Charity Happy Hour Re-cap (Catch-Up pt.3)

Last Thursday was the happy hour at Mad River to raise some money for Anna's House, my Dragonboat team's charity organization. The turn-out was pretty good and I think we raised a decent amount for them.

Lee, learning how to make a margarita:



My pops and Linda showed up (after the HH ended though):



From long range (Nick and I ran the table till everyone left for Mother's):



Everyone stayed at Mad River for a while after the happy hour ended and then headed over to Mother's until ... well ... I guess a while (the last picture in my camera from the night was taken at 11:55 PM and showed no signs of us stopping).

Dragonboat Races (Long Post)

So this will be a long post and may go off in different directions at times but it will have everything I want to say in it along with a lot of good pictures (some from my camera, some from teammates, and some from a co-worker that is a photographer on the side [I bet you will be able to tell those]).

My morning started at 4:30 AM, waking up to get my two teammates that crashed in my living room up and make sure we were ready for a third teammate to pick us up at 5 and drive us over to fed hill. We got to the captain's house in fed hill around 5:30 and started packing up the cars with stuff to decorate our tent. Once everyone got there (around 6) we all drove over to Rash Field and started unloading all our stuff. Let the set-up begin:

Once everyone got there and we checked in, we sat around, ate breakfast and waited until 8:15ish for our seeding race. This was against Baltimore City Police and two other organizations. We were in the first lane that went along the end of all the boat slips on our right. We were winning the whole race until the end when we started veering to the right and headed toward the last slip and right for the corner of a large yacht (the one with Route 66 on it ... the owner moved it forward about 10 feet after our close encounter). After coming within about a foot of the boat and our right side paddlers stopping till we passed it, we crossed the finish line (white buoy) a little under 2 second behind the cops. We were seeded 8th out of 21 teams.

I don't really remember how long until our next race, but we went up against Verizon (seeded 8th) and the Mayors office (seeded 17th) in our first "real" race. This one went much better for us ... although we still lost, we posted the 3rd best time during that round. The mayor's office lost control and started going out into the harbor (hence the 3+ minute time). Since time didn't matter anymore, we moved over into the losers bracket.

Our next race was against a couple schools and we won easily. The next team was over 10 seconds behind us. Our time slipped a little to 1:50.6 but we were still happy with our performance.

We had a long break before our next race and relaxed for a while and did our chant to the Gilligan's island theme (every team had to do a chant and most were a couple minutes long, I think ours lasted about 40 seconds). Our team name/mascot was the falcons so don't ask for an explanation regarding the beaks.

Our next race was the most controversial of the day. We got our rematch against the BCPD and also had Suntrust Bank and another organization in the race. We were pretty pumped and knew we could win. The race starts and we are winning be maybe a third to a quarter boat length to Suntrust with BCPD in third. What we didn't know is a water taxi crossed through the lanes after we had already start and since we were in front we got completely turned by the taxi's wake. We start heading in the direction of the Suntrust (on our left, my side) boat and collide we are rubbing against the boat and I am yelling, "keep paddling!" while i wedge my ore between the boats to push off. Once there is room, both teams start paddling and it sounds live an ancient war with swords clashing. We end up getting back into our lane and now the BCPD team was heading toward us (we later found out they were avoiding the boat in the first lane that was also affected by the water taxi's wake). We come to a dead stop and let them pass then start right back up not letting this deter out desire to win. We catch up to them and start gaining but only manage to get to their halfway point. Suntrust ended up winning the race but the organizers reviewed it and (after 20 minutes of waiting and wanting to hunt down the water taxi) determined that the water taxi essentially ruined the race. They allowed us all to advance (BCPD declined though) as if we had won. I wish I had more pictures of this race, but I was in the boat and my picture taker had left. Notice the angle of the boat on the far left in the picture.

While loading into the boats for the next race we got some dirty looks from Suntrust because they felt we didn't deserve to advance even though (with the exception of the water taxi race) we had consistently better times than them. This was the semi-finals and the winner would move on to the finals. So we went out and did our best ... leading for most of the race (with Suntrust right with us) then we started to the left a little bit than back to the right to compensate ... at the end of the race we came in at a slight angle and had no idea if we won. They announced that they needed to review the video because it was too close to even make an unofficial call. We were still happy about how we did regardless of the outcome.

We all got off the boat and asking everyone in the crowd and anyone volunteering for the event who they thought won and no one could tell us. When they announced it, we were winners by 0.4 seconds. We made the finals ... we celebrated:

While we were getting ready for the finals, we got some of the dirtiest looks from people on the Suntrust team, except one guy who came over and congratulated us and shook our hands and all the stuff that this day was about. The race came and went and we got 4th place running our worst time of the day (with the exception of the taxi race). Maybe fatigue had finally set in after being in the 90+ degree heat for 10 hours and not having a break between our semi-final and the final race. It doesn't matter, we were happy we could help a charity and have a day of fun at the same time. Some more pictures of the day:

This Week

So far this week has been pretty boring overall. The only things that have been interesting to me this week were finishing season 3 of Six Feet Under (Disc 1 of Season 4 should be arriving today) ... and checking out the re-opening of Tiburzi's in Canton last night, causing me to get a little drunk because I talked to the new owner for an hour about how to market the new bar with the square being so close and what specials might attract a crowd (same owners, new management, it's becoming a sports bar [Terps and Ravens] instead of the failed attempt at a nice Italian restaurant). Tonight should be fun though; meeting up with a friend from college that I was in a play with my sophomore year but was never really friends with but ran into each other this past weekend at Noble's in Fed Hill (love those stream of consciousness sentences). Tomorrow I am working from home then heading to Rash Field in Fed Hill to set up for the dragonboat races this weekend. I am looking forward to them except that I have to be up by 4:30 AM on Saturday and then be expected to row for at least 3 races. All I know is I am going to the closest bar once the races are done.

Happy Hour for Charity - Mad River 9/03 7-10

Not that I believe anyone reads this blog (I really write everything for me since I don't remember what I did this morning let alone last week), but I figured since I subscribed to Blogtimore, maybe the headline will reel someone in.

Where: Mad River - Federal Hill, Baltimore
When: Wednesday, September 3rd, 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Why: I am on the Dragonboat team for my work and we are raising money for our charity oganization, Anna's House
What: $10 cover (goes to Anna's House), $1 off specials for domestic beer, house wines and liquor (not top shelf though) and 1 free drink ticket with each paid cover, all tips also go to Anna's House and I will be "guest bartending" from 9:00 - 10:00 PM

I appreciate anyone coming out to support Anna's House, they have been great supporting us during our dragonboat practice the past several weeks.

Dragonboating & Beyond

So every Tuesday (when it isn't storming) a group of people from work go to Canton Marina and practice for our dragonboat race in September. I'm not the most in-shape person (or really in-shape at all) but I enjoy doing this and am pretty strong overall, which helps with the paddling. We have only practiced a few times, but every time we do, things seem to be coming together more and more. This year's race has two categories, competetive and sport. We are in the sport division so it takes some pressure off and we are mostly just out to have fun and do something good for charity. Here are a couple pictures from today:


After practice, a few of us grabbed a couple beers and I headed to Speakeasy again for my daily dose of the Olympics. Caught the end of men's beach vball USA beating Argentina and then watched as local Katie Hoff fell to fourth place as the top 3 all beat the world record in the 200M Freestyle. Saw some women's (but none of these girls seem to be women yet, they all look 12 years old) gymnastics and then watched Phelps become the life-time gold medal record holder.

Today and some weekend pictures

So today was a productive day, I joined the dragonboat team at work and had my first practice and joined the gym in Canton and am planning on going tomorrow. I hope some of the pictures someone took from dragonboat practice get sent to me so I can post them.

Speaking of pictures, here are a couple fro this past weekend semi-camping at my friend Lucas' parents farm.

The tents set up in the yard The rough camping set-up

Yes, that is us playing rockband on a sheet with a projector in the middle of no where, Westminster