Ironically, we traveled to Knoxville, while the University of Tennessee (located in Knoxville) sent their football team to Tuscaloosa to play the Crimson Tide in a long-standing SEC “grudge match.” The Crimson Tide won 41-17 in a surprising blowout against the Volunteers, and Alabama Crew brought back a bronze in the men's varsity four (MV4+), thoroughly stomping both fours Tennessee fielded. Even the trailer-driving went well! My closest call was leaving the race course, where I had a three-inch margin of error from the stern of the Engineer to a tall street sign that was looking to take a bite out of the carbon fiber hull. Jason jumped out to keep me notified of my clearance, and I just squeaked through that one. :-) Aside from that, the drive in both directions went very well; I switched with Drew at that same Cracker Barrel in Fort Payne, because I was starting to droop pretty seriously. After we got back in the truck, having finished dinner, I laid down on the bench seat in the back, and was sound asleep before we had been on the road 20 minutes. Anyway though, back to the race itself. We brought the novice eight up for their first race of the season (MN8+), as well as our MV4+, MV8+, and the double (MV2x).
The double was our club's first event of the day, and as we had not arrived until 11 o'clock the previous night, we had not rigged up any of the boats. Drew, Alex, and I left the hotel around seven o'clock Saturday morning, though, and so we were the first ones out to the staging area in the morning. As more hands arrived, we unloaded the boats and began rigging them up for the day's events. Calvin and Bryan prepared the Two Fast, our double, for their race, although the stabilizing fin was still curing from being attached a couple days prior. The weather had been damp and rainy, so the silicon had not dried all that well, but they decided to take a shot at it, only to have the fin fall off halfway up the race course. They had to scratch (drop out) the race and row their windy way back. Next up was my primary boat, the MV4+.
We boated out at 10:50 for our 11:50 race time, and spent the 5000m warming up, rowing, and getting our first look at the course. Amy, our coxswain for the race, had never coxed in a race before, and it was only Kyle's second race total, so of the five people in the boat, we had a total novice (Amy), a novice rowing varsity with one head race under his belt (Kyle), a new varsity rower with one year of collegiate experience (myself), a new varsity rower with several years of junior and one year of collegiate rowing (Person), and at stroke, a third-year collegiate rower (Drew). Quite the crowd, if you deign to ask me. However, that proved to be an explosive combination, as we took off through the chute with a strong and smooth start, quickly catching the boat directly ahead of us (Tennessee), and leaving the boats directly behind us (Auburn and Georgia Tech). We passed Tennessee by the time we were 2000m into the race, and we quickly opened up water between us, even through a gusty headwind. An island that marked the approximate halfway point came and went, and we continued to push through until we heard our exuberant cheer from the bank: “Row Tide! Row Tide! Row Tide!” Amy called us up into a couple Power 10s, and we cruised across the finish line at 18:44. After we docked and carried the boat back to the slings, Jason said that UT Chattanooga, Virginia Tech, Oak Ridge, and us all looked solid and fairly close, so it was going to be a four-way battle for three spots. However, Oak Ridge did not place quite as well as Jason had predicted, and we beat out Georgia Tech for third place, with UTC and Virginia Tech ahead of us by 11 and eight seconds, respectively.
With the four done for the day, I started derigging it, and Jarrod pitched in to pull off the riggers before he donned his uni for our upcoming race in the eight. The novices boated out for their 1:50 race, and we hung out in the shade for a while, resting and eating until it was time for the MN8+ event. Clambering down a rocky section of the riverbank, we had a good vantage point to watch the race, and we perched there in the bright sun and waited for our red-clad crew to pass. As they came into view and pulled past us, we urged them on with a hearty “Row Tide!” or three. They placed ninth in their event, and looked fairly good while doing it, too.
As often happens, the MV8+ (or in this case, the champ eight event, the difference being the former is limited to collegiate entries medaling, and the latter is an open division, meaning anyone can compete and medal) was nearly the last event of the day, and so along with Alex, Jarrod, Austin, Calvin, and Bryan, Drew, Person, and I boated out for a second look at the race course. I rowed 10,000m on port in the four, and subsequently warmed up and raced an additional 10,000m on starboard in the eight. Even at practice, it is a daily surprise to find out which side I am rowing; it makes me stay on top of things, because I cannot get comfortable and zone out in any one seat or on any one side, because who knows if that is where I will be come the next day! Anyway, this time we were behind another Tennessee boat and in front of Georgia Tech, the last boat in the event. We did not pass anyone, but neither were we passed; however, we gained water on Tech (moved ahead of them) and Tennessee (pulled closer to them). That was only good enough for fourth place, behind Oak Ridge, a junior rowing club that came out and kicked butt and took names on the day. Again, it was a champ race, so the boat's placement counted, and it whipped all of the collegiate boats in the even pretty badly. Next in line was Tennessee (who pulled out a surprising low-17 performance, nearly 50 seconds ahead of us, whereas last week they bested our time by a mere eight seconds), and they were followed by UTC, who consistently beats us by a handful of seconds in each event. The race, aside from giving me a pretty new blister on the inside of my right hand's ring finger, was a fairly good one, although we kept getting blown over at times by the crosswind.
The Head of the Tennessee was a solid race, and it showed significant improvement over last weekend's race in Chattanooga. In two weeks we will be back in Chattanooga for the Head of the Hooch, so we will see what kind of improvement we can muster over two weeks of practice and workouts.

This weekend is the Head of the Tennessee--or rather, tomorrow is the Head of the Tennessee--regatta, and we are leaving this afternoon. For the first time, I am going to be doing the bulk of the driving with the trailer; Jason wants one of the younger guys (me, at this point) to learn the nuances of driving 60' boats strapped onto a 45' trailer in towns, traffic, and thoroughfares. Up until now, I have only driven the trailer once: on the way back from the John Hunter Regatta in the spring, and that was not even from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where the regatta was held, but rather from Fort Payne, Alabama, where we stopped to eat dinner at Cracker Barrel on the way back. Knoxville, the site of this weekend's race, is a good five-and-a-half hour drive, and I have been told the final approach to the staging area is through a gnarly residential area with windy, narrow streets. We shall see how that goes...

Stephanie--along with two of our other friends on campus, Keri and Lauren Lee--turn 20 today!

Hey everyone, next weekend I am going up to Birmingham with the crew team to participate in the AHA's Heart Walk--except with a twist: we are bringing up ergs and making it an ergathon and joint fundraiser for both the AHA and Alabama Crew. I would really appreciate any sort of small donation if you find yourself so compelled. Just visit my page to participate. Thanks for taking a look! :-)

This morning at crew, the sky was seriously contemplating letting loose a pretty serious rain storm, but thankfully it changed its mind after a few threatening sprinkles.
Fast forward eight hours. I walked Stephanie to her Blount class in Toumey at two o'clock, and was heading back to the Ferg to meet up with a Bible study group from UCM, and again, steady, fast, yet light sprinkles moistened the sidewalks and windshields of cars. I hoped that things would dry out in the next hour, so I could get back to Riverside fairly dry and swap stuff to go meet up with Person to row our afternoon workout at the Aquatic Center. Well, I was not watching the windows as we were talking and discussing, but after the closing prayer, I glanced out the large corner window, and sheets of rain greeted me. I walked outside to survey the situation, and with a wry comment (Well, you get wet to a certain point and then you don't get any wetter), I stepped out into the deluge. The main Ferg parking lot for residential and faculty/staff parking was flooded pretty badly, the drainage plan for such torrents is pretty bad. There was a lane's worth of water, two to three inches deep, the entire length of the lot, making it a soggy option to effectively take a straight line to the pedestrian bridge to my dorm. I made it back to my room with minimal wetness, and as I reached my door, so did Stevo, looking rather much more bedraggled than I, having traveled a significantly longer distance in the rain. By the time I got back outside with my water bottles and workout journal, the rain had subsided, leaving only large puddles in its passing.
Thankfully, the rain did not cause intramural cancellations for the evening, so the SuperFriends' final game of the season still went down earlier tonight at eight o'clock. We faced off against The Nations, the first place and undefeated team in our bracket. For the majority of the first half, although we did not have any substitutes, we dominated the field. I was playing defense, and I made several cutting runs deep into their defensive third to rip off some shots. Finally, all that firing paid off as I slipped a left-footer through some heavy traffic and into the far side netting of the goal. I was fairly ecstatic. :-D Seriously though, I had been hunting for a goal in all of the last three games, and especially in the most recent face-off, I was incredibly close so many times, only to completely shank the shot. So that, combined with the fact that I had really been working for that goal for several minutes, resulted in a joyous whoop and yell of excitement. Sadly, the rest of the game did not turn out nearly so well. We kept that one-point lead through the first half, but in the second half, they managed to work the ball down our right sideline, and one of their girls poked one in past our goalkeeper. However, unlike in normal soccer, that did not merely tie the score, it gave them a one-point lead, because with the intramural rules here at UA, since men and women are equal, when men score a goal it is worth one point, and when women score, it is worth two. Sure, sounds fair to me--not. Anyway, Stevo graced the netting with a second goal for us to tie up the game, but then they got a final fluke goal (those seem to be our Achilles' Heel) to seal our fate of not advancing to the playoffs. Still, it was a very intense game, and I played hard. At one point, I was working the ball down the sideline out of our backfield, and one of their guys was right on me; I was faster than him, so he was a half-step or so behind me, but he kept grabbing at me and holding my arm to keep me back, and I got fed up with his antics, so I yelled, “Get off of me,” at him as I continued to dribble. I never shy away from a solid, physically played game, but I abhor those kind of underhanded tactics, so I was “hopping mad” there for a bit. I shook it off though, and got back into the game, but grr, that irked me, for sure!
At the close of the game, SuperFriends planned to reconvene in the spring semester for indoor, where hopefully our success will be better. Then Brendan, Matt Loop, Keri, Erin, Stephanie, and I went to Cold Stone for some celebratory ice cream. :-)

Tonight at Campus View, we sang a song that struck a chord with me. As “every” church-going Christian knows, Jesus is the beloved Son of God; however, hearing that over and over can cause the reference to take on a bland air, regardless of the fact that God declared to him, “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” Too often we pass right over that reference: “Big deal, a father is affirming his son as he should.” But it is so much more--Jesus is so much more. Here are the lines from the song: “High and lifted up / Jesus Son of God / The Darling of Heaven crucified / Worthy is the Lamb.” Who is your darling? If anyone, it is a person very close to you, whom you care about deeply. Darling is defined as “1. a person very dear to another; one dearly loved.... 5. favorite; cherished.” I call Stephanie darling, and sending her to a fallen, corrupt planet to eventually be brutally tortured and killed is the last thing on my mind, and yet that is what God sacrificially did for me, for us. That is worth a pause for thought.

Thank you for the cross Lord
Thank you for the price You paid
Bearing all my sin and shame
In love You came
And gave amazing grace

Thank you for this love Lord
Thank you for the nail pierced hands
Washed me in Your cleansing flow
Now all I know
Your forgiveness and embrace

Worthy is the Lamb
Seated on the throne
Crown You now with many crown
You reign victorious
High and lifted up
Jesus Son of God
The Darling of Heaven crucified
Worthy is the Lamb
Worthy is the Lamb
~Worthy is the Lamb - Hillsong

What does it mean to be in the world, but not of the world?

Q. Would you rather row two or three 2000m races within a few hours of each other, races at a very high pace and pressure, or two 5000m races in a day, at a lower pace, but still fairly high pressure?
A. Bring the 2000m races.
Quite seriously, racing a pair of five kilometer courses on a river is pretty rough, especially considering that to accomplish that, you essentially row the course four times, because you have to get to the starting line before you take off--rivers do not generally run in circles of 3.1 miles. During a typical spring race, I think I usually rowed about 8000m, possibly as much as 12,000m, if I was entered in three races. In the fall, I am going to be regularly rowing 20,000m, which is a really long distance! 12.4 miles of rowing is not easy, especially when half of that was against the current. Enough with the complaining though, I really enjoyed this regatta; it was my first race as a true varsity rower. In the four, we placed fifth out of 16 boats, getting beat by Clemson, Tulane, Emory, and UTC. The first three are traditionally strong crews--and Clemson was just hauling hard all day--and UTC's varsity is comparable to our own, so that was a toss-up that we just lost. However, top five showing is nothing to look down upon, especially since we were only 42 seconds behind the leaders, and over that distance that is not a horrendous gap. The eight did not fare nearly so well. We rowed an excellent first half or three-fifths, and then Georgia Tech passed us, Tulane began to slowly edge up on our stern, and things just started falling apart from there, making for a very poor second half or last two-fifths. Looking at the placing, it was a pretty sorry performance: ninth out of 11 collegiate boats. However, our placement in the field was right where we should have been, considering who had beaten us: Georgia Tech's A, B, and C boats, Clemson (again), Tulane (again), and Emory (again as well), UTC (but not by much), and Tennessee (who are mysteriously averse to rowing in any event but the eight; they just edged us out as well). We beat Clemson's B boat and Auburn (yay!), so it was not all for naught. We have room to improve though, and next Saturday at the Head of the Tennessee, we will be looking to pick up a few places in the field in the eight, and hopefully bringing back medals with the four.

My first alarm of the day for five days of the week is set for 4:50 a.m. So when I set the alarm 25 minutes earlier, that is getting early even for me. I am up and dressed; the bulk of my stuff is in my Volvo; my pop-tarts and ziplock bags of cereal and granola are hanging in a Publix bag from the suite door to remind me to get my bottle of milk from the refrigerator; I am ready for the first regatta of the year.
Row Tide!

I was able to sleep two and a half hours later than usual this morning!
It being the first day of fall break, and since we did not have classes to worry about getting back to campus for, practice was moved back to eight o'clock (and actually, as it worked out, we did not even get on the water in the eight until 8:45!). However, most everyone must have taken that relaxed practice time and used it to sleep even later, because people were drifting in for over a half hour after that supposed start time. We finally did get enough rowers to man the Helluva Engineer, and Alison took us out to row a 5000m time trial. We posted a 16:49 over the distance, which, as with my four's time, was respectable, but possibly slightly inaccurate because the distance was not a full five kilometers. As soon as we pulled the boat out of the water and set in the stretchers on the concrete pad to be derigged and placed on the trailer, Drew, Person, Kyle, and I took The Heart of Dixie out for some light work down to the McFarland bridge and back. Kyle had to get off the water in time to clean up and drive to Birmingham for lunch with his girlfriend, so we had a fairly short work time in the four, but it was plenty after just rowing close to 10,000m in the eight. After we got that boat off the water, we derigged it and the Two Fast, our double, and loaded them on the women's trailer for the trip to Chattanooga. We wrapped up a little after 11:30, so it was a pretty drawn out morning. The rest of the day was quiet, low-key, and fairly relaxed. I cleaned up a clutter pile on my floor that had been there since the beginning of the semester, the contents of a sling bag I had received from Chad, the crew club's former treasurer, that I had dumped there and never done anything further with. And I cleaned off my desk...had a couple quiet meals...showered...gathered up gear for the regatta (at which point I realized something somewhat crucial that I had left at home: a sleeping bag or just sleeping gear in general)...and since I am meeting at five o'clock tomorrow morning to depart, I am going to bed.
Goodnight!

Monday night, at the UCM Coffeehouse, I said to a few people that it had been “a very long Monday;” now, in my semester's schedule, all of my Mondays are long, but for some reason, this past one was especially lengthly. Today was fairly long as well, especially considering it possessed the same class load as Monday, plus Stephanie, Steph, and Matt all left a little less than an hour ago, my roommates are all gone, and the campus is relatively ghost town-like compared to the normal hustle and bustle of a mid-semester evening. When I was not with the crew team or in class, I was either grabbing a quick bite to eat, working on my AC371 project in the business library, or meeting up with my AC371 instructor for some tips on and clarification for the aforementioned project. My team and I got in a good brainstorming/collaboration session last night after our AC310 lab, but the memo still is not quite polished to where it could or should be, methinks. My last class of the day let out a little bit early, so I walked back to the dorm, and then helped Stephanie, Steph, and Matt get their stuff into Stephanie's Bonneville for the break, and then saw them off before ambling to Lakeside for dinner and a Sudoku puzzle. A friend of mine with whom I had Brit Lit II in the spring saw me while I was eating and came over to say hello; Daniel asked how I was doing, and I pondered for a moment and replied that I was doing pretty well at the time. He said I looked peaceful and that “Sudoku zen” was a “good place to be.” :-) Indeed, a good logic puzzle and food makes for a relaxing time, but I was still missing Stephanie, as it is rare we have a meal separately. Now, onto fall break, and in a few days, the Chattanooga Head Race.

Today is the second-to-last day of classes before classes are dismissed for the “mid-semester study break.” I am not sure why it is called as such, because it is definitely not a break from studying--unless you just want to get behind. However, with that said, I do not know how much studying I may be able to get in over the days between Thursday and Sunday, because I have a late crew practice (eight o'clock) on Thursday, and then I will be leaving fairly early on Friday morning with the guys to head up to Chattanooga for the first regatta of the season, from which we will not return until sometime late on Saturday night; Sunday morning there is worship, and then I will have a few hours again in the afternoon to wrap a few things up before that “break” rapidly comes to a close. Even so, it will be a relief to not have classes for two days, even if I am only getting out of two classes between the two days. It would be better for me if the break spanned Friday through Monday, because then I would miss out on the five-class Monday that I have to deal with each week. I have all my “midterm” grades back from my various classes: an A+ for Computer Applications (AC289), A in Introductory Spanish (SP101), A in Business Financial Reporting I (AC310), B+ in Introduction to Taxation (AC371), and B in Organizational Theory and Behavior (MGT300). That gives me a GPA of 3.726 to work with at this point, which is not as high as I am “accustomed” to score, but I have to keep in mind that I am getting into more technical and in-depth classes, and even in those which I have had a solid base for, I must continue to work in and out of class to improve. I wanted to make all-A's this semester, and while I am not out of the running yet, I have some work to do to get back up there in a couple classes.

Aaaannd...
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LAURREL!!!

Hm, I had my first “interview” in Spanish this morning, although it was different than I had anticipated. I thought that I would be one-on-one with the instructor, speaking with him and answering questions “en español.” However, the interview was conducted in a group setting, with two or three students conversing among themselves with the instructor looking on and listening. I teamed up with Briant, one of the few other guys in the class, and as we reviewed and touched up on some vocabulary, we threw together a sketchy outline for our interview. Once we were in the classroom, it really was not all that bad, despite my nervousness leading up to the oral test. After three minutes of basic conversation, our time was up, and the instructor commented on our performance, and quizzed us on a couple places where we had messed up grammar or pronunciation (one does not eat coffee (“yo como el café”), but rather drinks it (“yo bebo el café”), and yes, I misspoke and said that I ate coffee as a part of breakfast). Overall, we both scored well on the different facets of the exercise, and we came away with 96s. With that, and the 94 on my test, and nearly perfect homework, I should have a solid A for midterms.

Calvin and I worked our first Rent-A-Rower today, and it was a scorcher. Thankfully, our employer-for-the-day provided plenty of water, which the two of us eagerly guzzled at frequent intervals. The work itself was not all that hard; it mostly consisted of weeding, edging, and mulching--with an impromptu car wash tacked on after five hours and 50 minutes of work were already done, and we were hoping to be able to call it a day. There was no such luck, especially with Barry, our mainframe-programming host, finding plenty of small tasks here and there for Calvin and I to finish up. Generally, Rent-A-Rowers (RARs) are advertised as $100 for six hours of any kind of work by a rower; however, that can be adjusted in many ways, such as one rower for three hours at $50, or two rowers for three hours at $100, or four rowers for six hours at $400...that would be a pretty major job if someone could keep four of us steadily working for six hours. We would have to be siding a house or laying sod for a really big yard or something along those lines. The tasks that we were assigned were edging landscaped planters nearly the whole way around Barry's modest suburban home (so as to give them some definition from the yard as a whole), weeding in the planters and pulling long-stemmed grass out of some of the shrubbery where it had popped up, mulching the aforementioned areas with about a dozen large bags of mulch, pulling everything out of his garage so he could blow-clean it with a leaf blower, putting everything that we had removed from the garage--save for a few items--back into it, and then washing his wife's car. Thankfully, we did get a short respite from the unrelenting sun, wolfing down a couple footlongs from Subway for lunch. All in all, it was not a bad day, just time consuming--and I got sunburnt. Again. This time it was not very bad at all, just a little bit red, but hooray for aloe nonetheless!

This week has been homecoming week, which, of course, must culminate in the homecoming football game. For the past several days, the quad has been slowly populated by tent after tent for groups to welcome their alumni. Over in the large, open section of the quad, a giant frame has been going up for a bonfire, and pallets have been stacked inside to provide the bulk of the fuel. When the bonfire was finally lit last night, there was an enormous crowd to see the blaze, which prompted me to comment that everyone is a pyrotechnic at heart! It was amusing to see the numerous cell phones being held up to capture a photograph of the spectacle; and then there was the clueless person in the back, using their regular camera--with the flash on. There is a giant fire in front of you; the fire produces light; why are you trying to illuminate a 20'x20'x60' blaze with a 4xAA battery flash?
The crew team had a tent on the alumni “section” of the quad, so I went up there and hung out with the couple guys I knew in the group while Stephanie was working a shift at the Arts & Sciences tent as part of her Arts & Sciences Ambassador's duties. The kickoff for the game was an early one, 2:07 pm, so once Stephanie had finished up at 10 till noon, we walked back to Riverside so she could get out of her A&S Ambassador garb and into comfortable clothes, grabbed our tickets and a quick bite to eat, and then we walked quickly up to the stadium, where Matt was saving a couple seats for us. The time and temperature of the game reminded me quite a bit of my first college football game last fall: UA vs. Vanderbilt, I was painted up with some guys from the crew team, it was an early game, very hot and sunny, and I had a “B” and the number “34” branded into my chest and back, respectively, from the sun. However, I managed to get through three quarters of the football game without similar scorching, but by that time, being out most of the day in the middle of the day in the sun was draining Stephanie--and me too, to a degree--so we took our leave and walked back to the other side of campus.
The best comment we got was on my “rowtide” Alabama Crew shirt from a lady working the GameDay logistics: “Now that's original! It's all about football until you see that shirt.” Yes, though it may come as a surprise to some, more than football is played at the University of Alabama; to borrow a phrase, “I play crew.”
Oh, and we did win the football game, in case you were wondering. UA, 30; Houston, 24.