North West Regatta, and the finishing of my rowing career (for now)Aug 23, 2011
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| On August 18th I left with the rowing team for Duluth, Minnesota for one last regatta. North West regatta was described to me by my coach as the party regatta. He explained to us that Western Canada Games was like Christmas (you anticipate it so much and then it's over in a flash), and that North West was the New Years of it all. He was very correct in his saying this. This trip felt like a complete vacation to me and I am very glad that I decided to go on this one last trip with the rowing team. I was sceptical about going at first because I didn't think that I would be able to make it across the American border without a passport (as mine is sent away at the moment getting my working visa put into it for NZ). Once i arrived back from Kamloops there was no way I wasn't going to this last regatta, those races in B.C purely made me hungry for more. Before we left for the 15 hour bus ride to Duluth (which turned out to be a total of 21 hours), I looked into border patrol services and figured out that a passport wasn't necessary to cross the border if you were travelling with a team or organization, and you had proof of Canadian citizenship. After driving about 8 hours, we arrived at the Manitoba/U.S border. By that time I was getting pretty nervous, as all my other teammates had their passports with them and I did not. The border patrols got us all to enter the building and they began to scan everyones passports and question us, as others searched the bus. I could feel my heart pounding out of my chest as I got closer to the line. All that I could think of was, "what if they dont let me through.... that's gonna be one long and expensive taxi ride home." Luckily my manipultive.. I mean negotiative skills came in handy when I managed to talk my way through it. When we finally arrived in Duluth it was about 1130 at night so we basically all went directly to bed in anticipation for the races the following morning. We awoke at 530 the next morning and loaded the bus to drive to the racing venue which was being held on Lake Superior. I must say, this was the most incredibly beautiful venue I have ever laid eyes on. The beach stretched out for miles, and when you looked out at the glassy blue water it appeared to look like the ocean, as Lake Superior is incredibly vast. Since I signed up so late for the regatta, my coach managed to only get me into a couple races. The first day I raced a single which was interesting because I had not been in one for months. The last few months of training, the only boats I had trained for were the quad and the 8, as that is all I was racing in Kamloops. My race turned out to be one of the funnest races I have ever had! The water was rougher than I have ever experienced, and even during my warm up to the start line I almost tipped several times. Within the first 20 metres of the 2000 metre race, my boat was completely swamped with water. During the duration of my race it felt as though there were 3 other men sitting in my boat slowing me down. Not only was the boat incredibly heavy, but the water inside it was sloshing around making it nearly impossible to steer in a straight line. You would think that I would have been more frusturated by this, however I knew that these races were more for fun than anything and also I knew that there was not much I could do about it. I stayed calm, even as I rowed across the 1000 metre mark and my boat completely submerged, leaving me basically completely under water. At this point in the race I noticed that the umpire (the officials that are in charge of keeping everyone's course) was openly laughing at me. I can only imagine how odd it looked to the people on shore that were unable to see my boat, but only me "gliding" across the wavy water at a pathetic speed. There are two things you can do in this situation, one; you can get frustrated and angry, or you can laugh it off and keep going! In the end I managed to make it across the finish line in 4th place out of 6th. Now generally I would have been upset with this, however I was pretty excited because of the circumstances. The rest of the day I basically spent lounging around on the beach and cheering for my teammates. Although I had a lot of fun, that was one of the longest days I have had in a while. Because of the windy conditions, they kept postponing races which made it so that we weren't done the regatta till the sun went down and we were forced off the water by mother nature. That evening we went for dinner as a team to the Olive Garden and arrived back at the hotel at around 12am. The sleep that night felt like merely a blink of my eyes, and before I knew it I was loading back onto the bus for the next day of races. Once we got there I found out that my race in the 8 did not start until 150pm that day, so I went and napped on the beach from about 6 till 9am. After waking up with the sun lightly shining down on me, I waited around till my race and kept myself entertained by visiting with people from other teams. Once again races were delayed and our 150 race didn't end up happening till 4pm. By that point it was so windy that thy were considering cancelling races altogether. They finally decided that they would purely let the big boats out on the water, as they are most capable of handling the rough conditions. We managed to get 3rd place in that race (out of 8). We were all very pleased with ourselves because the women we were racing against were mostly all in their 20-30's and we were a boat of 15-18 year olds. Once again that day dragged on and when we were finally finished racing we quickly changed and went to the banquet for dinner and medal ceremonies. I am incredibly proud of the Werbiki girls, and especially Larissa. Larissa ended up getting gold in her single, quad and her double with her sister. Immediately following the banquet (at about 1030 pm), we loaded the bus for our journey back to toon town. We drove all night and arrived back in Saskatoon at around 3 the next day. Now that this regatta is over, I am officially done rowing until I leave for my trip on September 25th. I have decided to not get the job at Handy Special Events because I would much rather spend this next month taking care of the rest of my trip stuff, and visiting with family and friends. I am looking forward to this last month of summer here in Stoon, and I am most thrilled that I will not have to see winter for basically a year. I just went through a spring and summer, and once I leave, instead of fall I will be heading into New Zealand's spring. I have a feeling that this next month will pass by fairly quickly now that I no longer have distractions from rowing. The closer this trip comes the more excited I get, and the more fearful. |
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