anaroundtheworld

So here we are, the NCCU IMBA International Dragon Boat Team 2007!!!

How does this work when you are not Asian? You just have a guy (in our case James) who says one day : "who wants to enrole for the Dragon Boat Race?". And you think that this is going to be a nice experience. I had seen a Dragon Boat Race on some HK movies and I wanted to try. I just take one precaution : "James, I am not paddling, I want to be the drummer!". And then he says "Yes Honey no Problem!" And I believed him!!!!

So then 4 weeks before the race we start organizing practice in the morning. 7AM on weekdays!!!
And I paddled to all the practice sessions have been to (I actually missed one). What was practice for? Having the same and correct paddle movement. And efficient also... it helps! And being SYNCHRONIZED. If one guy in the front row messes up, all the rows behind have to follow his false pace because otherwise the paddles collide. That is why you usually put the strong and synchronized people in the front rows so they give the example.


Had we read Wikipedia before, we would have known that they were called the "pacers" and that there was a certain angle we should have had when puting our paddle in the water and a certain elbow movement etc. Well has we hadn't, we just had to come up with that all by ourselves.


As I was the drummer I was in charge of setting the pace. And for practice we actually didn't have any drum, so it implied a lot of screaming. We thought that to make it a little less booring, we could count in French (Un, deux) whenever we were going casually to the starting line, count in German for the fast paced start (Eins, Zwei), and then back to English for the middle part of the race.
Screaming has never been so much a problem for me. But screaming and rowing at the same time was really tiring.

Xindian is the best spot for the Dragon Boat race in Taipei. The water of the river is clear. You can actually swim in it. Our poor colleagues from the Dutch team were rowing in the middle of polluted water and dead fishes. It is also not so serious. No very strict rules about the life jackets and all. It's just family casual. Restaurant a little bit up from the shore. A stage with non-stop spectacles from Dragon Dance to old-ladies dance.


So we arrived at 8:30AM to register. Our 1st race was at 9:20AM. I was kind of stressed because I had messed up the start at the last practice. We get in the boat...
Usaually only 12 people max. showed at the same time for practice. But on race day our boat was full... and unbalanced. God!!! 21 Western people on a Dragon Boat, that brings it very close from the water!!!
So here we go to the starting line. We were put in the wrong category as the administration couldn't see by our western that we were a mixed team, they put us in the men teams category... Niiiice.

And then the gun goes off!!!! And we row!!!! And we are not the last ones. Only 3 boat are per race. We were 2nd, and happy! We had never been so synchronized and efficient.

Then comes lunch and a lot of beers and poker. Our next race was at 2:50PM.

We get there for our 2nd race, confident, we know the drill. Get in the boat in orderly fashion. More to impress the other teams than becasue we really have to. Paddlers, steerer, drummer and flag catcher on the boat. We row backward to get away from the shore:
"Wait, wait, you lost your head!!!!"


The Dragon Head of the Boat is actually removable because we don't need it for practice. Ours stayed on the shore as we left. Was that a bad sign? We come back to take our head. G was not so sure anymore if she wanted to climb on it to catch the flag. We lost this race, our last one, but from what I've heard we'd never been so fast.

Than go some more beers, and tomorrow the finals races and closing ceremony.