Oh GRR

To start with: the mistake is mine.

But.

When I got to the motel on the outskirts of Rochester, the person at the desk couldn't find information about my reservation. I eventually had to shrug my shoulders and figure I hadn't clicked all the way through when making the reservation, so unlike mallorys_camera I sucked it up and paid the higher room rate for the brevet weekend.

I have a feature where my credit union sends me an email to notify me any time I engage in a large financial transaction. I got such a message this morning, which seemed funny, because by now this is a good week after my stay.

You can probably guess, dear reader, that I DID put in the reservation, but for the incorrect weekend. It of course comes with extensive verbiage informing me that there will be no refunds, and whatnot.

But I have to ask: do the people working at the desk have the ability to check ahead and see if this kind of mistake had been made?

Once I knew to look for it, I was able to find the confirmation message. I believe when I've done the equivalent with a car rental place for a prepaid reservation, they charged me immediately. Why, oh universe, do things work differently for motel reservations? Why???? The car reservation place made good on things, overall, including with reminder messages ahead of my rental. So I'll still patronize them.

This is why I prefer to camp.

Of course, businesses don't care that I hate spending time on the phone with customer service. It's part of their business model, after all. They're in cahoots with the internet service provider that has a local monopoly and doubled my rates in a year (and yes, I DO need to call them).

All that said and done, in this case I will actually remember and make a point to not patronize this particular motel chain again.

Boats on my mind [rowing]

Saturday's regatta was a wonderful day, in expected and unexpected ways. I expected it to be wonderful because we have a fantastic team.

Team photo at the end:


But along with that, we were fortunate to enjoy generally good weather and some solid racing, although there were some bittersweet elements because two teammates wound up unable to join us at the last minute due to an injury and health problems.

I packed light for this race:


No EZ-up tent, just two chairs, a folding table, some food, and a change or two of clothing. It was my teammate K who brought along the campstove and French press to ensure we had plentiful coffee and tea for the day.



This regatta is primarily a Masters regatta. What makes that great is there are enough people at the regatta of all ages that we have a rare opportunity to race primarily against other boats in the same age group. For many other regattas, in order to get in any racing at all we have to work under age handicaps. The trouble is that age handicaps are typically applied after the race is over; the boats all start off together, and then the older you are, the more time gets subtracted off your finish time. Even this would be okay, except that by now there's pretty compelling evidence to suggest that the age handicapping formula used in the USA is overly generous towards older rowers. The older Masters rowers don't seem to mind this, but it can create a discouraging barrier to the sport for younger Masters rowers.

For example, by outward appearances, our Men's Masters 4x had a fantastic race and won handily, by 16.9 seconds over a 1000-m distance (total time 4:18.8). However, with an average age of 41, up against boats with average ages of 59 and 62, they came in third, because the 59-year-old boat got a 20.5 second handicap and the 62-year-old boat got a 24.5 second handicap. Let me tell you, it's pretty much impossible to estimate those kinds of distances and times while out racing on the racecourse. In contrast, for my Womens Masters 2x a 10-year age differential meant only an 8.6-second handicap gap (age ranges 42-52). Not great, but not too terrible, and at least it's a little easier to estimate that kind of timeframe.

Personally I'd prefer if more Masters races worked with a "reverse" handicap, where boats have a delay at the starting line in proportion to the handicap, and the boat crossing the finish line first is the winner. But this is very difficult to orchestrate without stakeboats at the starting line that can hold boats in alignment for 30-plus seconds; this particular regatta instead had a floating start. And we also had some gusting headwinds, to keep things interesting. Headwinds and crosswinds can mean not only staying in alignment, but being able to hold a point for when it's time to start.

In any case, since there were so many more race categories, our races were spread out across the entire day instead of just compressed into the morning, as at the last regatta. That meant we had time to eat, socialize, and even take naps.



Good stuff.

The forecast had originally been for rainy weather, with afternoon thunderstorms. As it turned out, the rain held off until around 3 pm, when we were out on the water preparing for a Women's 4x race. At that point, there was just enough rainfall to feel refreshing, with a tiny bit of hail mixed in. After we finished our race, there was a single flash of lightning and a thunderclap. Time to get off the water, stat! The regatta officials sent off the next race down the course (fastest way to get boats out off the water, heh), then shut down racing as one of our routine precautionary measures. But that was all that the micro-storm delivered (if it can even be called that!), so racing was able to resume shortly thereafter and everyone had a chance to compete. Last year, in contrast, the regatta wound up being canceled after about 1.5 hours of racing because of high winds. So we'll take what we can get!

My teammate A and I also had a particularly exciting race in the Women's Masters 2x. We got off the start quickly and pulled ahead by about a boatlength in the first 200 meters. Between 200-300 meters, however, Lane 3 next to us (we were Lane 4) crawled up on us and got out about 2 seats ahead of us. Oof, it was going to be a fight! I don't exactly remember what A uttered at that point, but whatever she said, we then proceeded to get into our "race gear" and managed to walk back up on Lane 3. By the halfway point at 500m, we were about a boat length ahead of them, and we managed to maintain that gap for the remainder of the race. It can take a lot for a crew to make that kind of comeback, so it was a satisfying win.



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Meanwhile, totally unrelated to our regatta, a race known as the Seventy48 happened not too long ago, the first weekend of June. I've had my eye on this race for a couple of years, I think ever since learning about it from some of my Berkeley rowing/paddling teammates. As the name implies, it involves human-powered water transport traversing the 70-mile distance from Tacoma, WA to Port Townsend, with an overall time limit of 48 hours. All kinds of watercraft attempt it.

I felt a strange sense of worlds colliding this year when two of the characters from a wooden sailing yacht restoration channel that S and I have been following posted photos indicating they were planning to attempt the race. It was an especially fun episode to watch, particularly because I haven't gotten to see video footage of the mass start before, and as mentioned, there are some very creative watercraft that participate. In addition, the race has an evening start and continues through the night, so there's a certain similarity to a certain long-distance French bike ride as well, except with water navigation involved.

I don't yet know when I'll go out to make an attempt at the Seventy48. It's possible I might try for it next year. For now I really do need to just focus on the things right in front of me. When it comes to these sorts of larger adventures, one must pace oneself and be patient.