The Road to 2012

It’s true. This post is shamefully, awfully late. We’ve added a few updates to the gallery and tweaked the look of the site here and there, but any sort of updates on our Road to 2012 have been absent. I’m writing this from work at DEKA Research and Development up in Manchester, New Hampshire (more on this later) where I’m living and training for the summer. Dave is back in Washington, DC working for Boeing. Neither of us can talk about what we’re doing, as we’re operating under NDAs or Secret clearances… pretty cool, though not as exciting as it should be.

So much to talk about! For now, I’ll start with a quick list of the events in our lives, both academic and athletic, since the last post.

• Triathlon! I attended the Lone Star Half-Ironman in Galveston, TX and the Endurasport Olympic Triathlon in Pomona, NY, and won both (for the 20-24 age class). I’m still gearing up for the full-length Ironman at the end of August, so, more on that to come.

• Olympic Trials! Dave traveled out to Oklahoma City this past April to race for a spot on the US Olympic Team. He ended up with some impressive results, finishing 6th in the finals. Unfortunately it takes a win to go to the Games, so we’re going to have to hold off until 2012 to make our statement.

• The school year’s over, along with the brunt of our work for our Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering degrees. Next year should be much simpler on the brainy side of life, giving us plenty of time to focus on the brawn. The US Men’s team has been fantastic in 2008–we’re going to need the brawn.

• We’ve decided on a senior project in the engineering department. For those of you who haven’t seen this already, go over and check out the Flyak;Einar Rasmussen has been working on this hydrofoiled modification to the K1 for years, and it looks like it’s about to go into production. David and I are going to take this concept and apply it to the K2. It’s a slightly tougher problem, as we won’t have a paddler sitting at the rotational center of the boat (important for pitching the front foil up out of the water and alleviating some of the hull drag, allowing the boat to speed up for “lift-off”. We’ve got a few ideas for overcoming this, including generating bubbles from the leading edge of the hydrofoil to keep the kinematic viscosity low until take-off–props to Mike Harbold, 3x Olympian and former WCC coach for this insight.

• I’m learning the Blues Harmonica, mostly on my own but with some help from Adam Gussow over at YouTube. One of the unfortunate truths of full-time training is the overwhelming boredom that sets in once the initial excitement of it all wears off. I’ll always be the kid with the odd hobbies, but composing the 2012 Blues might just make up for all that. (Other obsessions in my life–I’m learning to ride motorcycles this August, I’m playing Jazz guitar again, and I’m finally, finally learning to cook.)

• David and I will be making an appearance at the Lake Placid Invitational on the weekend of July 5th. Come out and support the dream!

Back to work. Thanks for reading, everyone, if you’re still checking up on this. David will add his voice again shortly. One fun little addition to the site we’re expecting to begin shortly–video posts from our respective locations, via YouTube.