Well, obviously I’m way behind on my blogging.
I don’t really have an excuse, since I’ve had a lot of free time. Oh well.
I’m going to go ahead and post all the pictures and briefs of what I’ve been doing since Robbie’s graduation party.
I stayed in Raleigh for a few more days.
On Monday we went out to Lily’s Pizza (some of the greatest Pizza I’ve ever had, and a Raleigh favorite) to say goodbye to Alyce, on her way back to Louisiana, and Errikos, on his way back to Greece.
The picture quality here isn’t great because I was messing around with the settings. Oh well.
An enormous amount of pizza:
Which we somehow managed to finish.
Alyce and Ida and Errikos and Ben:
I came back up to D.C. to load the trailer for the Stotesbury Cup. We couldn’t even get out on the Potomac that week because of the flooding.
The team had a great hospitality tent, where I didn’t spend much time because I was running between the grand stand, the trailer, and the finish line, but still.
We started by rigging. See if you can spot the similarities between this Thursday rigging session and last week’s:
Well, I don’t know how many similarities there are, but here are some I noticed: Thursday rigging weather is gorgeous!! (”It’s always sunny in Philadelphia” seems to apply only to rigging Thursday and Finals Saturday… not Friday, the longest day of the regatta…)
Also, we’ve got a Danny Heater wannabe…
The course looked pretty nice on Thursday evening:
But, the heavens were ominous:
And those clouds didn’t disappoint; it rained on Friday and was just a typically muddy race day in Philadelphia.
A story that sort of runs parallel to this is my hunt for a Visa to Bangladesh.
As of that Thursday, I had no visas for any of my travel. I had turned in my application to the Bangladeshi embassy and was expecting it to come in the mail any time. On Thursday morning I rushed down to the embassy to ask about the status of my application. The woman took my receipt and seemed surprised. “You turned it in on May 1? That was a long time ago.” … Yeah. I know. That’s why I’m here.
Apparently because I was employed by the government, I needed a letter from my boss saying I was allowed to go. Well, never mind that that is absurd and that as a government peon I should be allowed to at least take a vacation without getting some form signed in triplicate. I explained that I didn’t have a job anymore and I hand-wrote a note saying the same, and they said it would be sent out that day.
Well, needless to say, it hadn’t arrived by Monday morning.
So I set off to the embassy again, had an impossible time finding parking because of some protest rally at the Ethiopian embassy, walked up to the door… and the embassy was closed for some holiday.
Well, about to throw myself into traffic, I get a call from my brother as soon as I get back to the car, telling me that an express mail package just arrived (at 11am) containing my passport and visa. Of course, if I hadn’t gone down there myself, the package never would have arrived. Visa in hand, I went to the agency to which the Indians have, in I suppose stereotypical Indian fashion, outsourced their visa application process, and got that straightened away with minimal hassle.
… more tomorrow.