Where did Aug 23rd go?

Hello from the southern hemisphere! We left Philly Aug 22nd at 5pm and arrived in Sydney on Aug 24th at 630am, so strange that August 23rd 2016 was completely erased as if it never existed. But a 16 hr flight is probably the closest I'll get to a time vortex. Ive been on a lot of planes and some long flights, but I have to admit I was skeptical about how this long flight was going to go. However, Qantas Air did not disappoint and the flight itself was actually very tolerable, thanks to nearly empty flight, spacious seats, full TV and movie selection and snack bar in the back. I lucked out and got my own row which allowed me to lay down and sleep for a few continuous hours. Stats for 16hrs from Dallas to Sydney:

• Roughly 6 hrs of sleep
• 1 book read
• 15 episodes of Big Bang Theory Season 9
• Countless games of Candy Crush

As we approached the less than 2 hr mark the reality of time set in, and I think we were all feeling a little worse for the wear and in need of a shower and some teeth brushing. Sadly no showers on board but in the back "snack bar" they had toothpaste and toothbrushes. Although the toothpaste tube bore a frighteningly strong resemblance to model airplane glue.... I decided to trust Qantas and give it a go. Yay it WAS toothpaste! 

NOT glue

Feeling slightly less gross, we disembarked, had an uneventful time through baggage claim and customs and then off in search of food. A tiny little cafe in Coogee Beach was our target, and the horde was for sure ready for some food (and the staff for some coffee....). There is no "brewed" coffee here, everything is espresso which is both delicious and the high octane diesel we all needed. True to giant toddler form, time waiting for food was spent coloring.

Breakfast arrived and across the board it was awesome. Eggs here have yolks the dark orange color they're supposed to be, the bread is AMAZING and they put avocado on everything (woot). Troops fed and satiated, we still needed to kill some time before checking into hotel (good lord I'm counting down the minutes until i can shower and change clothes!) we headed to the Queen Victoria building in downtown Sydney. Its a very old building thats been converted into a high end shopping center. Pretty cool, but wayyyyy above our price ranges and I think everyone was in post breakfast and jet lag coma so it was just a lot of aimless walking. Finally the time has arrived for us to check into the hotel at 2pm Sydney time (that's 14 hours ahead of EST so midnight on Aug 23rd for you guys. Weve been traveling for roughly 24 hrs...) Quick turnaround though since we have practice, so quick showers, change of clothes and then back on the bus. We had use of 1 court in the local university rec center, so we were sharing space with rec badminton players and little kids learning how to play tennis. Slightly different than the usual environment but I think we were a bit of an odd sight for the locals as well.

Post practice we headed out to grab dinner, and in the typical reality of team-travel, we hit a bit of a snag. Walking to dinner we experienced what the locals later informed us was as much rain in a few hours as they normally get in a month. On this trek we also proceeded to get lost, and a 15 minute walk turned into a 45 minute 50 and pouring rain "tour" of downtown Sydney's bridge overhangs and parking garages. Never fear, as always happens we eventually reached our destination and were rewarded with some EXCELLENT seafood. I had the Barramundi, an Australian native sea bass and it was awesome.

Troops once again fed, the length of travel and time changes combined resulted in peak zombie status. You know teams are tired when travel anywhere in a group is silent. We reach our beds at 830pm Sydney time on Wednesday Aug 24th (630am Wednesday Aug 24th back in NJ) We have been traveling since 2pm Monday Aug 22nd, bringing our travel time to 30 hrs. Bed is going to feel realllll good tonight. Tomorrow we're off to the Sydney Opera House and our first of 3 games. Good night all!

The team is also taking turns blogging about their experience each day, heres the link to Day 1.
Princeton WBB in Sydney Day 1

4 years later...

So I kind of fell off the face of the blogging earth, I know I know. Despite how the blog would lead you to believe I am no longer in Ireland.... I did make it back from that trip and actually have had quite a few work travel adventures in the past 4 years (Cayman Islands, Cancun, The White House, Cuba), but I just kind of lost the motivation to blog and to be completely honest I totally forgot I had one..... However I have decided to start 'er back up again for the work travel adventure were embarking on tomorrow, Australia!!! I'm off with Women's Basketball on a 10 day tour down under. Nothing exciting to report right now, the first leg of the journey will be a flight to Dallas and then a 16 hour flight to Sydney..... So stay tuned, more to come once we land in the southern hemisphere. Wish me luck that I have enough drugs, snacks and books to keep the giant toddlers and myself occupied and sleepy enough to survive this flight!

Happy St Patrick's Day from Ireland

Well the day finally came for us to depart for our great Irish adventure. We left campus on Friday at 430pm to head to JFK airport, just in time for rush hour traffic...... But amazingly enough, we made it to the airport and checked in with plenty of time to spare. Take off at 945PM Eastern Time, and 6 hours and 20 minutes later we landed on the beautiful green island of Ireland. This length of flight is significant, did you know on international flights over 6 hours they serve free beer? I didn't either but bet your rear end the college rugby guys did, so they were all quite happy. I did what I usually do on flights and slept the entire time, easy to do when your knees are 6 inches away from the seat in front of you. There are few advantages to being smaller than average, but this is for sure one of them. This sleep worked out well since we landed at 830am Dublin time (For those who are keeping track, Dublin is 4 hours ahead of EST) We de-planed and headed to customs along with about 400 other people. I was pretty excited, having just gotten a passport a few months ago, I havent been out of the country since before 9/11 when all you needed was a birth certificate, I was ready for a stamp in my brand new passport. 30 minutes later it was my turn, I had visions of a gruff man asking me if I had anything to declare, length of stay, reason for visit, and if I answered wrong a body cavity search. What I really experienced was a very friendly Irish man who simply asked "Are you with all these ruggers? Ohhhhh what a lucky lady. Welcome to Ireland!!" ~~STAMP~~ and off I went. Apparently I did not look very threatening, or maybe he thought I was an American leprechaun coming home for the holiday. Which speaking of, I was pretty surprised to see how much of a big deal St Patty's is here. I somehow thought it was an Americanized holiday, but the airport was decorated with balloons, there were people wearing gaudy green clothing EVERYWHERE and the money exchange lady was wearing shamrock antlers, and all this before we even left the airport.

Once we did leave the airport, we loaded up onto a bus and headed into downtown Dublin for a few hours. The guys were pretty excited to run off and see as much of the historical architecture as possible in the few hours we had (AKA Drink as much Guinness as possible.....). The coach and I wandered around the center of Downtown Dublin and into Trinity University. Dublin is a pretty cool city, very walkable and very easy going, although today was not a typical day, as the crowds were growing for the parade. After a pretty delicious authentic Italian brick over pizza ( ya ya ya, Im in Ireland, why Italian. But it was crazy at the authentic places, and this was legit from Italy pizza, the menu was all in Italian. And it was tasty, so back off ) we wandered up towards the parade. If being able to sleep on a plane is a perk of being a tiny person, then seeing a parade is NOT. I did my best in trying to take some pictures by standing on my tip toes and raising my arm over the crowd, but this is the best you get.

I Should've had this kid take some better pics for me

I'll put more pics on Picasa as the trip goes on (depending on internet availability). It was a pretty cool experience, tons of people (I'd say only about 5% were actually Irish) but pretty fun to say I was in Dublin on St Patty's Day. The time came to wrangle the cats back onto the bus, which actually went smoother than expected, no one had been arrested, everyone still had pants on, and we did'nt lose anyone. We drove the 2 hours to Galway, checked into Snoozles Hostel (Yes the real name of it). I will be staying in a B&B for the rest of the trip, but for last night I was in a 2 bunk bed room with 3 of the guys. Calm down dad and grandma...... It was like being back at summer camp ha. We went out to a pub to watch the Ireland v England 6 Nations Rugby game. Had my first Guinness here in Ireland, had a bunch of drunk Irish old men try and talk to me about the game, then they heard my distinctly non-Irish American accent and kept trying to say things about America, or at least I think they were. Between the booze and the brogues, I couldn't understand a word they said so I just laughed and nodded. After the game was over, it was time to head back to the bunk beds. Pretty early St Pattys day, but we have a game tomorrow and were all still adjusting to the time change.

Well that was Day 1. Hope St Patty's day was a good one for everyone!!

Back to the Jers.....

Well the the 2012 rowing training trip has come to an end. All in all, it was a pretty good week. The weather was awesome, only 2 legit injuries (Coach broke his foot and the aforementioned shoulder dislocation) and no one got arrested while painting bridges. Apparently there is a tradition while in Tampa, that each senior class paints the bridges, and Princeton is not the only school who does this. The walls under bridges all through Tampa have artistic evidence of rowing teams who come here for winter training, look closely at this picture theres even a Michigan State one!!

Its pretty cool actually to see the years of rowing trips documented this way. This artistic endeavor requires some plausible deniability by the adults in charge, some covert ops and a lot of orange and black paint.

It was a good trip, but now we must head back to New Jersey. Great video of the trip here by Doug our videographer.

First rowing races are in March and rugby is picking back up again. Next adventure takes us to Ireland in March for the men's rugby spring break trip, which will I'm sure be the definition of adventure :)

Those pesky docks and DOLPHINS!!!

Well we've reached hump day on the training trip, and so far I have been amazed that its been pretty dare I say uneventful. I have been enjoying sitting under the tree with my table, bonding with the local squirrels, reading ( Blood, Bones and Butter is a pretty awesome book, and I would highly recommend it.....) and of course working on athletes. But I have long since learned that uneventful NEVER lasts, especially with rowing. Many people seem confused or not understanding as to what an Athletic Trainer who works with rowing actually does. "Do people get hit with oars? Do you have to follow them in a life boat? They can actually get hurt rowing?" Believe it or not those are actual questions I have been asked in my time working with rowing. It is not a traditional sport in the sense of what most people associate with Athletic Training, I don't tape ankles,  Rowing is like cross country running, but full body. 90% of what I see is overuse, with the women mainly rib cage and upper spine/shoulder pains, with the men low back and hip pain. The other 10% is due to the fact that rowers are rowers for a reason, put them in a non-rowing activity that requires movement (i.e walking, running, playing other sports) and they usually find ways to fall down (Sorry to all you rowers out there, but sadly you know its true.....) Today however, we had a rower sustain an acute, traumatic injury while doing something actually rowing related. Aside from an Ejection Crab (Yes catching a crab is not referring to a venereal disease, but an actual rowing term when the blade of the oar gets caught in the water, causing the handle to come back and knock your @ss over. Watch the video paying special attention to 0:12, its awesome, and even awesomer it happened to a Buckeye. Sorry Erin : ) or falling while carrying a boat, its rare to have an actual acute rowing related injury. Today, we had an athlete dislocate their shoulder while docking the boat. Thankfully, it reduced on its own and the athlete will be just fine. Also thankfully, today is everyone's afternoon off, so as it has become tradition on Florida trips, afternoon off for me = ERIN TIME!!! Mrs Myers was oh so kind as to drive the hour and a half from Orlando to come fetch me from the hotel, and we spent an awesome afternoon out on a pier on the other side of Tampa Bay. It was a beautiful afternoon, and as we were walking down the pier we saw dolphins!! Like 4 schools of them!!! We proceeded to spend the majority of the time going paparazzi on them, but only managed to get a couple pics. I promise you there were a lot, and some were even jumping out of the water!

Soooo cool. We also had the pleasure of watching dozens of pelicans throughout the afternoon. Weird looking birds, and contrary to what "Finding Nemo" showed me, they DO NOT gracefully swoop just above the water level and scoop up a mouthful of fish. They legit dive bomb and crash into the water. I also tried in vain to photo document this, but the marine life around here was wise to our attempts to catch them in action. 

Don't be fooled by the majestic flying, he's moments away from a less than graceful crash into the water

Although it was only a few short hours, it was great to spend some time with Erin as always. We were treated to a pretty sunset on our walk off the pier, and thanks to Erin having longer arms than me we were able to grab a few pictures.

Back to the hotel I go, grab some dinner and then work on some athletes. Tomorrow starts the final leg of the trip, 2 rows thursday, 2 rows friday then 1 final early saturday morning, load the trailers and were headed back north. Lets hope the weather keeps staying awesome!!

Hello from Florida!

Good Morning from beautiful Tampa, FL. I find myself enjoying this beautiful weather courtesy of the Princeton Rowing Winter Training Trip. Although this is far from my first time enjoying the sunshine states winter warmth, this trip will be vastly different than any of my prior endeavors. Each year during the last week of January, the entire boathouse packs up and heads somewhere warm to kick off the spring training season. This totals 4 rowing teams: Men's Heavyweight, Men's Lightweight, Women's Open Weight, Women's Lightweight= approximately 150 athletes. 2 trailers with 10 boats, 8 coaches, 1 administrator and yours truly. Slightly different than my trips with 24 softball players.... Sports and number of athletes may change, but travel snafus and hiccups will always remain constant.

We left campus yesterday in 2 groups for the Philadelphia Airport, a 5am group and a 7am group. Because most of the students were up late working very, very hard on writing papers at the "library", several people were late, and in my 7am group we actually left 2 people behind because they missed the bus. Surprisingly enough the travel once we left campus until we landed in Florida was hitch-free. We gathered luggage and waited outside for the buses to take our group to Ft DeSoto State Park. The day we landed was Gasparilla, so rowing through downtown Tampa during the pirate Mardi Gras was something to be avoided, and the coaches arranged for us to row saturday afternoon at a state park outside the city. As we are all sitting outside the airport, enjoying the warm weather and car exhaust, a "vintage" bus circa 1957 pulls up. I think it may have been the same bus used in "Major League" just re-painted, complete with BB holes in the windows, and a gear shifter that almost worked 50% of the time. But believe it or not it got us to the state park, and they were able to row.

This is EXACTLY what New Jersey looks like... ha

Everyone happy and enjoying the warm weather, we pack up to head into Tampa for dinner. Hard to believe, but our pristine bus breaks down.

Thank heavens we were stranded at a beautiful beach for the hour it took to arrange alternate transportation, because only the sunshine was going to keep 150 hungry rowers from going Lord of the Flies on us.

We made it into town, and had dinner at the University of Tampa dining hall, where we will be eating all week. Not to shabby, although I think dining services underestimated the amount of food that many rowers can eat. Pretty sure they're also not used to seeing that much spandex either.

All in all, day 1 wasn't bad. Given some of the travel experiences I have had, I'd say this one was close to as smooth as travel with that many people could go. Now we have a week of 2 rows a day ahead of us with what is looking and hoping to be some great weather.

Annnnnnnnd thats a wrap

Hard to believe, but the fall rugby season has come to and end. Its strange, not only for its brevity, but for the fact that it just picks up right where it left off in the spring. The guys finished the season in 4th, so that means they are the 4th seed for the playoffs in the spring.... strange. But, we will be hosting the 2012 Ivy League Rugby Playoffs April 14-15th, so any eager rugby beavers should mark that day on your calendar. With the regular season done, the team packed up a few of the guys at the end of fall break and headed up to Boston for the Ivy League Rugby 7's Tournament. So the fall season we played 15's Rugby, 15 guys per side (duh). There is another form of the game called 7's. This is played with..... thats right you guessed it 7!! This is actually the version of the game that will be an Olympic sport for both the men and the women starting this summer. I have never witnessed a 7's game, and to make thing more interesting, the team has never really practiced for a 7's game. They're plan was to just kind of wing it and hope for the best.

So Friday afternoon all 12 of us piled into the FULL bus for our trip to Boston. When I told Linnea we had a bus for that few people, her response was "Thats what 12 passenger vans are for". It is still hard for me to get used to having a bus, but hey I'm not complaining. The movie selection this week was distinctively more boy-stereotypical. "City of God" Brazilian movie with subtitles about the drug business in a Rio slum. Here's a synopsis for you. Someone gets shot, someone smoking drugs, someone selling drugs, someone gets shot, shot again, shot again, etc etc, all in Portugese. Then some "Die Hard", quick stop at McDonalds halfway so the guys could load up on the "EPIC" McRib, and we were in Boston by around 1030.

Bright and early Saturday we headed to the Irish Cultural Center for the tournament. Pretty nice facility, 3 rugby fields and a Gaelic Football field. Not entirely sure what Gaelic football entails, but we were threatened with firey death if we stepped on the field, so I guess its pretty serious..... Anyways, we had 3 games scheduled for the morning. 7's games are very short, 2 7 minute halfs with a 2 minute half-time, so playing multiple games in a day is more realistic than a full 15's game that takes 80 minutes. Its a very fast paced game, and quite a lot of fun to watch. I encourage anyone who has a chance to see a game either in person or on TV to take advantage.The guys started the day off with a win, and then halfway through game 2 I turned around to find 2 familiar faces:

Brynne and Mama D!! They were awesome enough to drive the few hours, and kept me company the entire day, it was awesome. Minus the fact I spilled Brynne's mocha chai non-fat latte all down my leg within the first minute, it was great being able to spend time with some great people. Just like being back at Maine with softball, except it was a bunch of sweaty guys running around, and spectators smoking cigars and drinking beer on the sidelines. All in all the guys played 5 games, won 3, lost 2 and finished 5th. Not too shabby for a group that had never really practiced 7's formally. At the end of the day, it was time to pack up and head back South (I haven't really ever been able to say that in my life, always seem to be headed back North, anyways.....). Said goodbye to the Davis ladies, thought seriously about stowing away in their trunk, and packed up on the bus. Fairly uneventful drive home, until 3 miles away from campus our bus broke down 5 times. Our awesome bus driver Stan somehow managed to always get her started again, and thankfully we arrived back on campus.

All in all it was a great first rugby season. No ER trips, I never got trampled on the field, and had quite a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to more in the spring. There may be some random travel for me here and there, but looks like everyone's gonna have to put their big girl panties on and deal with my prolonged blogging absence until spring, that means you Mr Majewski and Grandma.......... Until then, happy future fall and winter holidays everyone and see you again in 2012.