Novice Teams Practice Schedule

Ben has not yet heard back from all of the captains of the novice teams re their plans for participating in the rescheduled races on the 23rd. In the meantime, we'll go ahead and schedule some blocks of time on the weekends for their practices.

Practice times will be available to the novice teams on Saturday, October 9th, and Sunday, October 10th, at 1:00 and at 3:00. Practice times will also be made available on Saturday, October 16th, and Sunday, October 17th. We can take out two boats per practice. Because we don't know yet which teams (or how many) will be asking to practice during these times, I am not yet asking specifically for you to volunteer for drumming or steering at any particular time, but I did want to keep you posted on how things are progressing. (After HOTO, this project will be moved to the front of the TRRA project burner.)

Individual novice paddlers will be invited to join Paddlefish practice on Monday, October 4th and Monday, October 11th, too.

Open House: Sunday, October 3rd

Open house is set for October 3rd from 12:00 – 3:00pm. If you haven’t already, please let me know if you can be there.

The invitation flyer is attached [to Lisa's email message], please forward to anyone who you think might be interested, and post where you can. Judy will get emails of acceptances and forward to me.

Kathi volunteered to be in charge of refreshments. She will purchase everything and then we will split the charge evenly amongst the team. Rachel is in charge of getting beer. Extra cookies etc are always welcome.

Open house will include (weather permitting) getting people into the dragon boats. Chuck will organize this, if you are willing to paddle, steer, drum please contact him.

Ada is going to organize a collage of dragon boat pictures, posters etc. Please let her have anything you have on Saturday, or email to her. Verna (welcome back to the team!!) is going to make sure we have videos playing – Toronto and possibly Paddlefish.

Stefani will bring sign up sheets – I will bring Paddlefish flyers, TRRA membership forms, and waivers.

If I have forgotten anything, please let me know,

Here’s to recruiting some great Paddlefish!!!!

Lisa

Practice Tonight

The river's still up, so we will practice indoors at Millvale tonight (6:30).

A brief planning meeting for the Open House will be held tonight at 8:00 sharp (at the boathouse). Lisa is in charge of organization of this one; anyone interested in helping out should come to the 8:00 meeting or, if you can't make the meeting, let Lisa know via email that you're interested. (With a bit of luck, we may be able to talk Kathi into taking the lead on organizing the refreshments for the day -- and maybe get some more of that bean dip out of her!)

Many, many thanks to everyone who helped TRRA clean up Washington's Landing on Monday. You are beautiful mud puppies, each and every one of ya.

Festival Update

RACES RESCHEDULED FOR OCTOBER 23RD AT MILLVALE.

Check out the TRRA site for photos of the flood at the WL boathouse and for regularly updated information.

A race day schedule is posted on the Pittsburgh Dragonboat Festival site; please see www.pittsburghdragonboatfestival.org/images/dragon%20boat%20races.pdf.

The schedule includes times for the novice/community team heats (whoo-hoooo: Perkins Eastman vs the Data Angels in the very first heat!) and for the masters/open mix/men's/women's. Note that the women's and men's races are later in the day than originally posted. If this will pose a problem for you, please let Ben, Pauline, and Chuck know right away.

Note that any weather-related changes will be posted on the Festival homepage (www.Pittsburghdragonboatfestival.org) on Friday.