Training Going well in Oakland

We've been down here now for a week and training has been going well for most of the team. Some members have gone down for a few days with some kind of sickness/flu bug. It seems as though it hits someone new each day. Time for isolation rooms I think!!

The weather has been much better the last few days as we haven't seen rain since Sunday.(day off) Training on the waterway is definitely different than on Elk Lake. For starters it is salt water and absolutely filthy! We all try to make sure that if we get our hands wet.....which we obviously do, we don't touch our mouths or eyes. As soon as we get back to the boathouse everyone has a shower, washes up and uses disinfectant hand sanitizer. Apparently you can get a nasty staph infection if you don't. Since my clothes usually get wet, I only wear them once so I have a few "outfit" changes per day!

We generally row about 10km down the waterway and if we wanted to could row out out to the Bay Bridge or Alcatraz, but it is usually just too rough with all the container ships out there. I think we all had pretty much the longest row ever the other day. Two hours almost continuous, just 2 short 4 minute breaks. Talking for that long did start to get a bit much for the guys, but I suppose you could suffer through worse. (training meetings :))