Waddell vs. Drysdale

My chemical oceanography course is cancelled today, so I'm sitting at home waiting for the live broadcast of the NZ Olympic rowing trials to begin (Click on the title of this post to check it out).  At 9 am on March 4th (3 pm today for everyone on the east coast, noon for Alan, Will, JB and everyone out west) the starter's flag will go down at Lake Karapiro.  Mahe and Rob have been battling it out for weeks, and right now are tied at a victory apiece in Olympic qualifying races.  These guys are arguably the top two scullers in the world right now, so while it's terrible that only one will make it on to Beijing (and Delux), the race this afternoon should be excellent.

I was going to hold off on posting here, but I guess this race is as good a way to start as any.  I'm not sitting at the starting line of an Olympic qualifying race (I wish), but I do feel like I'm at the beginning of a pretty awesome adventure.  Hopefully I'll be able to include as many of you as possible with this blog.  Right away I need to throw a huge thank you out to Karl Huggins, Karla Heidelberg, Ken Nealson, Brad Peterson, my family, my friends and everybody on Catalina.  I also want to thank everyone involved in the Our World Underwater Scholarship Society, especially Robin Parish, Brenna Mahoney, Jim Corry and everybody else who have been sending me messages over the past few weeks.  I haven't even left home yet, and I can already feel how incredibly supportive and important this group of people is going to be to me.  I realized the other day that this scholarship is so prestigious because of the accomplishments and the character of the scholars that have preceded me, so I'm really excited to take what you all have given me and do my best to push it higher and farther than ever before.

While I'm super excited about the scholarship and about sharing my adventures with everybody through these posts, when it comes to blogging about myself, I'm just like an unfrozen caveman (thanks Chuck!!!).  I really have no idea what's going on.  I've included a couple of things like my favorite links and videos etc.  I'm going to try and keep them all updated and constantly changing, so subscribe to my RSS feed and check up on what I've got going on.  I also see this thing as a great way for people to get in touch with me, so post comments and send me messages about what you guys are doing.  Feel free to make fun of my early attempts at underwater photography and videography.  Hopefully a year will be long enough for me to learn the difference between my elbow and my aperture, and everybody can play a role in shaping my final movies and presentations.  Anyway, I've gone on long enough for one day.  Hopefully some of you see this in time to check out the race, I've got my money on Waddell!