My son is a freshman in high school and is on the rowing team, which is a new sport for all of us. I think he likes the fact that this is one of the few sports I know nothing about — other than what I read in The Boys in the Boat — and therefore I can’t give him any helpful advice. This may come as a shock to some of you, but he seems not to particularly care for my undoubtedly extremely helpful tips and pointers as to how he can better himself in any number of areas in his life. His loss.
An email recently went around to all parents of the rowers on my son’s team asking for volunteers to “drive a launch” at the upcoming spring regattas. Now, I had no idea what “a launch” is. I thought it was a truck with a trailer that hauls around the boats. So I volunteered. Why not?
It wasn’t until a few days later that I discovered that a launch is actually a mini-catamaran that coaches use during practice and referees/marshals use during the regattas. They use volunteers to zip the referees around on the water during the races. Once I realized that, I was totally in. I had one training session on how to drive the launch (I still have no idea why it’s called that) and then went live last Sunday. I had no idea what I was doing.
Fortunately, despite the frigid temps, the marshal I was responsible for motoring around was very nice, and we had a fun morning out on the lovely Schuylkill (pronounce it with me: “SKOO-kill”) River, yelling at rowers and getting them lined up correctly at the starting area. Here’s a picture of me hard at work along the famous Boathouse Row.
(Here comes the segue.)
Today we, ahem, launch something new at CMEpalooza (did you see what I did there?)
(note from Scott: Unfortunately, I did. We have, ahem, sunk to a new low. Did you see what I did there?)
The people have spoken and you are requesting, nay demanding, a CMEpalooza podcast. And we have heard you and responded. Kind of. There is a CMEpalooza podcast now, but it is basically just an archive of the audio from previous sessions. And for right now, it’s just the audio from the very first CMEpalooza back in 2014 as part of our 5-year anniversary celebration. It’s a work in progress, and we’ll be gradually adding the rest of the sessions over the next few weeks. Like driving the launch on Sunday, I really don’t know what I’m doing, but you’re all nice people and hopefully this will turn out fine, too.
Will we ever turn it into an actual podcast with original content updated on a regular basis? I don’t know. We’ll see. For now, this is what we have. Here are the links if you want to subscribe. Or you can just search for “CMEpalooza” in either Apple or Google podcasts.
Apple podcast (I can’t get the stupid Apple podcast badge to work, so here’s the link)
CMEPALOOZA 
Oops…realized you already did…Thanks!