Banana Boat Wins Gold (Again)

So I raced on Saturday and this is all I have to show for it...



So Banana Boat finally won some hardware this year and I was pretty elated when it happened because not only did we manage to jump up 2 divisions but we had to beat off some serious BS with our paddles to get it.

Usually Woodstock is a pretty smooth regatta but man did they struggle to keep it together on Saturday (and it didn't even rain or anything). It basically boiled down to lots of teams waiting around in the marshaling area, sweating for no reason. Okay fine, I actually did most of the sweating, but you get the point.



Like I said it was hot and I'm a sweaty animal I don't deal with humidity very well, so cue the team walking through the sprinklers shot . . . now.



They didn't even have good food at the festival either - that was pretty lame. If there's one thing they need to step up then it's probably that. I wanted to eat a giant turkey leg or something (to get my energy up you know) but ended up with two crappy hot dogs, which I had to make up for at the buffet afterwards.

I'm probably just still bitter because the team behind us ate victory lobsters after their final race, and all we could do was watch. That's right lobsters.

...cue the requisite Banana Boat cheer shot . . . now.



Since I'm such a fair competitor, I tried to get jacked up on as much sugar and 5 hour energy as possible for the Final. I'm still having a hard time trying to convince the rest of the team that caffeine pills are alright too. I don't think it worked out though because all that waiting seemed to have foiled my plans (maybe).

I think what happened was that the caffeine and sheer volume of the Arizona iced tea plus the heat plus the waiting just made me have to pee so much that I eventually got most of the drugs stuff out of my system before the race even happened. I went form pulsating wired to straight headache and mild buzz for the race. The plan will be revised and improved upon for GWN...



So during the final we were in lane 4 (last lane on the right) and what happened was lane 2 tried to pull some BS (or their cox just totally sucked that much) and nearly pushed over into our lane with #3 sandwiched in between - in the pic above there was another team to the right of them as well.

It was crazy and I could hear our coach constantly telling them to "back the f**k up" because they were getting all up in our space. Luckily they have officials following behind the boats to catch that kind of foolishness. The fact that they "drifted" over so far was some real drama because that's a lot distance to "accidentally move over".

As a result, shit got real and that team got disqualified for being noobs (even though they were ahead). That's what happens when you suck you interfere, so get real (or another cox).



Outrage! We actually didn't find out until afterwards that we took first because it was a pretty close race and with the angles you can never tell. It ended up working out though and we got that repeat gold medal swag. That's real (just like my teammate vomiting red puke in the subway because he had to get up so early (btw it was me that told the entire team, sorry (but not really (mwah ah ah ah)))).



Here's what the race looked like from the drummer's perspective. Especially at 2:05 you can see how close the other boat got, and that was not cool. I usually follow the person in front of me and the two people on the diagonal for pace, so I could see that boat in the corner of my eye and it was pretty ridiculous.

They came into our lane about 3 times and let's just say that there was a lot f-bomb dropping...



Anyway, all is well in the jungle and we were well rewarded afterwards.

I was also introduced to this iPhone program called Photosynth. It's basically a panoramic photo stitcher app, but it actually works reasonably well (so long as most things in the picture don't move).



It's also free so get your download on and check it out.



Now back to da grind...