One of the things that I wanted to do after going through treatment for breast cancer was to join Making Waves, the dragon boat team for Join The Journey in Rochester, which I did in May. I have had a lot of fun at the weekly practices all summer and have met some amazing women.
This past weekend, some of us traveled to Dubuque, Iowa, for the 31st annual Dubuque Dragon Boat Festival.
Saturday morning we were up bright and early so we could be at the festival park by 7:30 for the opening ceremonies. This festival is normally held in Miller Park along the Mississippi River in Dubuque but due to recent flooding, the venue was moved to A. Y. McDonald Park along the Peosta Channel where the water was a little calmer.
So let me back up a little bit and give you some history about the Dubuque Dragon Boat Festival. It started in 1988 and has grown steadily since then. Each year for the past six years, there have been 30-plus dragon boat teams participating including teams from Canada and Germany! Breast cancer survivor teams are only part of it. There are youth teams, corporate teams, and community teams as well.
Each team has a camp site where they set up canopies and tables, chairs, etc., so they can watch the races in comfort. Each campsite decorates according to the overall theme of the festival. This year's theme was "Holidays," and our team chose National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day as our holiday. Let's just say we were really popular with all the free cookies we had! There are prizes given for the best campsite decorations, best team spirit, and best T-shirt designs voted on by the team captains.
The boats used in the competition are traditional Taiwan style boats made of wood. I'm not sure what kind of wood it is, but it's a heavy boat. It is divided into 18 squares--9 rows of 2--for the paddlers, one square for the stern, one square for the drummer, and a special elevated seat in the head of the dragon for the flag catcher.
The boats are loaded at a dock and then paddled to the starting line in the middle of the river. It takes teamwork from the paddlers and finesse from the stern to get jockeyed into the correct position. Commands like "right side pull water" or "three strokes reverse" are what you hear in the boat.
Once the boats are in position, the starter yells "Sterns, ready?" After an affirmative reply, he yells, "Paddlers ready?" At this point, all paddlers lean forward at the waist with their paddles in the water waiting for the air horn that signals "go" to sound. Once it does, it is basically one paddle stroke per second or a little more to race 250 to 350 yards to the finish line.
At the finish line, there is a buoy for each lane, and each buoy has a flag. The person sitting in the special seat in the head of the dragon waits until the last possible second and then jumps up, turns around and lies flat on the top of the dragon head with feet anchored around the horns and arms outstretch to grab the flag as the boat passes. It is the most intense 60-ish seconds I've ever experienced!
Each race consists of two heats, one on the inside track and one on the outside track. After the first heat, the teams paddle their boats back to the starting line, repeat the "jockey into position" maneuvers, and complete the second race.
This year in Dubuque, there were 36 teams competing. Saturday's races were the time trials, and there were some fairly significant lopsided races. On the other hand, Sunday's races were bracketed with more evenly-qualified teams competing so winners were sometimes determined by time differences of hundredths of a second.
Sunday also included the pink flower ceremony which honors breast cancer survivors. In Dubuque this year, there were only two teams whereas normally there are four to six teams. However, that did not diminish the impact and emotion of the survivor's ceremony as seen in this video.
Our team got second place, and it doesn't matter that there were only two teams. We raced our best and even improved our total time from Saturday to Sunday by almost 10 seconds. That's HUGE, considering that we were three partials teams paddling together for the first time. By the time we left on Sunday, I was tired but in a really good, satisfying kind of way. I made some new friends, learned some new skills, and saw some new country. I just don't think it gets much better than that.
Of course, there was more than just paddling over the weekend!!
The two ladies that I traveled and roomed with were awesome. We left Friday morning to make a sight-seeing day of it. We headed south on Highway 52 under partly cloudy skies and warm temperatures.
We stopped in Guttenberg, Iowa, because the motel along the highway had a deer head mounted outside each door, and the antlers for each deer had a plethora of empty beer cans on them. Some of the deer were wearing hats as well. A perfect photo op!
Right around the corner where the motel office was located, there was a wooden cow cut-out with random holes in it with a sign that said "Holy Cow!" Huhn...another perfect photo op.
Then it was on down the road for half a mile to the scenic overlook of the Mississippi River. We happened to see a barge going upriver!
The rest of the trip into Dubuque was uneventful but we were hungry by the time we rolled into town, so we stopped at a place called The Copper Kettle. It is a locally owned establishment just kitty corner for the town's old brewery. Unfortunately, the brewery is in a sad state of disrepair and is being torn down. The restaurant, however, was full of nostalgia honoring the brewery. I was fascinated by the ceiling fans that operated on a pulley system.
The burger I had there was one of the best burgers I have ever had! I'd put it up against the Juicy Lucy at Newts or the Swanee burger at Coates. It, obviously, did not surpass my homemade burgers from Brogan beef, but nothing does. Because the food was so good, and we didn't want to eat at any chain places, I asked the bartender for a recommendation for supper. She suggested their sister restaurant across the river called the Silver Spoon. Sign me up.
From The Copper Kettle, we went to the hotel to check in. The GPS took us on a scenic route there so we got to see a lot of the unique architecture of the older houses in Dubuque before getting to the hotel. We got checked in and then decided we wanted to see Galena, Illinois, which was only about 20 minutes east.
When we had gone about 20 minutes and not even crossed the river yet, we realized something was probably wrong. We pulled off into a Casey's in Farley, Iowa, and realized that we had been heading west instead of east. Uff da. Pretty sure that was my mistake as navigator! So we got back on the highway headed in the right direction and finally got into Galena about an hour later.
Oh my goodness the cute little shops they have! A lot of high-end clothing stores, several restaurants, some coffee houses, two or three candy shops, and so much more! I found the perfect dish towel for me in one of the kitchen stores.
Before we could explore everywhere we really wanted to, it was time to get supper and head back to the hotel. We did stop at the Silver Spoon on the way back to Dubuque, but we all decided it wasn't as good as The Copper Kettle had been.
Back at the hotel, we had a quick visit from the team captain with Saturday's timeline of where to be and when. Then it was into our jammies to watch some Friends reruns before lights out.
Saturday after we were done racing in early afternoon, we decided that we just had to finish up seeing the rest of Galena, so we invited others from the team who wanted to join us. The nine of us split up for shopping purposes but met up for burgers at Dirty Gurt's Burger Joynt--a very unique establishment with very good food!
This time we made it back to the hotel before full dark and opted for HGTV episodes to fall asleep to.
After Sunday's races and ceremony, we headed home tired but happy. We stopped once for gas and a stretch break and one in Harmony for supper at Estelle's. I made it home by 5:30 or so.
I am so very glad that I made the decision to join this team. These ladies are wonderful role models and support people. The team is about camaraderie and having fun while being active. If we win a medal, that's just icing on the cake.
Thanks, ladies, for making me part of the your team!
Images used:
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/c7/0a/5f/c70a5f0a30f9ac94738d7cdf4b7a2cb5--dragon-boat-quotes-dream-team.jpg
http://www.americandragonboat.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/fdrace4.jpg?gid=3
http://www.americandragonboat.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/dubrace.jpg?gid=2
So glad you had so much fun !!! Wish I could have seen you !
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