circles while the getting was good.

How do you measure the days...

I've been listening to the theme song to Rent a lot lately. Originally it reminded me of road trips with my club volleyball team at Northwestern. Driving through the midwest to find small out of the way gyms at various Big Ten universities .

Then it reminded me of some of the harder parts of last year and how I was counting the days until I could journey into parenthood.

Today, well all that seems a really long time ago. Today I measure my days with weather forecasts and by checking my new favourite site.

Here is a sample of my morning hit today.
I think it has scenic value even if you aren't trying to guess whether its rowable. It also shows how the days are clearly getting shorter here. Tonight I was rowing in the dark at 6 pm.

Rowing Nationals

As many of you know, I've been quite busy the past few months training for rowing. Last week we headed down for Nationals in Twizel. It is a really amazing place for rowing with green-blue glacial water in the high country of the South Island. My four won a bronze medal and we were in the lead for a good portion of the race. Our eight was only 4 seconds behind 3rd place. It was a great season for me and I am already missing it!

Here are a few photos:

recent adventures - dedicated to Laura, Pete and FINLEY!

This post is dedicated to my dearest friend Laura and her husband Pete who just welcomed into the world their wonderful son Finley. I hear Laura is looking for posts here while she is on Mat leave, and so I submit the following thrown together post as I nurse my cold and prepare to fly to Twizel for Rowing Nationals.

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Last weekend was Sevens weekend in Wellington. People dress up to attend the rugby matches. Anything goes, the only rule is to get a bunch of mates together and wear matching outfits. Always entertaining!I spent the weekend up in Wanganuni, about 3 hours north of here along the west coast of the North Island. It is a charming town, although it seems like most of the stores are always closed and I had the worst meal ever here the night before I left. It was nearly $20 for an all you can eat Mongonlian Grill... and well I couldn't even eat and just walked out. Oh well, live and learn.

I was there to row not eat anyways. And row we did. My fours team took 1st place and our eight didn't have a chance to race due to poor water conditions each afternoon.
Actually, I think we did more watching and sunburning than we did rowing...


As is our informal tradition, we stayed in a school hall near the river. I kept looking for the basketball hoops, but I guess basketball and school hall aren't as linked here.

I thoroughly enjoyed my new Christmas present from Traveler to pass the down time. Podcasts from NPR are a godsend when spending hours on end listening to teenagers verbally process life. I find both fascinating, but like to have a chance to alternate between the two forms. Kind of like I like switching between cooked and raw food throughout a meal.

And of course we went grocery shopping where I snapped this photo at Pak N Sav, park of their 'we save you money' campaign. Trolleys are shopping carts. Some use the word trundler as well for this thing. I just miss the bar to rest your foot on that are on American ones.
On the drive home I saw a llama on the back of a truck.. you know, as one does.

The next day I was flying back up the coastline for work. The plan was to fly over Wanganui up to New Plymouth. Unfortunately New Plymouth was covered in fog ALL DAY. So we landed in Wanganui and then were bused north. I was so glad to see this the following day because it meant the ceiling was plenty high enough for me to fly out.