Karen and I
are out here in Virginia to visit with Stephanie and Stephan and to attend
Alison and Andrew’s baby shower. Steph and Stephan arranged for us to stay with
their very kind and gracious friends, Al and Mercia, in Herndon. We have great
accommodations in the basement suite of their beautifully restored/renovated
1916 home.
Karen got up
early Thursday morning to go with Alison to a prenatal doctor visit, while I
stayed in Herndon and got a sense for how Al spends some of his spare time (at
Mercia’s ‘suggestion’, he and I gathered up a couple of truckloads of used
paving bricks for a future home project).
Later that
evening, Stephanie and Stephan and Al and Mercia hosted a friends and family
gathering.
Our original
plan was for the Three ‘S’s’ (Stephanie, Stephan and me) to run a Ragnar Trail
Race this weekend. When that fell through, we decided to go hiking on Friday. Stephanie
got Al to join us, too. We hiked about 7.5 miles of the Sugarloaf Mountain
trail system. It’s a privately owned and managed conservation and recreation
area in Maryland, and it provided just the right amount of vertical elevation
gain and pleasing vistas.
Steph,
Stephan and Al invited me to join them Saturday as a crew member in this year’s
Cardboard Boat Regatta. The event is an annual fundraiser put on for the
benefit of the Reston Historic Trust and Museum, and it takes place at the Lake
Anne Village in Reston.
For last year’s
race, Al researched, designed and built the boat using only the materials
allowed by the rules committee: cardboard, duct tape, and water-soluble paint. The
boat and crew performed so well last year that they earned the 2nd
place award.
The goal this
year was to use the same boat and improve upon the 2018 performance.
The site of
the regatta is quite festive. The large crowd is there to both support all the
contestants, and to witness the inevitable maritime disasters that can occur
when cardboard meets water.
The vessels
run the gamut from simple box boats to elaborate designs.
There are also cool trophies for the fastest boats. And there is the 'Titanic' award for the boat that goes down to Davy Jones' Locker in the most spectacular fashion.
When it was
our turn to compete, we were well prepared with our strategies for launching,
for synchronizing our paddle strokes, for making the turn around the marker
buoy, and for celebrating our victory. We even had four new ‘budget’ paddles we
got from Amazon.
However, as
soon as we dug in with our first strokes, we experienced catastrophic paddle
failure. The lightweight plastic deformed with each pull through the water. Our
power output was drastically reduced. It was as if we were paddling with
straws.
Regardless, our brute strength and precision paddling allowed us to
finish with a respectable, if not winning, time.
At the end of
the day, we joined the other competitors carrying our boats through a long
tunnel and hoisting them into a dumpster. Our valiant vessel made it through
two seasons completely intact, thanks to Al’s ingenuity and execution in
building it. Many other boats were carried out in handfuls of mushy cardboard.
Walking back through the tunnel past the line of sailors carting off remnants
of their boats, I had a fleeting mental image of fallen Roman
gladiators getting carried out of the arena to be discarded after performing for the crowd.
Al is already formulating plans for a new and improved design for next year!
Next: Baby Shower
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