Making friends in the Steel City . . .

SATURDAY, JULY 2, 2011 - The Herd Racing caravan has arrived in Pittsburgh for the APBA's North American Championships, and I do mean caravan. All told we have a group of 19 including family members who have joined in Pittsburgh to enjoy the 34th annual Three Rivers Regatta the next two days. Both the F2 and F3 boats were able to clear technical inspection on Saturday afternoon and will be ready for on-water activities tomorrow. We have some more work to do on the boats tomorrow morning, but they are pretty close to being ready to race, which is a world of difference from where they were at the beginning of the week. In addition to racing we spent a couple hours this evening with the young ladies at the Three Rivers Youth program. The girls, who live in several group residential homes in the city, have very diverse backgrounds. Some come from homes where there may be abusive parents or others may have gotten into trouble themselves, resulting in their placement in the residential program. The bottom line is they are all terrific ladies and seemed to have a great time this afternoon sitting in both boats and learning about tunnel boat racing. We were able to talk to the girls as a group and encourage them, as well as leave some video encouragement for them in the form of their own personal copies of the movie, We Are Marshall. Each girl got her own copy and the girls planned to watch the DVD tonight as a group. Most of them plan to be at the Regatta tomorrow or Monday and we hope they are some of our newest fans. The Jesus boat seemed to be a hit with the girls, and the F2 boat will probably be a local favorite as it looks a lot like the hometown team Steelers whose colors are yellow and black. F3 boats take to the water for the championship run tomorrow and the F2s on Monday. I'll try to get back to update on our performance later in the weekend. In the meantime, keep up with what were doing on our Twitter and Facebook feeds. Dana Tomes