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.