Quite A Busy Weekend

As I alluded in an earlier post, when we're with daughter#1 there is no such thing as down time. As Type A and anal retentive as can be, our event planner has each day planned to the hilt. Time is precious. She is in town to take care of a little skin cancer problem, i.e. to get one removed from her forehead. You can see the bandage in the picture below. She trusts a local Dermatologist here in DC to not scar her as one nearly did in Connecticut. After my practice on Saturday morning (more on that a bit later), we were looking for someplace in Fairfax to eat. We don't head north that often on our days off, but I remembered seeing a Joe's Crab Shack off of the Fairfax County Parkway. So we loaded up the car and headed off. Below Daughter#1 and I enjoy some shrimp at Joe's.

After lunch we headed to Burke Lake Park to hit some golf balls. Note the Tiger Woods type swing.


Daughter#1 has just taken some lessons and wanted to show us what she had learned. Note the position of the golf club with its baseball type finish. Not recommended.

The Son and Ann each took a turn at it also although neither has played any golf in their lives beyond Putt-Putt at the beach.

She's left handed so it was a bit awkward.

Our day was finished yet. We barley got home long enough to walk the two furry kids before we were off again to watch the Potomac Nationals take on Myrtle Beach. Below is Potomac's mascot. Uncle Sam I believe.

Unlike our 4th of July disaster, we managed to get box seats behind home plate and enjoy a beer or two (except Ann who is our DD) and some Hot Dogs.

One thing about minor league baseball, they always have some promotion regardless of what day you go. Sunday it was Bring Your Dog to the Ballpark Day. They walked on the field between games. Sunday was a doubleheader as Saturday's night game had been rained out. Cute dogs. The club was actually sponsoring the Prince William County SPCA. It was kind of neat. The dogs were much more well behaved than out two furry kids.

The first game was shortened to seven innings so they could get in the second game and still get everyone home by a reasonable hour. The Nationals won 4-1. Yea! While waiting for Game #2, it started to rain. We hadn't really planned on staying for the entire second game anyway so we bugged out. One hot dog a piece left us still a little hungry so we opted to stop for some Chinese at the House of Choy on the way home.

After that we went home and I collapsed into bed. Its a good thing Daughter#1 no longer lives here. I'd be in an early grave.

Saturday's practice was quite intense. We had enough for two 8+s and more importantly two coxswains to go out with. The early part of practice was a lot of rowing by sixes so our coach could film out technique. We'll get together and review them sometime soon. Next we practiced doing more of the Occoquan Challenge turns. Than it was off to do some head to head racing. We started out headed up river toward Jacob's Rock from the race course. Both boats started out even. The task was for one boat to get open water on the other. At that point the boat that was ahead could drop out four rowers while the slower boat had to keep rowing by all 8 and take over the lead. We were the first to take the lead and get to rest half the boat. After that it was easy to continually catch and overtake the other 8+ since we were not only the faster of the two boats, but more rested as well. On the last piece from Jacob's Rock back to our boathouse, they actually were ahead at the end by a boat length, but more because they had cut the final corner so badly, they easily saved themselves several boat lengths, but also badly violated the traffic pattern. they were lucky no other boats were heading up river and coming around that turn. It could have been ugly. I was surprised our coach let them get away with it. My legs and butt were really sore/worn out by the time we reached the dock. Saturdays' row combined with Friday's row of 11 miles pushed me to my limit, which i actually a good thing. My hands have a few new blisters to show for it.

Sunday before we started our all day marathon courtesy of Daughter#1, I went for a bike ride on the W&OD Trail. I did the Rt 28 to Leesburg ride. 42:10 minutes out and 39:10 minutes back. The ride the entire trail is on for Sunday assuming we have good weather. Daughter#2 hopes to come up for it and The Son is also considering trying it. I'm getting excited about it. Right at the end of the trail is Magnolias where we hope to have lunch. heck out their beer selection. Mmmmmmmm. Just what we'll need.