The GLRF Blog

A little late in writing this catch up post. A sinus infection (my first) hit me hard and left me dazed and confused at the booth and crashing at night.

Saturday saw the total animation of the booth on our right, Row For The Cure with the warm and totally engaging founder, Kathy Frederick. They were there to spread the word about the 2008 Row For the Cure regattas in Portland and Seattle, both scheduled for 21 September. Others are planned but no schedule was available. GLRF will list the regattas on our calendar since we honor at least one GLRF member who is a thriving, race competing rower and survivor in Boston. They’re also looking for club coordinators to help spread the word. You can contact Kathy at fairygodmother3 (at) verizon [dot] net to volunteer.

What makes the Northwest Regionals so cool? It’s the unique community feel of the park/lawn/beach that brings everyone into the same area: vendors, race officials, rowers, and you can watch the entire race from the luscious and soft lawn. (okay, so bring some bug spray – the no-see um’s begin to turn into thirsty vampires by 3:00 pm. That and the awesome music that keeps the mood easy and happy all day long.

So who comes to the race? There were Marin Rowing Association folks from the San Francisco Bay Area, every rowing club in Oregon and Washington, and a great showing from Vancouver and Victoria. The somewhat outdated rule that said competitors outside the Northwest region could not win a gold medal in a race has been replaced by the standard gold/silver/bronze and a Northwest Trophy goes to the winning Northwest club – this year: Lake Union Crew! Woo hoo! Also, not sure if other countries offer the same feature, but there were some great races to watch in the AA category, meaning under 26, which is a relatively new USRowing category.

So how did days 2 and 3 work out? We saw a lot of visitors at the booth on Saturday and Sunday, including membership registrations from Washington and Oregon and Canada. The GLRF gear seemed to fly off the tables, and one Dad even came by just to say he was glad we were there. Speaking of flying, the GLRF booth started getting some Flying Nun action beginning at Noon on Saturday. When I mentioned the problem to Margaret and Rome, they both just looked at me with a total WTF look. Doesn’t anyone know about the Flying Nun ? Come on! Alright, the winds were lifting the canopy off the frame. No, Alejandro Rey didn’t appear but the wind was creating total havoc at the starting line as stake boats kept breaking away. Finally they put the regatta on wind hold at 3 pm and called it at 5 pm. All existing heats went to finals based on finish times. The next morning went off without a hitch although some of the Vancouver Island folks had to scratch in order to catch the last ferry back to the island. We had some typical early morning Northwest mist/rain but the sun came out later.

Kudos to the USRowing Northwest Rep, James Rawson, who did his magic to keep the regatta from missing a beat between Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. (yes, ’til 8:30 pm, he did toil…) , and many thanks to all of the volunteers for an awesome regatta. More pics posted on the GLRF NWR2008 page .

ps: Albert, Mr. Vic City Rowing Club Coach – you look good in every thing.

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What a gorgeous day. Just posted the pics to the booth promotion page – see it here. The first person that greets me as I dash down the lawn is Margaret Christopher from Whirling Girl Jewelry. There couldn’t be a nice chick on the planet. Her Mom thinks we should tie the knot. With the new California marriage laws, would I be Party A or Party B. She is going to kill me when she finds out I uploaded that pic of her to the flickr photostream on the booth page.

Alec stopped by from JL Racing – hadn’t seen her since last summer at the Royal Canadian Henley. She’s working there full time so it looks like the company is going to be in great hands (Joline’s daughter, she is…).

How about a Canadian as Obama’s VP? Drew Harrison was busy shaking hands and saying hi to everyone. As the Wintech rep in the Northwest and a talented coach, he knows EVERYONE! He even got in some races in the afternoon.

So who is the Regatta Committee chair this year? None other than the talented and always sharp-looking Rome Ventura. It was no surprise there were no delays in the race schedule with that lady at the helm. Rome is known up and down the West Coast as the coach that delivers winning crews at every regatta.

A new face and booth at the regatta is Nancy Klein from Oariginals. She had some cool rowing accessories, like cards and gifts, and a great selection of temporary tattoos. See the photostream to see the 8-man boat on her arm.

Okay, well weigh-in’s open at 5:30 am and more importantly parking spaces disappear by 6 am so this rower bud is crashing at 10:15 pm.

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We just finished updating the GLRF Denmark country page with the new regional community focus. So far we have converted 15 of 26 of the GLRF country pages to help build a local and regional rowing community among gay and lesbian rowers. To come up with a country map, we use the google image search engine and usually input something like ‘Xcounty maps.’ When we did that with Denmark, the number of listings seemed to go on forever as compared to say Switzerland or Austria.

With the recent news of the 2009 Outgames receiving a multi-million Kroner grant to market their event and Denmark abroad, it all begins to make sense. This is is a country that really puts its resources into promoting its country and its wonderful beauty. There is so much to explore and see in the country, and for such a small population, they are REALLY into rowing. Check out the GLRF visit to Denmark in Sep 2007 : we hung out at the the 2007 Danish National Rowing Championaships in Aarhus (rescheduled to a later weekend due to high winds), and then tooled around wonderful Copenhagen.

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The 2009 Copenhagen World Outgames staff will be hitting the US eastern seaboard campaign trail in June. Outgames’ Director of Sports Tommy Kristoffersen and his entourage will be hitting four cities: Boston, Washington DC, Philadelphia, and New York City. Rowers can find information about the events in each city by visiting the GLRF Calendar page and/or by looking at the GLRF United States calendar panel , and of course, rowers can get a look at the planned rowing venues and formats at the GLRF World Outgames Regatta page .

GLRF members in each of the four cities will also receive the new ‘calendar and message board digest’ emails that summarize new message board posts and new calendar events. The weekly email program is part of the GLRF project to help strengthen local and regional community ties. Over the past two months, the GLRF membership database has been undergoing a conversion to a regional focus so rowers in a given locale can learn about local and regional events without being inundated with extraneous emails outside of their area. As an example, the Boston event will go to GLRF members in the New England region: MA, ME, RI, NH, VT, and CT. The other event emails will go to GLRF members in the following three regions: New York, Pennsylvania /NJ, and MidAtlantic. This service is just another benefit of our new web hosting service .

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