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.