Hobart

After a few days in Melbourne trying to acclimatize and get back on time I flew to Hobart this morning and met up with Tom and Jennie who arrived a couple of hours later.  I started to get sick yesterday after picking up something from a kid on the trans-pacific flight.  My throat is sore, I'm bringing up green stuff (and maybe some blood too) from my lungs and I can barely talk.  But there isn't that much I can do about it and I need to make the most of being in such a beautiful and cool place.  I just hope I don't make any of the other competitors sick.  I picked up some antibiotics from a doctor's office, but I think the bacterial infection is secondary, and I still have a virus infection to get over.

There is a bunch of good stuff though.  Hobart is very cool, based around a harbor and surrounded by tall steep hills, it doesn't look very Australian, more a part of New Zealand that got lost and got stuck underneath Australia.  AND, all of our boats are here, undamaged and shiny.  Tom's paddled did get lef behind in Melbourne, but they should be here in a few hours, if they aren't already.  At the moment TeamUSA is camped out at Carol Hurst's place.  Quite a few of the Aussie team live there, and Carol was a huge help to us when she picked up the boats from quarantine and paid the duties for their import.  Here's Carol.

We've transformed Carol's backyard into a boat workshop where we, and Stefanie Valle of the Canadian team, are assembling our steeds for the following weeks.  Its nice to be around a bunch of wildwater boats and boaters again.

And speaking of wildwater boaters, here is the prototypic boater's car - a real classic, belonging in this case to top Aussie racer Dan Hall.

So, hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow as we shop for resin and glue, do more boat work and head north to the site of the first race, the Mersey.  My SIM card is yet to arrive for my phone so I'm not sure how often I will be able to keep this updated if the phone doesn't come through.  I'll do my best though.