We went to a regatta.

Crew parents tend to be heavily involved. There are a lot of kids* on Duchess's team, and the regattas involve a lot of events and last all day for multiple days, and everybody needs to be fed and organized, and the parents do a lot of that. And they go to regattas, even the ones in Canada or California. We do not. So this weekend, when Duchess had a regatta locally, we attended one day. A short day. And we left early, and Duchess got a ride back to the boathouse with a friend. But we were there! We ALL got up at 5am, even Skipper, who was fairly pissed off about the whole thing, and schlepped to the lake.


















Duchess had two races back to back,which meant that she had to row out to the start, race 2 kilometers, row back to the beach, wait while four girls got out and four other girls got in, and then row right back out to the start.

A better parent than me was out in a launch, and so we have these photos.

Race #1

Race #2

Race #2, at the end... look at that face.

Actually, look at all their faces. As far as I understand, the ENTIRE POINT of this sport is to fill your WHOLE BODY with lactic acid and then row really hard for five more minutes. The appeal of this is lost on me. I will go the long way round to avoid lactic acid. However, the combination of intense physical effort, teamwork, AND spending the whole day messing around with your teammates is apparently compelling for Duchess. So there are more regattas in our future.



*A hundred? Five hundred? I don't know. They feel like an army of giants.