Painting, Movies and Rowing

Friday I got the first coat of paint on the porch floor.

It is so good to see that chore nearing completion. As I was putting stuff away Michelle pulled into her driveway. She told me to try and make it the Train Station downtown. The old Louisville-Nashville depot downtown has been rehabbed into a banquet facility. West Alabama Aids Outreach was hosting a “first Friday” gathering showing the movie Steel Magnolias. I’ve only seen excerpts, never the entire movie.

Picture of the station from the internets:

I was so worn out from painting I was originally going to just go to bed. This function was scheduled to be from 7:00-10:00. I never go out anymore… so after I took my shower I put on my Utilikilt and took off on foot downtown.

It is not a far walk. There was a large crowd waiting for tables standing outside DePalma’s. It’s funny: when I walked by it got real quiet and I could feel the eyes boring into me. I just kept walking with an assured gait and my eyes looking straight ahead. It takes balls to wear a kilt!!

There was a good crowd out. I saw many friends and enjoyed the movie. There was a special treat in they had an Armadillo Cake that was cut and served in synch with the movie!

Walking home I was waiting for the light by DePalmas. This man approached me and asked what band I played with. I told him I was not in any band. Then he inquired why I was wearing a kilt. I broke into a smile and told him to check out the website http://www.utilikilts.com/ . My kilt is the most comfortable item of clothing I own, I enjoy being an evangelist for Utilikilts!

I'm so beat this morning. Instead of taking out an eight, Katie fixed it so there were two crews rowing in the four. Katie coxed with Krystal in stroke seat, a college rower was in the three seat, I was in two seat and Wendy rowed bow. Katie said she wanted to have the serious rowers out first, as it would be a similar work-out to what the college kids do. After rowing with the “learn to rows” all week I was set to kick some butt. This would the first time I've rowed port in quite a while

We did drills down to the steel mill. Only having four people in the boat makes it fast work to go through the drill rotations. Thursday morning was one of those magic sunrises on the river. The sun was a huge orange orb suspended and reflected in the river. I took along my camera just in case we had such a sunrise today. It was not an intense sunrise, but pretty nice just the same. This shot was taken about 6:00 a.m. as we took a last quick break before rowing non-stop back to the dock.

We rowed all four back to the dock bumping up the stroke rate in segments of 20 strokes and rowing easy between the sets. Krystal has not really rowed for while, nor has
Wendy. I know I was beat when we docked. But it was a “good beat”. The second crew of rowers was waiting for us as we pulled in. We did not have to carry the boat up the hill.

I'm 9,000 meters behind my Concept 2 "Dog Days of Summer" challenge. It is going to be real hard to get 4,500 meters down at the "Y" today.