1 Month to Go

In one month I will be going off to Montreal. I just bought my plane ticket to Quebec for the Canadian University Rowing Championships. I fly from YVR to YUL on the 28th of October where I will have two days to practice in the olympic basin. On Hallowe’en day I have my Time Trials and then on the fridged day of November 1st I will be racing in the finals (hopefully the A final) in the Canadian University Rowing Championships.

The following day I will have to bounce to London as I will be racing there on the 3rd of November for the National Rowing Championships with the 4th being the finals of that regatta. I am going to try and re-do my 2km and 6km erg tests this week so I can make Provincial Development and thus get more funding to go.

I also found out that the military has an option where I can go to grad school right after I graduate. This would mean I would get two more years at university and two more years of rowing. I would not be limited to SFU so I could go to a school with a full rowing team. I would have to decide if I want to stay in BC or go outside. If I went out it would be a school such as McMaster, UWO, Queens, UofT or Brock.

If I say in BC my three choices would be UBC, UVic and SFU.

UBC would allow me to stay in Vancouver, with a great rowing team, amazing academics but I would really have to pull up my socks this school year and study to get in.

UVic would require me to move with average academics but an amazing rowing team that would allow me to move farther in rowing in my future with the potential of the national team for 2012 and the London Olympics.

SFU would be the easiest to get into, with the best CS of the three schools but still rowing would all be self motivated and more importantly, self funded.

So while I think about that I am going to go work on my CMPT-412 assignment on computer vision.

Random Updates

Let’s see, there has been a bunch of stuff I have wanted to post for a bit but basically was too busy to make individual posts on each one so I will post them all here.

Firstly I had a race today, the head of the river that I mentioned a few posts back. It was pretty solid and I think I placed 3rd in my category but I haven’t seen the official results yet. There were some hard 90 degree or greater turns in the race which really kills your momentum. There was also open water which is rarely fun in a single. I drove my boat out to White Rock on top of Emelia’s car. Just to give you an idea of how long they are, take a look:

For some reason a flag lady got mad at me for my boat. I was at an intersection when it was red and she decided to ream me out because of the hang. I had to sit there for two minutes while she was yelling out random stuff like, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!! WHAT IS THIS THING!! PEOPLE LIKE YOU SHOULD NOT BE ON THE ROAD!! LEARN SOME LAWS!!”. All I could do, while not necessarily the most mature response was flip her off as I drove by.

But it was not the only time people were being ridiculous today. After the race I was in Burnaby Lake Rowing Club parking lot, taking off my boat, derigging it and trying to put the racks away. Of course there happened to be a wedding being set up. The people setting up obviously did not want me being there as every five minutes they kept asking me when I was leaving, despite not being in there way. Now I still have the single rack on top of the roof rack and I cannot get it off without a pair of vice grips.

In other news, I got a new colour scheme for this blogs layout, and I have a twitter account, so you will now find me sending in twats.

I use last.fm a lot and I have found some really cool sites that use it’s API. I think I have mentioned it before but I will re-post the links again. There’s bandsintown which uses your last.fm feed to tell you local concerts coming up you might be interested in. As well there is also the last.fm tumblr which generates an rss feed with yahoo pipes from your last.fm account showing the top artists of the week you have listened to. Of course I link my last.fm feeds on this blog so you can see my recent plays if you were actually interested in that.

At school classes have started and most of them are good though I haven’t been to all of them yet. I should make a post on that soon, and I must say now that CMPT-412 is an amazing class so far. Novice recruitment is really good and we haven’t officially started it, and we also seem to have about 10 walk-ons onto the team, a number I have never seen before. Froshweek is also over, that went fairly well in my opinion, specially with a small budget, but now I need to be reimbursed.

Rowing Pic

We did a rowing photo shoot this last Sunday for sponsorship and the website.

Here’s one photo that was taken:

I also did my 16K erg test, took about an hour to do and I did it was an average of 281 Watts. That’s the provincial development level which is decent for me since I am not even on the chart on the short pieces, like 100 m.

Tonight I am wanting to do my 6 K but it is so hot so we will see how that works out.

All You Did Was Save My Life

Today’s the first day of the U23 World’s. So far Canada is doing decent, but to me the most important race is the Women’s Lightweight Single because a girl from Burnaby Lake, where I row, is representing Canada in that category. In the first day she had heats and came second to Great Britain, but she is moving on to the Finals.

July is coming to an end, which means classes are coming to an end, I just need to finish off the last two assignments. Das Rowhaus is coming to an end as my two roommates are moving out soon and I have no idea what is going to happen next. I know I will be living here and I will need a roommate.

Rowing does not stop though, when finals are over I will be doing three workouts a day and finishing off Froshweek stuff. At BC Champs, I came 3rd in the Mens HWT 1x which is great for me, I still need to be stronger to make the provincial team this year to go to Nationals and then rep Canada next summer. I found out next year U23s will be in Belarus, in Brest.

But on a topic outside of rowing, something is interesting with the military. Because I live in a high cost area I get what is called Post Living Differential (PLD) which almost doubles my pay. Now the military has realized they have been giving it to some other ROTP students who are living with their families, the shouldn’t be getting paid. So now the military is taking back what they paid to my buddies through their pay, so they won’t be receiving their pay for the next long time, maybe for the next year or so.

That really sucks for them

Video of Me Rowing

That’s me finishing my heat 1 at the Alberta Opens a few weeks ago. I was definitely a good few hundred metres ahead of the other boats.

Road to London

Tomorrow morning is my registration, I plan to take CMPT 354, 412 and 470, CRIM 315 DE and 357. I also quit my job at the boathouse, it was too much stupid stuff to deal with and not enough time to get it done, so it wasn’t fair to my co-worker.

Last weekend four of us drove out to Calgary for one of my most fun races. The ride was twelve hours long and we left at 4:30 am. We got there Friday evening and quickly went to the boat house. The Calgary rowing club is one of the most amazing places I ever raced at. The water was blue, there was no wind and it was a nice 25 degrees outside.

As you can see, I made the final where I can third. I came 2nd in the heats to make the final and I raced 21 seconds faster in the final.

See, I actually row.

This weekend is BC Champs where I go back to the rough waters of Elk Lake. If I can deal with the waves or the wind is not too bad then I should be able to do decently. When I get back the rest of the summer will be spent doing intensive weights and working on blade technique as I prepare for the upcoming university rowing season.

I also need to try out for the BC Rowing team so I can go to nationals. That will be happening in the next few weeks.

Twatswatter

If you like Dave Matthews Band you are what is wrong with this world. Someone has a difference of opinion as you and you feel personally attacked instead of dealing with the bigger issue: you listen to shitty music!

Well I sure have been busy the last few weeks with school, work, and rowing. I managed to get a new PB on the 2K erg test, 6:45.4. It is ok but I know I slacked a bit and I think that I could get around 6:39. Only 20 more seconds till I am in the competitive range for Worlds. We are going to Calgary next week for the Alberta Opens; I will be racing there in a single.

I hate coaching adults. Adults do not listen, they think they know everything so there is no point in coaching them. Adult Recreational rowers are the worst. Not only can you not coach them, they don’t do anything you tell them. If you do tell them something they just question you, and if it is not something to prevent them from getting hurt they won’t do it. They don’t care about the club’s equipment, going faster or other rowers in their boat.

Americans also like to be different in every way, even in rowing. In rowing there is a category called Novice which is for people who have only rowed for a year or less. That category is standard around the world, that is except for America. Novice rowing there is for people who have only been at university for a year. This means you can have olympians in the novice boat, such as the two german medalists in the University of Washington Novice 8+.

Of course Americans also call rowing, “crew”. They say they do “crew” and that they are on the “crew team” (which is a contradiction since the word crew implies you are on a team already). UDub does this, Cal Berkely does this and so do the Ivy League schools like Princeton (just to give a few examples).

Well I need to go hack up an old 8+, pics for that will come soon.

Update de la semaine.

Well today had two interesting set of races, the World Rowing Cup and the NCAA finals. Canada did decently, taking 2nd and 3rd in a number of races, the Lightweight Women and Men’s double, the Men’s Quad and the Men’s Pair. Great Britain wiped the floor winning every race. While in the NCAA’s Stanford won in their Varsity 8 which allowed them to win NCAA’s.

Which leads to the SFU Rowing Club, some interesting stuff happening there. First of all, because SFU is *trying* to get into the NCAA (which I don’t support for many reasons) they need to balance out what they spend on the football team as a result of Title IX. This means they want the Women to become a varsity sport. This is pretty cool as it will mean we will get more money, better equipment and dedicated coaches. While the men are not going to go varsity, this is not a big deal since men’s rowing isn’t in the NCAA. That is why there are the IRA’s and the ACRA which is something I would like to see the men in eventually.

Other than that, we have been doing some fund raising recently and so we have some money, there has been some discussion on what to do with it. It has been decided that we are going to buy a brand new Hudson Middleweight Coxed Four with Pair Riggers. This will set us back about $20,000 but with the money we have earned last few months and the fund raisers we will be doing we should be able to pay it off in a few months. We get to paint it however we want and I am pushing to have flames painted on. We did a liquor store this weekend, basically all we do is sit in front of a liquor store, smile at people and say hi, they feel bad and give us their change. We are able to make a lot of money out of it. We only spent a few hours on Friday and Saturday and made about $500.

I also got a job (that’s non-military). A local rowing club, the Inlet Rowing Club has hired me on to work for them, as well as another rower on my crew. It’s a pretty easy job, basically all I do is odd jobs around the boat house and coach. Last few weeks we have been cleaning and fixing boats, sandpaper-ing an old rusted boat rack, repainted it and put padding on it. Now we are supposed to recruit high school students to start rowing so we have to go to a bunch of schools in the Tri-cities area. Throughout the summer I will also be coaching learn-to-rows so I am going to try and earn my National Coaching Certificate Level I.

In terms of rowing personally for me, it is has been great. I row at Burnaby lake still five or six times a week (I should be in bed now as I row in seven and a half hours). I told the coach there that I want to do U23’s so he has been giving me more attention this last few weeks which is great. It has been really warm lately so I have been practicing in my uni-suit and soon I will have a really awkward tan-line. With summer comes summer racing and in four weeks we will be going to Calgary for the Alberta Open regatta. That will be a fun trip, plus I am going to do a side trip down to Drumheller. My last race I did really bad because of the weather, only being able to get a time that is 75% of the olympic standard. I am hoping the weather will be nicer so I can get a much better time and podium.

On top of my rowing, running and weights I bought myself a bike.

It is a Kona Shred with the large frame. I was originally going to go with the Kona Blast but it was not able to handle any abuse and knowing me I am going to want to drop off of stuff. Now I got to start getting some bike stuff, like gloves, tools, and a playing card in the back wheel. I plan to try and ride everywhere I can instead of driving.

Froshweek is going pretty sweet, I am done all the major stuff for now, just got to start doing the little stuff and wait for money from the Sponsors.

Speaking of the CSSS, on their forum there was a thread where all the older members were complaining that there are no pictures of events from the last semester on the website. After their going back and forth one member writes this line:

If you’ve been to the common room, you’d know why.

You’d find either a load of nerds who stare at laptops, or jocks that make conversations annoying.

This statement is quite funny for a number of reasons. First of all the person who wrote this is a huge nerd himself, and whenever I have seen him in the common room, he has been on his laptop. So basically we have an example of the tea kettle calling the kettle black. Secondly, there are not jocks that hang out in the common room, let alone in the department of CS.

But school is going pretty well, English has some interesting books, CMPT-383 has really effed up programming language, CMPT-475 is boring and Terrorism has a lot of reading that is not too interesting. But I keep busy with rowing.

I also plan to try and get in a few trips this summer when I have time. VIA rail is giving out free passes to all military members so I am going to try and go to the Rockies. I have trips to Victoria and Calgary for racing. I want to go to Kettle Valley or other places for biking and then I would like to go to Baker and hike the crater. Of course there are many local places I want to hit up too: Grouse, Seymour, Lynn Valley, etc.

But now it is time to go to sleep for rowing.

Till next time, Keep on Keeping on.

Rowing Updates

Given that it’s my blog about me, I have been rowing a lot lately so there are some neat things happening there. I told my coach that I wanted to do U23’s next summer. He is the type of coach that will straight up say the truth, so if you suck then he will tell you. His response was that I just need to keep lowering my erg scores. This means he thinks that I can actually do it. He has also been coaching me a lot more this last week so it feels like I have a real coach.

Being part of the exec we have to come up with the budget for this year, next year and the year after. Apparently we have spent around $16,000 from our own pockets. I never really realized that rowing costs so much for the team. Next year we want to buy a coxed four with sculling riggers, (which will cost another $20,000), a full time coach at $25 an hour and a new launch with a four stroke motor. We are applying for a grant from the city of Burnaby for the amount of $100,000 so we really hope to get it.

I am looking at buying a bike too, I went to a store and rode the Trek 4300, it was pretty sweet. I looked at the North Shore Mountain Biking Gear Swap but they only had medium sized bikes and I am needing a large one. I am going to try out a Norco Kokanee and a Kona Blast.

Here’s a funny video to end off the post.

Willkommen auf Deine Rowhaus

Well I have had an interesting last few days. On Friday my new roommates from the rowing team and I, we got access to our apartment. So the last few days has been a bit hectic moving all of our stuff in here, getting furniture from ikea and from randoms, then putting them together and finally being able to unpack.

I have been saving up for a few months to be able to get all the necessary furniture and so far I think my room is really awesome. One of the best rooms that I have ever had. I also got myself a new queen sized bed. I love it so much.

Anyways, here are some pictures of the place.

So this is when you first walk in through the front door, though we don’t use that door. The two doors on the left are the two bedrooms, mine is the farthest. The door straight ahead is the bathroom.

So yeah this is my room. I am pretty stoked for it that I have bought mostly all the furniture myself. That or I was given stuff by people, none of which were my parents. I also got a queen size bed which completely rocks my socks.

And then in my room facing the door.

What’s really weird, if you look out the window in my room it almost looks like you are going into the Bronx. There’s a run down basketball court in the middle of apartment buildings. It’s quite interesting to go from Vancouver to New York.

Then in my door facing the rest of the apartment. You can also see the bathroom on the left. Which looks like so.

We do have a green shower curtain, also an interesting colour combination, lime green + pink.

Entering the kitchen, and then here is a pic to look into the dinning room.

And then both sides of the kitchen.

and

Because it is so small, it reminds me of something European.

Then we have the dinning room.

And the living room (with one of my roommates on the telephone).

And then the third make-shift bedroom which is where another roommate of ours lives. And yes those are SFU colours. Representing the clan.