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.