Princeton

Before I came to Princeton, I had established a fairly typical young person’s employment record: glittering instances of food service, delivery driving, and gritting my teeth through low-to-mid-range retail. All of my previous jobs have had their perks and their drawbacks, but none of them have ever been quite like the job I keep now in Princeton. For as much as I would like to write an entry about my financial situation in Princeton being centered around prize monies, endorsements and stipends, I can’t. Instead, this is an entry about being attacked by housecats, ripped off by heroin addicts, scrubbing toilets, and pureeing cauliflower. Rowing may be my primary responsibility while I’m in Princeton, but I have to have money in order to afford to row.

There was a morning this fall that we all met at the boathouse at our usual time, expecting our usual workout, with the usual water and the usual boats. As we all groggily waited for the ok-go from Tom and attempted to position our limbs in ways that vaguely resembled stretching, Tom dropped the bomb that has since defined the way I consider my role at PTC. He said: “I’ll be going with the older group.” Then looking at me and some of my younger, newer cohorts he added, “and novices, Laurel is going to go with you.”

One of the simplest ways to introduce outsiders into our niche of the elite athletics community is to create a basic understanding of one of the most fundamental elements of the sport that we as athletes may at times take for granted: the training facilities. I know that I am guilty of complaining about not having security lights in the parking lot, or the cloud of stink floating out of the men's locker room that you have to walk through in order to get to the women's locker room, but the fact remains that the facilities at Princeton are some of the best in the country and we rarely have any real complaints to lodge with our training facilities. In this week’s entry, I’ll try to show you what it looks like to row and train at the Princeton Training Center. Nat’l teamers bear with me, I know you all know what it looks like, but there is a remote possibility that not everyone in the world knows what it’s like to train at PTC, since people seem to ask me all the time.

When Sean and Matt approached us with the concept for this website, I was really excited. What a cool project! After having just finished up my BAs at the University of Washington, one of which was culminated in a senior thesis project written on social networking websites, I was definitely interested to see where the site could go. The potential for social networking websites is practically limitless, and I think that the specialization of online networking is just one of the many things which are yet to come as these fascinating and unique aspects of cyberculture continue to grow and develop.

In the recent poll, 52% of people thought San Diego was the best place for winter training. I wonder if the vote was taken today if it would be the same? Steve, don't you wish you were back in Princeton? We've been having very pleasant weather in the 50's, no complaints here! And when we are on the water, we don't have to watch out for plane wake (Scott).