Dublin Head + a day at Powerscourt

Last weekend i rowed in my first regatta with the University College Dublin Ladies' Boat Club. It was amazing! First of all, i'm still amazed by the fact that i'm getting to row in January and now February. ON THE WATER. Rowing on the water at this point of the year in either Minnesota or Michigan would probably require some sort of steel-hulled shell (boat), which would definitely slow it down a little bit.




On to the regatta! It wasn't actually a regatta, but a head race, which is longer than the normal spring racing course of about 2000 metres (notice the -re instead of -er???!!). The Dublin Head was 3.8 km, starting at O'Connel Bridge and ending after Island Bridge, right before the weir (a sort of dam thing). I had rowed with that particular line-up of girls only twice before, on the previous weekend, but it had felt pretty good, especially for it being the first time i was in the boat and i was super excited to have even be chosen to race. The race was on Saturday morning and 2 of my friends even came down to watch it (a cute v-day-inspired poster in tow). I heard them scream my name as i went under O'Connel Street Bridge, but i stayed focus on the race, and we got through it with out any problems. Rowing through the city centre of Dublin was such a cool experience; we passed under haypenny bridge, and past such landmarks as the Custom House and the infamous Guiness Factory. We even beat the other boat in our category! It wasn't a major race or anything, but it was a great deal of fun, and i can't wait for more chances to race! Once back at the boathouse, we celebrated with valentines-themed and other special cookies and sweets that some of the girls had prepared, Yum! There was even a story about it (the race not the cookies) on the ucd website: http://www.ucd.ie/sport/news_160209_boatdublinhead.html




This Friday, i, along with my friend Alanna, went to Powerscourt, the traditional country home of the Powers family, of the whiskey brewing fame. It is a beautifully preserved estate, which has been open to tourists for the last few decades. Along with the beautiful house, there are beautiful gardens, which expand behind the house down into the valley below. They were designed with Versailles in mind, and this influence is clearly visible. The main Garden has a great deal of manicured shrubs and Classical-Style Statues of Greek and Roman Gods, in both marble and bronze. The focal point of the Garden is Triton Lake, a circular pond with a sculptural fountain of Triton, spewing a tall flume of water from his mouth. There is also a beautiful Japanese garden.




The day we went on couldn't have been more perfect; it was unusually sunny compared to the weather that we've had so far here. It's also just about turning to spring here, so early spring flowers like crocus were just starting to bloom and everything else was starting to really green up.




I'm falling asleep as i write this....i'll fix any mistakes later :)

Snow Panic

Over the past week, Dublin has received the largest amount of snow since the early 90's (or the 1980's or since 'the big snow' depending on who you ask). The amount of snow in this 'snow panic', which is what it is being called on all the big news stations, is not quite the emergency-causing proportions that midwesterners might imagine. Although it has snowed at least a little maybe every other day over the past week, i can confidently say that there hasn't been more than 2 inches on the ground at any time. This hasn't stopped the Irish from celebrating the 'novelty' of it, though.

On the Monday, the snow was little more than small ice chips that only collected in small amounts, but that was enough to cause people to slow to a crawl on the N11, the major motorway that goes past UCD. The next day it did snow a little more, causing commotion all over campus. My friend Alanna, who's no stranger to snow being from New Jersey, and I watched from a window on the second floor of the library as students seemed to revert back to childhood, gathering whatever snow they could to make snowballs, throwing them at everything (outsides of buildings, insides of buildings, bicyclists, buses, people) they could.

It snowed again on Thursday, and this time it was totally respectable. It was perfect packing snow and i got to walk through an Irish winter wonderland on my way to the Tesco supermarket. I almost ended up getting pummeled by snowball toting children, but then they saw a bus and decided to throw snowballs at that instead.

I think my favorite part of this mini-reminder of the way winter is supposed to be was teaching my Australian floor-mate how to really make a snowman (you have to roll it!!), making the second snowman at crew practice with the rest of the girls from the Boat Club on Sunday morning, and giving winter-condition driving tips to some locals (stop before you think you need to, don't overcorrect when you start to slide, and pump the brakes).

I hope the snow is over and that it will be beautiful and springlike, with no rain from now on......just kidding, i know that Irish weather is anything but consistent (example: if i check 3 different weather reports for Dublin online, they will all be different and none of them will end up being correct). More later!

A little mishap on the Liffey

Everyone experiences small embarassments or little "fails" in their daily life. Tripping up the stairs in front of people, dropping your tray at lunch time in the cafeteria, forgetting what you were going to say in front of class - these are all small fails. Once in a while, you might expeience a bigger fail, like tripping up the stairs in Spartan Stadium, or in rowing, maybe, flipping a single. Flipping a single can be funny, tragic, or both. Either way, it usually is over pretty fast. What i did today, goes a little beyond that.

I just started rowing with the University College Dublin Ladies' Boat Club a week ago, so i don't know too many people and i haven't really been placed in any specific boats yet. I've rowed 3 times on the water now, twice in a pair, and once in a single. Today i went out in a single. I was both excited and nervous about this, since i hadn't sculled very much since high school. It was a little windy today, so it wasn't the best row, but i was doing pretty well considering. Over half way into my row i got caught in the weeds in the bend of the river and it took me a few minutes to get out, just because of the wind and where i was on the river. Now, i thought this was kind of embarassing, since a few boats passed me pretty closely while i was struggling for a few minutes. Once i got out, i thought to myself "well that was probably the worst thing that will happen all day, at least it's over!".

A little later i was back near the boat house and i decided to bring it in. I tried to bring it in the same way that i had the day before, from across the river. I checked and didn't see any boats coming, so i started rowing across the river, so i was probably at a 45 degree angle with the dock. All of a sudden i turn around and i see a double, coming straight toward me.I yelled "way enough!" which now that i think about it, probably is a completely different command here, but we both checked it down.....it was too late though. Their bow went straight over and onto mine and then we both stopped moving. I was scared that there was going to be damage, just because of the sound that it made when we collided, but it didn't look like there was any. That didn't make things too much better though, due to the fact that their boat was completely on top of my bow, and if i'd leaned over i could've given the bowman a high-five, except for the fact that would have been completely inappropriate at the time. Also, this double was a trinity double, which is apparently our rival school, so it would've been like if i'd collided with some double from Michigan, awesome.....So we tried to get out of this situation, by pushing eachother off, and both backing down, but nothing was working. Luckily, we were right in front of the boathouse and some guys from the club had seen this happen (along with other boats on the water, and at least 20 people just hanging out in the park right across the river) so they ran down and got into this training double, which is basically just a tub. They rowed out and after like 10 minutes of pushing my bow down, theirs up, and removing one of my oars, we were free.

I'm pretty sure both boats were fine, no one was injured, and i somehow managed not to flip the single, even though at one point i had one oar in, and had my feet out because i was sitting behind my seat, trying to shift the weight, but that was seriously the most embarassing thing i have ever had happen to me while rowing. I had only met 2 of the guys that were there before, so i was really worried that i was in deep trouble or something, but they didn't seem to think it was that big of a deal.

Ugh, so that's my epic fail, i only wish someone had a camera, because i honestly think it might've made it onto fail blogs. I'm going to go eat massive amounts of nutella now.