This afternoon before practice I was outside on the observation deck of the boathouse with my shoes and socks off doing stretches I learned yesterday. I was lying down with my eyes closed and slowly getitng up when I heard the door open and someone come outside. I turned around and saw the Sup and his entourage being escorted by Coach Hall. Needless to say, I was suprised and got to my feet and saluted and then stood at attention while he came over and looked at the view. It's not everyday that I have a three star general asking me questions while I stand there with no shoes and socks on and try my best to look good. It was rather embarrasing.

For practice today we rowed to north to an island that you can hardly see from West Point because it's so far away. The row down wasn't too bad, but by the time we reached the island we were all realy tired, cold, and soaking wet. On the island is an awesome mansion that is really overgrown and cool looking. It reminded me of the place the lady lived in in the book Great Expectations. The interior was made with wood from ships in the Spanish American war. Unfortunatly the wood had a lot of gun powder in it and ended up blowing up and destroying the interior of the mansion. The outside walls still remain and have a ghostly effect. Coach wanted us to row around the island, but it was getting dark, we were tired, and we still had another 45 min of rowing back so he decided we didn't have to row around it and could just turn around at the side of it.
The way back I got really cold and was really scared of tipping over. I've never gotten scared before, but today I got really nervous and had to keep telling myself to relax and trust my teammates. In order to take my mind off of the things that were bugging me I started to sing some praise songs in my head. Soon my mind was off the cold and the fear I was I concentrating on praising God. It made the row back a lot faster for me and I wasn't very cold anymore. We got back and I was soaking wet and the temp was probably in the 60's. I took a nice hot shower and Coach Hall ordered pizza's for the team. I guess practice was pretty good today.