Cool Runnings (Except with Dragon Boats instead of Bobsleds)

It's Rose Festival Dragon Boat Race weekend! With our ragtag bunch of beginner paddlers we hoped to:
1. Have enough paddlers show up to fill most of the boat.
2. NOT come in dead last. Or something like 20 seconds behind everyone else in our heats. If we keep our fingers crossed and do extraordinarily well, we're hoping MAYBE we can get a medal in Division 4. (Even though you generally have to beat a blind team, a deaf team and the Special Dragons to get there. *sigh*)
3. Have some decent weather.
4. Eat lots of Fran's rice balls.
5. Have some fun!

About half the team showed up for our last practice on Wednesday night. Not unusual. Every practice we wonder if we will have the minimum of 10 show up to be able to go out on the water at all. Often Fran recruits a couple people from other teams, or even random tourists, to go out with us so we can practice at all! Everyone was told to show up on race day NO LATER THAN 8:30 am. Preferably 8:15. Or earlier. Lennie contacted everyone else later to let them know.

Race Day. 8:30 am. We arrive at our tent. Stan looks around and asks, "Well, do we have enough people to go out?" Of the 25 people on the roster, there are 5 at the tent so far. Plus Austin is rumored to be off smoking somewhere, and Lennie, Fran and Keegan are at the coach's meeting. That's 9.... So almost enough! (Of course a full boat requires 19-- 16 paddlers, a tiller, a caller, and a flag catcher.)

Thankfully the day's off to a slow start as there are random boats anchored in the Willamette along the race course! So while the race officials move the finish line and the Coast Guard tries to get the boats moved, we do have more time before our race anyway.

By 9:30 (our original marshalling time) we're still a bench short and we haven't heard from either of the flag catchers.

As we head to the marshalling area, two more paddlers show up and Robert the flagcatcher calls Keegan and says he is there but can't find us. The paddlers didn't bring their team shirts. Lennie goes back to the tent to round up a couple extra shirts. Robert finds us, but is wearing the red team shirt from 2 years ago. Lennie goes back and gets him a shirt, too! Now we're off to our first race!

The first heat we got 3rd place, with 2nd & 3rd VERY close. We were ECSTATIC not to be last!! Then the next heat we got 2nd place!!

We were placed in Division 3, which was in itself a big improvement from last year. We were happy with that even though it meant we probably wouldn't get any medals this year.

Sunday morning. Quarter final race. We're matched with teams that had similar times to our best the day before. We feel we have a good chance of getting a 2nd place, or at least the "fastest 3rd" and advancing to the semi-finals. If we can get a good start. And keep the timing together. And no one pulls out. Yeah, we could do it.

We're lined up at the start in lane 2. The boat in lane 1 is awfully close to us and starts to draw right just as the starter judge calls alignment and the horn blows...

GO!! Our right side paddles are occasionally intertwined with Lane 1's left. I am on my lane, though, with the flag sited right between the dragon horns, and I am NOT moving out of their way unless we will actually crash! We are exactly even all the way down the race course, with rarely more than a foot or two between the paddles! With that craziness going on beside us, we have no notion of where the other 2 boats are compared to us. Stay the course, don't crash, stay on the lane, don't crash, watch the flag, watch the paddles, don't crash, flag..... As Robert climbed onto the dragon head, all I could see was his hand and the oncoming flag...GOT IT! Apparently the boat in Lane 1 had to veer off slightly to the right to get their flag, so we WON THE QUARTER-FINAL! And... broke 3 minutes! 2:57 was 10 seconds faster than the day before!

I was surprised how exhausted I was when I got off the boat! Clyde, who runs the tiller clinic, was standing on the dock when I got off the boat. I gave him a big hug and said "Thank you SOOOO much for that tiller clinic!!!" He looked a bit surprised and said, "So...it was helpful then?"

Rob came back to the tent a while later with the line-up for the semi-final race. All the other teams in our heat had previously beat our best time by at least 5-7 seconds. We told each other that if we could pull together all the best of what we've done so far, we could get a 2nd place and move on to the finals. WE CAN DO IT ZEN!!!!

We headed down to the dock, loaded the boat, and had a while to wait as the Portland Spirit wanted through the race course. While we sat there we took a couple pictures, and Fran gave us the MOST AWESOME PEP TALK EVER. "You guys have done just AWESOME this season," she began. "This will be our last race together, but you have all done SO good and pulled together SO well..."

"FRAAAAN!!!! Ok, we might have been thinking it, but we weren't going to SAY it! What kind of a pep talk is that?!?" "Oh!", laughed Fran, putting her hand to her mouth. "Did I really say that out loud?"

So...we lined up in Lane 4, got off to an awesome start, and all four teams were dead even all across the race course. Nearing the end of the course, I thought we MIGHT be pulling ever so slightly ahead! So I called the end of the race a little early, with a "WE'RE IN THE LEAD!! FINISH IT WITH EVERYTHING!!"

Fran can never hear me call the finish, but Keegan at lead stroke can, so she always looks up and repeats it to Fran. Keegan told me later that while looking at the other lead stroke, she could see the three other dragon heads even with us through the whole race. But between the time she looked up at Fran and looked back at Rob, the other dragons were gone.

We had actually surged forward that much! WE WON the semi-final race by more than 2 seconds!!! Time: 2:53. Apparently the race announcer was going on excitedly about how they'd never seen anything quite like this!

Ya know, we might actually be able to win this! Wouldn't it be great to be able to present PCC with a trophy that says 1st Place!! (Lennie's been working really hard to get the school to pitch in more money for the team--they paid all the entry fees for 2 races this year plus a bus to go to Olympia this year. He's looking for more races and some team equipment for next year...)

Final race. We're feeling pretty good about this one. "Paddlers prepare to start...GO! "ONE! TWO! CRACK! Suddenly we're not going anywhere. Keegan says she looked at the other boats and thought, "Where are they going?!?" A couple people in the middle stopped paddling. Timing was way off. Ryan turned and shouted something to Lennie, who was in the back row. Lennie stopped paddling and yelled up the boat. Sky quit paddling, and with a paddle HANDLE held aloft, turned and yelled "WHAT DO I DO NOW????"

Lennie handed the extra paddle up to our powerful midstroke, but by then there was no catching up. Apparently the paddle broke in spectacular fashion on about the 3rd stroke and pieces of it flew and hit other paddlers. No one was injured but everyone was quite startled! Sky had tried to just keep paddling with the handle, having been programmed by Fran that, "No matter what happens, the most important thing is to keep in time!"

We actually came in just a couple seconds behind the rest of the pack. Keegan and Sky were pretty bummed about losing until Sky got to carry the broken paddle around, and get everyone's awed reaction to the story!! And we do have a 4th Place trophy, medals, and something else no other team has--the Power of Thor Trophy and a really great story about how to lose an epic race in epic fashion.