Well the trip to Michigan ended up being pretty unproductive 😛
We left from the boathouse Friday around 4pm and drove about an hour to Janesville for some food. We stopped at an all-you-can eat place and completely destroyed the place within an hour. After that we drove for another 4 hours or so through Chicago and around the base of Lake Michigan stopping in Benton Harbor for the night. In the morning we went to a McDonalds that was across from the parking lot from us. The employees basically freaked out once we (60 people) had packed in and were standing in line – it took over 40 minutes to complete all of our orders. It took about 3 hours of driving after breakfast to get to Wyandotte and once we got there, we unloaded the trailer, rigged the boats and went out and practiced for about an hour…
The body of water we were rowing on connected Lake Erie to some inland lake. The water itself on Saturday was calm and was a very strange creamy green color. Rowing up the river was a strange experience as Wyandote is a city in transition. We launched from a rowing club in the middle of a very nice city park, but on either side of the park was an abandoned steel mill and a BASF chemical plant. On the other side of the river, a landfill had been converted into a large park and along the bank were multi-million dollar homes with views of the nasty steel mill. It was all very strange. After practice, we ate at another all-you-can eat place and headed to our hotel. Overnight very strong storms rolled in and by the time morning came, winds were at 35mph. This same storm system caused the tornadoes in Indiana and Kentucky. Small craft warnings were posted and our races were cancelled. Soon after hearing this, we packed up and left for Madison (about 8 hours of driving + stops) around 10am and arrived at about 8pm.
This was the last of our fall competitive season. Now it’s 5 months of indoor workouts and running 🙁