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Post by magnuson on Feb 21, 2008 14:38:40 GMT -5
Dear Spring Santa:
I would like a boat, please.
Thanks,
Maggie
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Post by alanbrandenburg on Mar 2, 2008 18:25:05 GMT -5
This is quite nice news I have to report. The Club inventory now includes a 1994 Dirigo 4+ (4 sweep rowers and cox) and four Concept2 hatchet oars. Mag, Don, Dawn and I left Carbondale on Saturday morning in my wife's pickup truck (thanks to her and her company Southern Gas for providing the right truck for the job) and arrived at tje site of Wash U and St. Louis Rowing Club club rowing, Creve Couer Lake around 10:30. Coach Carter in an amazing display of multi-tasking, had the truck hooked up to a 40' trailer, explained the fundamentals of rowing and rigging, tried like hell to get us to also take a 8 person shell, and had our four loaded on the trailer in 30 minutes. Thank you, Coach Carter, you are incredible.
Coach Carter then had to run off to be with his wife and kids, but interrupted this important task at least three times to make sure that Asst Coach Rudy Ryback was seeing to our needs. Before CC left for the last time, he loaned us an $800 cox box because "you're gonna need this." CC could not have left us in better hands. Rudy was helping us move the boat to Touch of Nature. Thank you Mag for providing the generous honorarium to Rudy. Pulling a 40 foot trailer in heavy traffic is difficult (great job, Rudy) and leaves a giant carbon footprint (thank you Mag for gas money). Watching the gas gauge go down was amazing and sickening.
We got back to Carbondale around 2:30 and Don jumped into his car to get us lunch and the rest headed to TON. Don arrived shortly, we ate and we start getting the boat off the trailer. This was not so easy. We then carried the boat about a quarter of a mile to its new home near Camp 2 (thank you Alan Teska of TON and Jeff Goelz from the Rec Center for providing this spot).
At this point the job was done, but we were but half finished. We still had to get Rudy and trailer back to Creve Couer. Don left us at this point and our gas mileage improved greatly. Mag and Dawn went to St. Louis to make sure I could find my way home and to scratch their "let's go Whole Foods" itch. Rudy got us back to the rowing club around 7PM. He is a great guy and I hope that we can bring him down to SIU for a coaching visit.
We got to Whole Foods after some memorable bad driving on my part (thank you Alan for not killing us). It is quite a store and provided the sustenance to get us through Pinckneyville for the fourth time. Any story that you hear about this trip could be true.
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Post by magnuson on Mar 3, 2008 10:27:33 GMT -5
Nice summary of an historic day for SIU Rowing. Saturday was an incredibly long outing on the road, for sure, but certainly a good time was had by all involved.
The biggest thanks, of course, go to Alan, who has funded this marvelous boat and in turn provided a great opportunity not only for our little boat club but for our university. Let us hope crew thrives here in southern Illinois.
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Post by Dawn Brady on Mar 3, 2008 11:33:06 GMT -5
It certainly was a marvelous day! For the first time in ten years, I was greeted with nostalgic phrases like "up an inch" and "down to shoulder level."
This boat will always be the Brandenburg to us, even if the Admiral does not wish to name it after himself. Anyway I got some great shots of Alan, DJ, and Mag worshipping the new Shell.
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