Next, you get really messy...

Dragonboating is a messy process. Here's why...

• The river we row in is pretty dirty, and when rowing correctly, we are practically half IN the water. So we get wet from the river.
• It's really hot here. We wake up early in the morning, but it's already hot out. And we work hard, so we're sweating A LOT.
• The boat is painted like a dragon, naturally, but in our furious rowing, we chip paint all over the place. It's kind of fascinating how long little flecks of blue paint can stick to a person. I sit at my desk at work, after showering, redressing, and spending six hours outside of a dragonboat, and I still have blue paint on myself.

It's also hard not to give up. There are about 33 dragonboat teams in our races. But we only see about the three best teams out on the river with us. We've started to scrimmage and we haven't won a scrimmage yet. It's kind of sad, but we're trying not to give up. We'll at least go up against teams that haven't really practiced.