Looking Ahead: Calendar Notes

This week we focus on Toronto. Practice Monday. Steel City comes down Wednesday for a scrimmage. Friday we head up to Toronto. Let me know if you expect to arrive in Toronto after 8 PM; that will help me figure out whether or when we hold a team meeting.

Saturday's an early day; our first race is at 9:20, and the 2nd is at 12:20. The average of our times in those two races determines our placement in Sunday's race. Dinner at Quigley's (Quimby's?) Saturday evening -- please let Laurie know if you are bringing someone who wasn't in the boat this morning. (This morning's count was 18 for dinner.) Time for the dinner will be included in this week's update (an early one this week -- look for it Thursday).

Races at the Point for the regatta on July 3rd -- 11 AM to 1 PM. The focus is on the novice teams here; Chuck is working out a race schedule. We'll need drummers, steerspeople, and paddlers.

Open Paddle/Learn to Paddle on July 9th. Lindsey's offered to help organize a post-practice barbecue. (Thanks, Lindsey!)

Latter half of July: Fundraiser for our GrandMasters heading to Berlin. Details to be announced. Stef, Lisa, and Judy head to Berlin at the end of July; the races are the first week in August.

Lottie McAllister Regatta on Washington's Landing on August 13 -- the focus for these dboat races will again be on the novices.

Latter half of August: a looong paddle, perhaps marathon in length, on all three Pittsburgh rivers. Stay tuned for more on this.

Elsewhere in dragon boat land in August: the races in Welland (see May 31 blog post) and in Princeton. These are both on the last weekend in August. We can gauge levels of interest/commitment to traveling to one of these once we get past the July 3rd races, but am just putting them both out there for thought right now.

As soon as September comes, we're going to be called upon for a lot of volunteer support for the Pittsburgh Dragonboat Festival novice teams, I suspect. We're also going to be getting ready for our races at that Festival.

Looking way ahead: the USDBF is holding its championships in Tampa Bay next August. One of the starting officials in DC encouraged us to attend. Do we want to put that on our race calendar for next summer?