Days 456

Here we go... So, day 4. Simple, no real thrills, 90' R in the pm. Nice water, nice weather, headwind a bit, only saw one dolphin. Lol. only one. Either way a nice row, kayakers were everywhere as usual. This was thursday, 2 days before the 2k, nerves were less than as per usual but I'm not sure why, probably just the joy of being in florida. Probably a good thing. I was introduced to the wonders of the Lord of the Rings, we watched the fellowship of the ring and passed out.

Day 4, friday, got up, ate a light breakfast, then lactate test, then better lunch/breakfast, then chillin. Walked down to the beach again, beautiful, spent a good bit of time talking to Matt McGovern, a good buddy and two year roommate from IC. Good to catch up and just shoot the shit for a bit on life and his pursuit of the ever elusive Amy Bates. Passed out early Friday night, don't even know what we did really, just that I ate some food and passed out, kinda nervous, not really feeling the 2k but knowing that you gotta do what you gotta do.

Day 5, saturday, up, weighed myself, good weight, then ate a bit of breakfast, just toast, banana, pb, honey. got ready for the piece, warmed up, pulled. 6:34.5. Sort of a disappointing result. I'm not 100% sure of what it was that made it a disappointing piece, but it was. I perhaps, as per usual started out a bit too hard, though at the time I didn't think so because of my 6k result. I was feeling pretty good until about 1300 to go, where the burn started to take over and things started to slip. Let's just let you imagine from there how it went. You have a pretty good idea. Post 2k, was alot of fun, despite the poor result. Here's how the day unfolded:

Finish 2k - in pain - wtf. bah, w/e... bring the 2 contraband ergs back to the boathouse, listen to Jon tell me how I shouldn't be self depricating, because I had a bad piece, and I should just get over it. Well yeah, I mean, a bad piece is a bad piece, but in the same vein, THIS IS WHAT I DO. This is all I do. I row currently. Unfortunatley, I don't have all the money in the world and I have to work 2 jobs this summer and I would like to do some other things with my life too, but I cant right now. So fuck, I think I can be a little disappointed by a bad 2k. Or at least one that didn't go as I would have hoped/thought. I mean, It's pretty fucking frustrating when I put in 2x the time as some other people and their results are better than mine. Not Jon obviously but people in college etc. UGH.

Anyway, we return, Brian inquires about acquiring some beer. I say that sounds like a fabulous Idea. We return to the house with a 12 pack of Sam's Noble Pils. Yum. We down one and then head to long doggers, a hotdog/fish place just up the road. I have a mahi sandwich and some fried plantains, along with 2 more noble pils. yum. Fried plantains are fucking awesome. Absolutely delicious. After we return, we head to the beach, 1 beer in cup, one in back pocket. We see Jon drive by w/ Becca and head exactally where we're headed. We arrive at the beach, we're cracking our beers near the steps to the entrance and brian goes: "cop cop cop cop" we quickly walk up the step and see that he was simply pulling someone over for a traffic violation... phew. then since he was feeling lucky, brian takes a piss right there lol.

we turn the opposite direction and continue our man-date toward the south. We shoot the shit about life and rowing etc... and we drink our nobles and we turn around. We see crazy looking seagulls:
The black spots on top of their heads were what made them kinda crazy lookin. We also saw two chick doing intervals down the beach bare foot, looked like fun, we were a little too inebriated to race them, and to be honest, they looked a little scared of us haha. After turning around, I couldn't resist to dip my feet in the water, so nice, thanks for that gene mom. haha. we strolled back down the beach and I had brian take this pic of me:
He must have hit the button right as my jeans were getting soaked haha. Post beach excursion, we stop off at a CVS which is literally right across the street from the beach, kind of an interesting place for a cvs, and we enter the candy motherlode. I grab some twizzlers, a cadbury caramel egg, and two russell stover eggs, one maple cream, the other coconut cream, not sure if they'll be good. haven't tried them yet. I ate the twizzlers on the way back.

Earlier, when we were grabbing the beer, we also picked up the 2nd lord of the rings: the two towers. I made coffee, we drank more beer and watched this long but awesome flick. After that (around 6pm) I was pretty tapped out. My drinking (brian had more staying power) subsided and I began the ritual chugging of water. Today we were supposed to go surfing, not sure that's gonna happen as it's already 9:30 and Jon is just eating breakfast w/ Becca and we've gotta get a row in today. So who knows. Trying to go with the flow. need to get outside though. It's too nice to just hang around all day waiting to row. I'll go insane. Perhaps a run, in 30'ish and then row later, who knows... more to come soon.

flo-rida day 2/3

well. let me just say, that i found a little bit of elation about 5 seconds ago when I decided to take a jog from Jon's house to the beach. It literally took about 11 min from my feet to step out of jon's door and hit the gorgeous sand of satellite beach...

carriage rd.

our humble abode

the end of desoto pkwy

looking north

looking south

africa?

petes feets

see ya later, awesome

Well, that was just this morning! here's some of our previous endeavors:

Yesterday, all that was on the plan was to lift, so we made our way down to "our club" - literally the name of the gym we used; which was about a 10' drive from jon's. This place was nice, and did the job fine, however it was quite possibly the worst part of my trip fiscally. I need to use this place a total of 3 times; yesterday was the first, and each time it costs $10. WTF. I spoke with the front office about his and they said I could get a weekly membership, for 30 dollars, or a month for 45. They didn't really understand how that didn't help me at all. I may just try to gain access with my receipt from yesterday for our next lift.

Anywho. lifted weights we did. after we came home, ate some lunch, chilled, and round 4 headed to the boathouse to help the juniors w/ practice. None of us really wore enough clothes for the launch... The kids forgot to put the plug in the launch... Vanessa (guys varsity coach) got stuck in traffic... yep, this was a junior rowing program. lol. Either way it was fun being in the launch and I told Vanessa a couple of things that I noticed about her kids and she had them do a drill I recommended. After about an hour of drilling, we brought the kids back in and Brian, Jon and I took off; We were COLD. Kind of an odd thing for florida, though apparently not in 2010.

We came home, ate dinner, went to walmart to buy a dvd player, ended up getting mms, and brian rented startrek. We ate mms and watched, and passed out.

This am, got up, made oatmeal w/ banana, and strawberries (which are awesome&cheap here) and then I decided to go for the run, mentioned above. Rowing at 4... catch ya on the flip.

floriday day 1

so, arrive in fla, after leaving bmore@ 7am. Got to the house round 11am, hit up publix for one of their AWESOME subs, yum, then on to the boathouse for a row. I was a little skeptical about this in the beginning, the wind was blowing. BLOWING. It was about a 20 some odd mph wind out of the south with gusts up in the 30's... fucking crazy.

We get to the boathouse, and I'm thinking, there's no way. no fucking way. but, after surviving the 7 or so min. that it takes to get from the boathouse to the inlet off of the banana river, there was totally rowable water. Unbelievable. A 6k stretch about the width of the inlet in ithaca, perhaps a bit less because of the boats parked on both sides, but protected like woah. Even better about this inlet is that its got a designation as a manatee zone, so that means idle speed - no wake. I.e. no pain in the ass motorboaters, going too fast. lol.

This place is also apparently a training spot for international kayak teams, crazy, they move pretty quick, and! there's 4 man kayaks, which i've never seen, kinda nuts. i got caught between two of those, and they throw a wake. lol. probably comparable to the wake of an 8. nuts.

So despite the 40 or so kayaks on the river, there was plenty of water to get the distance in, nice. Though the wind was a challenge, after the first few strokes I was remembering why I row. I also realized that aside from the 2k erg test this saturday and the other tests/bad weather days we may have, I'm for the most part done w/ the ergo for the winter! huzah. Nice. Time to actually do what we love to do...

Also, I saw at least 5 dolphins during my row :). Not sure if it was 5 different dolphins, but it was 5 different sightings, and also, I saw a ton of really cool pelicans with sweet yellow gullets. cool.

ttfn, pics and stuff to come soon hopefully. i do have one from the plane from yesterday am. pretty cool sun, over md/va i'm assuming.

b-more-skis

So, after a couple of days at home, nice... good to be home for sure, headed down to the b-more to see scald. Ended up jetting out earlier than usual which was really nice. I was origionally going to leave thursday afternoon but ended up leaving wednesday night. This is because, with ald and I's luck a jigundo storm was threatening to delay or cancel my bus. So, wednesday ended up becoming a run a round day where I got all the things done that I needed to before leaving home and I was able to catch the bolt bus early. Score.

It was so nice to finally finally finally - after two months see aldi. so nice. She even picked me up from the bus and dealt with the fact that I needed to get up a 5 am to erg, lol. That first morning after I had gotten done ergin was a quintessentially pete morning. My essence if you will. I got to do all the things i love to do. Or. Perhaps it was the thing I love to do. Lol. After scald had to go off to work, which was lame, but what can ya do.... I got in the gret, who i've missed very much, and drove to whole foods :). There I grabbed a coffee, and in what I can most closely relate to strolling an outdoor European market I leisurely wandered the isles of the harbor east whole foods. Love doing this. There's alot of good stuff there, and though it IS a super market, it feels like a shade better than the huge conglomerate evil, lol. I mean organic may not necessarily be better by a ton, but it's better by a little at least. Got some yum stuff, there, oranges, apples, choco milk, bananas, natural pb, etc, yum! also broccolini, and some sweet (though salty in flavour) pecorino romano, and perhaps my fave pasta shape, orrichiette. And, a lb of fresh spinach. Needles to say we made an awesome dinner that night. enough about the food lol.

A couple of highlights:
The walters art museum, a sweet little-ish (by nyc standards) art museum that had some sweet stuff, like a room with armour, an awesome exhibit on japanese enamel. We were seriously hung over after seeing my buddy tom bellu the night before, but we managed to work our way through about 50% of the museum. We'll save the rest for another time.

I'd also say that seeing tom was a highlight, haven't seen him for a number of monthes, he's doing well I'd say, even if he's drinking ALOT.

Bowling... always a good time.

PHO. period. PHO.

Bmore is a seriously interesting city, neat mix of people from all over. See you soon.