Guest Writer - Tom
I took a Lyft to the hotel that I was sharing with Chris, my pairs partner. He drove up on Tuesday and Wednesday and as luck would have it we arrived at the hotel within five minutes of each other.
After checking in, we went to lunch at red Robin‘s and then we went out to the venue to check out parking and see if we could help out unloading the boats. It was hot and sunny. We did quite a bit of work, unloading the boats, and putting a few rigs on. When we were done, we headed back to the hotel and stopped at a Sheetz for sub sandwiches.
We watched the first episode of the Teddy Roosevelt documentary on Netflix and called it a day.
Thursday morning, it was gray outside, which was promising. The heat of the previous day appeared as if it wouldn’t affect the races in the morning. But oh that gray was not overcast but rather smoke from Canadian and Minnesota fires. We drove to the venue, which was closed! Updates were scheduled for 11 o’clock. They came and the entire day was cancelled. More updates were scheduled for 5 o’clock, and we finished watching Teddy Roosevelt. We picked up some friends and then watched the Odyssey at an IMAX.
It is a three hour movie which brought us up to dinner time. We went to a little Mediterranean deli, ordered our food, ate it, and then five of us (Brendan, Jasbir, Edwin, Chris, and I) just sat around talking for about an hour or more. Finally around 8 o’clock we dropped off one of the guys at his hotel, and Chris and I went back to ours. We watched an episode of Abraham Lincoln on Netflix and called it a day.
Friday morning greeted us with a confusing message from US rowing saying that the venue would be closed on Friday and they would give us an update on at noon. We couldn’t figure out if that meant that perhaps they would have some rowing on Friday or Friday was shut down entirely. So we ate breakfast and went back to the room and I read a book that I had just checked out from the library on Kindle. We watched some more Abe Lincoln, and then we went for a workout; Chris on weights, me in a pool swimming “lapettes.”
After that, we picked up Brendan, Jasbir, and Edwin again and we went to a well-known deli Zingerman’s. That took a while because it was very crowded. I had a salmon and cream cheese bagel, and after that we went to the University of Michigan’s natural history Museum. Edwin knows quite a bit about natural history and it was a pretty interesting walk with his commentary. We came back by way of the art show that was set up outside on campus; tent after tent after tents, selling their wears.
They dropped me at my hotel where I walked to a nearby Subway for my dinner, walked back to the hotel, and got ready for bed. They all went to the team’s pizza party, which I really didn’t feel up to. I wanted to make sure I get as much sleep as possible and since the pizza party did not start until 7 o’clock, and I didn’t know if I were to race early on Saturday, I decided I would just skip that one.
Saturday the air was relatively clear and after breakfast, we went down to the venue. I had brought a book, but I just enjoyed sitting around, listening to other people talk.
Chris’s race was earlier than mine and he did pretty well with his quad. I tried to make myself useful by carrying oras and shoes for other TRC boats.
Finally, it was my turn to get into a 4+. The wind was picking up ominously. So fearing being late and rushing, we got on the water fairly early and that turned out to be something of a mistake. The wind was making it difficult for boats to get into their starting gates, delays resulted, and there were a lot of boats waiting for their events in a limited space with the wind picking up. We were getting in each other’s way. We also had to turn around to go away from the starting line to make room for the event proceeding ours. To make a long story short, a lot of water washed over the gunwales. Of note: one single could not get to his starting gate and eventually gave up. A pair swamped and I heard that even an eight swamped. I gave my hearing aids to my coxswain for safekeeping, thinking that I was quite likely going to go for a swim myself.
Another bad thing is that we had to wait so long. I had left my hat behind fearing that it would be blown away anyway. I did not use sunscreen because I thought I would be out there for only about 10 or 15 minutes. It turned out to be more like 45 or 50 and I did get something of a sunburn on my nose.
The race itself was somewhat strange. We had a tail wind, but we, or at least I, could not row very hard. I don’t think our time was that bad, but that was more due to the tailwind than anything else.
This was my first race, using a stroke coach and I could count down the meters. Despite everything we actually got off to a fairly smooth start, but we did have a few minor crabs along the way nevertheless we really rowed past all of the boats, except for a younger category and so we took gold for our age group. Altogether, it was strange but satisfying. Perhaps it was our event or the one after us that was the last one of the day before racing was suspended because of the wind. Chris took me back to the hotel where he showered and I readied myself for tomorrow.
On Sunday, I got up and had breakfast with Chris, who went down to the venue. I stayed behind, watching more of the Abraham Lincoln documenatary, and waited for Elizabeth to pick me up. We went to her church where her husband, Eugene and her daughter Aralyn joined us. Then to breakfast at, I believe, the same place Tran and I ate at last year. I had pirogis and a Reuben sandwich. We swung by their house, and I changed into my racing outfit.
Elizabeth took me down to the venue where I sat around waiting for my 4:15 race. A 3:45 race of mine had been canceled because one of the guys, Craig, had decided to go home early. John was in our boat. Had a very tight turnaround from his previous race; I think his prior event started at 3:35.
The race did not go very well, we hit a buoy and crabbed to a complete stop. We were coming on strong at the end, but we ran out of race and got what I considered a disappointing third place.
We hung around quite a bit, even though we were done racing. We helped to derig the boats and get them up on the trailers. We actually derigged the boat that we had to rerig so that Jasbir could race his final event.
There was a lot of junk food available, including Krispy Kreme. I didn’t really need dinner because I’ve had so much stuff while waiting around and rigging the boats.
Chris, Brendan, Edwin and I went out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Edwin was very disappointed in the whole event. Chris and I much less so. I kept most of my entrée in a take-home.
Chris took me to the airport at, leaving at about 4:45 AM, getting to the airport at about 5:10, for my 9:00 flight. That was fine. I ate the rest of my dinner from the previous night and then went through security. Everything was smooth. Trân picked me up and with Dana being home, she let her mother sleep and came alone. We ate at Lee’s on the way home.
I had higher hopes for this one. I didn’t know if we’d do well or not, but I was in two 2-man events, and both got cancelled. I wanted to do those to be a bigger part of an event than I was in the 4-man events. Nationals 2027 is a long way off, but I don’t have the same excitement about 2027 that I did for the 2026 event immediately after the 2025 event. We’ll see.
Smoky Day!
Gold Medal Team: Thomas, Mark Borchelt, Kaavya, John Winstead, Mike Andersonn
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