Back from Oak Ridge, TN
Here I am! Safe in my dorm room in Boston, Massachusetts, after surviving the flight on a Dash 8~100; that may sound fancier than your B 747-400, but in reality it was a two propeller plane with nine rows that sat 37 people. To make it even funnier, the last row was like the last row of a car–stretching from window to window with a middle seat that looks down the whole aisle.
When we arrived in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, it was cold and raining. The next day it started snowing, and for the next few days the temperatures were below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. I had checked ahead of time and had seen that the weather was going to be a little chilly, some people did not and found themselves wearing the same NikeFit shirt, long sleeved shirt, and sweatshirt every day during the beginning of the week. It’s a good thing that our hotel provided us with laundry machines that were free to use–unlike the men’s team hotel, which had no laundry services available (yeah, gross huh?). This brings me to my first point, when you are traveling to somewhere where you know you will be outside, check the weather!
Some great sites are weatherunderground.com or weather.com. If you live in the Boston Area, I would highly recommend using weatherunderground.com because its local weather coverage is much more accurate–seeing as though its base is apparently located at MIT in Cambridge, MA.
Being prepared for the outdoors is the most important thing you can do. Some of the girls on my team learned that the hard way. Some who were shivering on the boats had to be taken off because they were affecting the way that the boat was set, or balanced in other words, and they were not being effective at all.
Speaking of being warm while rowing, if you are a rower and you’ve been wondering how to keep your hands from freezing while they are touching the oars and being sliced through the icy winds, try out these things called pogies. Pogies are like mittens for your hands that allow you to still grasp on to the oars!
