"What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first step to something better."
Despite my extreme confidence in winning the race down in Arkansas, we lost and came in second. Behind by about ten minutes in a 120 relay race over three days.
I've long since gotten over the frustration of being beaten; in fact, I may have never had it in the first place, since I lost so many races in my first racing season. The way I figured it, I lost because I wasn't a good enough paddler as those that beat me, and that I can improve myself. Unfortunately, this race consisted of a four person team, and I'm afraid that I'm having a hard time blaming myself, like I usually do.
Hopefully, my confidence in my paddling partner will be restored in a few weeks, because we are racing together at Nationals for the C-2 Junior Mens race, and this will be our last year as 'Juniors' (I actually race Mens everywhere else; in fact, I'm the only junior to win the Illinois Mens C-2 Champion thingymajig). This really is our year; if all goes well, I could win most of the races I enter. Only thing I can do is keep training like I have been all year and improving more, and just hope that the other guy figures out that a shitty workout like paddling two times a week, only six miles each time, with a long rest in between, and only practicing sprints, won't do anything (minimum for us is 9 miles each workout, with little or no rest).
Sorry to bitch. I just took a 20 hour round trip, and paddle my brains out three exhausting days, to lose a race that we could have won.
Anywho.
Meant to finish up D. Gray Man before I went to Camp, but that didn't happen. I wanna wrap it up as soon as I can so I can get started on The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. There's also another anime that I have to find; I saw a web-based cartoon series based after it, but I can't remember what it is, and will have to go look back at the videos to find out. It's supposed to be really geeky, even to the point of D&D geek, so I might not even like it.
Still have to beat Persona 4. Blegh.
Played much Unreal Tournament 3. My crap PC can't really handle it to the potential I'd like it to be, but it's still sweeeeeeet.
Youmacon sent me back an email saying that I've been processed, and ready to ship to outer Detroit in late October. Somehow, that gave me the mental image of me cosplaying as a giant cheese roll. I don't know why.
We actually passed through a town called Oil Trough, Arkansas. With it's own Oil Trough watertower, Oil Trough Elementary, Church of Oil Trough. They seemed to be very proud of the Oil Trough name.
Wishing he had the fun of putting "Graduate of Oil Trough Elementary" on his resume,
-Ryu
