Close But No Cigar!

Day Two at the Lotus Festival started out early for me. I got up and took off for downtown around 10AM, ate some quick breakfast and got volunteered to row for the dragonboat races at the festival. We did some impromptu training and came up with a gameplan for rowing these big canoe looking things, which had a large draft making it just that much more difficult to move and steer. Anyhow our team did well, my girlfriend and I included, I really paddled hard and kept the people motivated down the last stretch. We had a very good time of 6'27" and stayed in first place for most of the day, however on the final race of the weekend a local team beat our time by just 13 seconds. So unfortunately we came in second. Fifty-Two teams had participated overall and I felt that second place was good enough for me. We even beat a local TV station's team, KTLA channel 5 fell to the wrath of the Lou by like 3 minutes!!! Around evening time we got our trophies and met up with Christina, Nathan, and Christina's Brother Alex which was really cool. I am really happy for them with Nathan getting out of the military and all, and then starting fresh here on the west coast, I wish them the best of luck! Hopefully the morning commute on their way to Sacramento won't be too bad, the I-5 can be really hectic around the so called grapevine north of the city.