River Rat Friday
The post draw for the River Rat canoe race is tonight. Miguel, my paddling partner and neighbor, called in sick today, but says he's still up for a practice run. We plan to paddle the course and then go to Memorial Hall in Athol for the draw. We've been referring to ourselves as "Team Hi Neighbor" after the slogan for Narragansett beer. I have a post up on the class blog for my sports journalism class at WNEU on the River Rat -- basically the same article that I posted here earlier, with a couple of minor edits. When I was poking around looking for information for that article, I found this article on Yahoo! about the River Rat written by a contributor named Nick Wheeler, who has a family connection to the race. I also discovered that there is another canoe race in Western Massachusetts. It's actually next weekend. It's called the Westfield River Whitewater Canoe Race and there are actually Class III rapids on the 8-mile "novice" course. They hold three free clinics for people who are interested in paddling in the race. Had I known about it earlier, it would have been fun to go try one out. But the last one is tomorrow, at the same time as the River Rat.