Tail of the Lake

Second biggest regatta of the fall head races here in Washington. It's not a high profile event, or a major one, nobody is flying in from Alaska or driving up from California, but most of the local clubs try to make it. It's run by Holy Names Academy and they have long asked the other schools to enter their best boats in the men's or women's open events.

Which means that as a middle schooler and high schooler Perry was racing against young men in their 20s.

He's been slowly going up in the ranks, 3rd and then 2nd the last two times the regatta took place.

Today he literally walked away with first, by about 20 seconds. The guy who came in 2nd has won the event on and over the years and maintained a friendly rivalry with Perry since Perry was a middle schooler who looked up to Cody.

What did impress me? Perry is a beautiful rower, he truly is, his technique is great and he's graceful in the boat. He's also a smart rower. Today, going into the last turn before the final sprint? He was coming up on four other boats. One of them yielded the better line to him, because he was overtaking, and the others did their turns, which were normal decent turns. One of Perry's skills is his navigation and turns, and he passed all four boats as he took the turn incredibly tight, very close but not touching the buoys. It was elegant, and set him up beautifully for the final sprint.

In other news his "Lady's Boat", a cox'ed four he's been coaching all summer won their division easily and well, and they even beat their rival boat, the "Bro Boat" mostly coached by the other SAS coach. (They chose their names!) The women from the Lady's Boat made t-shirts, and I wish I'd gotten a picture: their own silhouettes in the boat, it was quite cool. Perry's says "COACH" on the front. Oh. SAS is Sweep and Schull. They'll all be progressing to ASS, Advanced Sweet and Scull. LOL.

Despite getting up at 5:30 AM, the chill and the mist, it was a good day. Perry's girlfriend, who'd spent the night came with us and watched with us most of the morning. I like her, she's a rower, and it was fun.

Scared ETA ALL OK

Perry left here at a bit past 7pm. He should have been home by now and seen the barrage of texts, some important, some not, and some that he needs to ack and answer... ahd we haven't heard from him.

I'm sick to my stomach with fear. I don't panic easily, but he was up so very early this morning.

Ugh.

ETA Needless to say, he's fine. Last night, after I wrote this, I started thinking.

1. His girlfriend wasn't responding to a text either. They drove up together, but not in the same car.
2. There were no slowdowns on I5 (aside from late closures) and nothing from WSDOT on twitter about anything that indicated an accident.
3. The first text that freaked up out from Linnea asking if he was dropping off the stuff we sent for her was sent about 30 minutes after he'd have been back, when he could, perhaps, have been sleeping if he went straight to bed after getting in.

Note that he'd gotten up at 4:30AM after getting to bed late, and a full days either rowing, coaching, or hanging out with friends.

But. Perry never goes to bed early, even after he's gotten up early.

But he did. So, eh. He got home at 8:30 and went straight to bed. By the time of Linnea's first "where's my stuff, Perry?" text, he was long asleep.

I feel like such an idiot. Got a text at 4am from him and was able to sleep for a few straight hours after that.

I don't know why I panicked like that, I typically don't. All I can think of was the combination of being very tired myself (up at 5:30AM after going to bed even later than Perry!), dh being tired and also freaking out, and Perry's atypical behavior, well... it all added up. So.

Official I'm an idiot ETA finished.