Sunday - Completed 1st practice day

SUNDAY, 31-July-2011: Tampa, Florida
Sunday was a day of practice and bonding with teammates. We started the day by meeting in the lobby and scaring some of the other teams with our strength and poise (or was that pose) ? Hmmm? Anyway, you read Michelle & Vassar's accounts of the festival racers cheering us as we walked through the crowd. It was truly an uplifting and yet humbling experience. I even signed a couple auto-graphs. That felt ... odd!

Thunder and lighting came through so we waited patiently for practice and finally got out on the water. Tonight Senior A women did a team dinner. We sat in groups of 10 and worked on getting to know each other. Tonight I sat with Wendy from Wisconsin, Lynn from Pittsburgh, Jackie and Annette from San Diego and then Vassar, Christine (Bridge City) and Barb Wells. Very good day! :)

Oh, and last night there was a wedding in the hotel. Today we stole the groom ... just for a minute though ... for this picture! :)

From Tampa Florida...

Laurie

Master's women

Truly an amazing day - we are walking to the race site together, wearing our matching practice jerseys, and along the way we go through a part of the waterway where they have been having a dragon boat festival all weekend with rec teams competing. All of a sudden, we hear people shouting "Team USA". "You go!" and lots of stuff like that and then it swells into a chant of "U-S-A. U-S-A" that follows us all the way to the race site and ends with people wildly clapping and whooping. It was INCREDIBLE! We are smiling at first, then sort of looking at each other in disbelief, then we all walk a little slower and tougher, like, yeah we're here to BRING IT. When it's over, we are just speechless - just amazed at the pounding support, being the recipient of that crowd PRIDE. Never felt anything like it. Will never forget it.

We will not let them down.

worlds in tampa vs outside usa

walking thru the village of festival racers in out team usa practice jerseys, the racers started clapping and chatting usa. brought chills. something extra special about representing the us on home turf...

Saturday night

Most of women senior a is now here. We enjoyed cooling off in the pool and meeting some people doing recreational racing before dinner. The team meeting brought familiar faces, introductions and some great visualizations. Looking forward to great things. First practice and video review tomorrow.

10th IDBF World Dragon Boat Racing Championships -- Tampa Bay USA

The 10th World Dragon Boat Racing Championship will be held in Tampa Bay, Florida, USA on 1-7 August 2011 with racing commencing on the 3rd.
I'm packed ... the uniforms are packed in my carry-on and the flight leaves tonight. One of the more interesting pieces of this year's uniform kit is the skort ... I thought it rather ridiculous at first but it's growing on me. The polo (for dinner's out and other official things) is nice. The tank top has caused quite a surge in retail sales around the Portland area for something to make it less revealing! Ahhh, the fun we have! Anyway, just thought I'd test out the blog site to make sure everything is working. Talk to you all from Tampa!!! Laurie Hansen...

Tampa 2011

Adding the final items to the bag before heading to the airport and finding out how accurate all our visualizations have been.
And testing to see if I can post...