Dragon Boats

Every year Portland hosts the Rose Festival which has now been going on for the past week or so. The Festival includes various activities such as parades (3 of them which I think is a little much), fireworks, and Fleet Week in which a lot of military type boats and a couple of pirate ships come to dock. Another of the traditional festival activities and the one that I have enjoyed the most are the dragon boat races which Fishfrog and I watched today. These are Chinese boats that were donated by one of Portland's sister-cities. The races we saw were in the high school and women's divisions, but they also have a mixed division.


The really cool part about it is that Fishfrog knows someone who rows on a team and was able to go out on the boat a couple of weeks ago to give it a try. He came back with blisters, covered in sweat saying that it was incredibly hard, but that it also provided some fabulous views of the city (as you may guess, Fishfrog didn't use the word 'fabulous,' I've taken some literary privileges in the description... I like my version better). Despite his dire warnings about the amount of pain it causes, I think it looks like a lot of fun and am very jealous.