Commuting

It's been a fairly busy week for me and I'm adjusting to the commute between where I currently live and Salem. It's not a permanent commute and there are plenty of back roads for me to take so there's little to complain about other than watching the gas tank run dry faster than I'd like it to. This week has been a bit of a blur so a quick rundown for now and once things slow down a bit then I can start recalling days. Hey, when you get old things go quickly.

I picked up my keys this week and bought a new lanyard since I neglected to keep the one I was using at Lake Oswego. I also decided that since my original Willamette sweater is barely passing as a sweater I upgraded to something new and red along with a new t-shirt that feels more like an Abercrombie sized shirt - much smaller than the size indicated - and I'm debating whether I want to keep it or see how slimmed down this new diet gets me before making a judgement call. Call it motivation if you will.

We loaded up 3/4 of the boat house the other day and towed all of the equipment over to the fall boat storage area. With the way the river has changed it's course we cannot row out of the boat house so we have to travel down the road about 5 minutes to the Salem Yacht Club and use their launching facilities. It's a pretty decent setup and what it lacks in terms of buildings it makes up for in terms of bathrooms and security and space. I'm sure Sonja and Chris can recall the "exciting" trip to the old portapotty in the boat house parking lot, going between holding it or braving the cold, rain, sketchy nature - plus massive spiders. We have ergs and space to run a good core workout and a long boat ramp that is just begging for flipping tires.

Paperwork has been in the works and it looks as though things will get cleared up here fairly quickly. W2s, compliance, etc. are the name of the game along with a new Willamette e-mail address - makes me feel important - an ID card and I'm going to opt for the parking pass. It was suggested that Bush park is a good place to park for free but given Oregon's propensity to rain cats and dogs for months on end, trekking to and from there or even biking it sounds fun in theory, poor in practice.

Today we'll unload the trailer and rig the boats. The equipment is slowly getting into better shape. The varsity squads just got new boats, a K4 for the men and a new Hypercarbon 8 for the women. The Bill, Bev, La Fram, Boylin (sp) and Hudson are still alive and kicking and in fact the Hudson and Bill were just refurbished so they are quite pretty. I was surprised to see the Cavanaugh (sp) and Spencer still around but the Spence was just refurbished as well. I was also surprised to find that the women row both the Ochaco and the MOAB since last time I was around the MOAB was the men's boat. It doesn't look quite as big as it used to though. And of course there is the men's real Hudson, the Squirrel O'Reilly. I don't know where the name came from and it's been a pain with me referring to the old Hudson as the Hudson and all the athletes and Ryan thinking I mean the Squirrel. Lots of bold in this paragraph.

The oars could use some help. The old vortex edge blades are starting to come apart but seeing as how those were new about 8 years ago it's understandable. They've re-taped some of the oars but I was glad to see the Germans are alive and kicking - a set of our oars have German flags on them, thus Germans. Ryan has some plans to get or build a couple of dock rowers and the old projection TV has been replaced with a new flat screen and there seems to be more room in the boat house in general.

And of course, the "drug boat" is still sunk just off the end of the dock. I don't know why I thought that might have been taken care of. Some things never change though some things really should.