Dragon Boats!

Over the Labor Day weekend, Lansing hosted its first Dragon Boat Race as part of an effort to give Lansing residents a 'stay'cation', or a reason to not leave town. Usually town is dead over the weekends, and it was a bit creepy as my husband and I headed to Adado Park in the wee hours of Sunday morning to rally up with our newly-formed Dragon Boat team- the streets were empty and Lansing was unusually quiet.

Down at the riverfront, however, the amazing American Dragon Boat Association volunteers were getting things organized to start a day of racing in 40-ft-long brightly-colored boats with carved dragon heads. I had joined a team that formed not hardly 2 weeks earlier, and we were a motley crew of friends-of-friends. We had learned everything we knew about dragon boats the day previous, in a sweltering practice session on the Grand River, near our Lansing City Market, and were now channeling our inner dragons for energy and stamina (most of us had been up at 5am) and shaking out pre-race jitters.

Our first time-trial run was not our best, but over the next 2 heats we pulled together and won 1st place in the competition, and it was easily the most fun I have had all summer long. In fact, all of us were so stoked by the race that now we're looking into paddling another race before the close of the season, traveling to a not-so-distant location, and looking for opportunities to work together as soon as we can so we can maintain our champion status for next year's race.

If the mission of the race organizers was to keep residents interested in staying in Lansing, it worked!