FULL RACE- Port Townsend to Ketchikan
Team Name: Team Hot Mess
Team Captain: Will Schwenger
Total crew: 4
Race vessel: Modified Olson 30
Young people today. Listless, couch bound and obsessed with the internets and their twitter phones, playing Call of Duty in the basement and only heading upstairs at night to grab a Mountain Dew and make sure “Spicy Cheetos” is on their parent’s shopping list. No good chit-chat linger-loiter riff-raff.
When we were their age we were twice their age…and their music is just noise.
Not the fine young men of Team Hot Mess. They launched well past their parent’s basement and had a collegiate experience filled with accomplishment. While their peers racked up student loan debt smoking clove cigarettes, writing self indulgent poetry and using Camus-based platitudes to score, the industrious lads of Team Hot Mess racked up student loan debt winning medals all across Canada. Rowing, sailing, sailing again- Summer Games, National Championships, Olympic Development team. Their resume is truly impressive. If there was a collegiate water based competition in Canada these guys probably won it, or at least came close, at least once.
In case you didn’t notice, other people apparently did. In the words of one of their crew:
“I am well known across the US and Canada as talented crew and a fierce competitor”
While we might not have heard of them before they applied, the R2AK was thrilled to see someone else shares our same brand of notoriety; we tell everyone we meet we’re famous too.
Since college, the team hasn’t returned to the basement but ventured boldly forth for work and play; from trudging around the Arctic to a sailing circumnavigation of the Peloponnesian Peninsula. Team Hot Mess bundled all of that accomplishment, packed it onboard an Olson 30, then bolted on a carbon fiber bowsprit to carry even more sail, then bolted on a pedal drive, screwed in a pair of oarlocks, and shanghaied a championship rower as a contingency plan.
That’s smart, college smart.
Team Hot Mess is repping a generation, a country, and the idea that glory days don’t have to end at graduation. Enthusiasm and accomplishment, while they might not be making young people today like they used to, Team Hot Mess is a nod to the fact that it’s quite possible they are actually making them significantly better.
Welcome aboard Team Hot Mess, may the R2AK be your chance for even more accomplishment and anonymous fame.