Cardboard Regatta

Yesterday was the 3rd Annual Cardboard Regatta for the 48th Ward. Since I am the Activities Co-Chair, I was in charge of planning the events. I was running around Saturday morning trying to make sure everything was ready to go and I didn't even take time to look at my legs that morning. When I arrived at First Dam, someone exclaimed, "Jalayne! What happened to your legs?" Thinking she was referring to the scrapes and scabs that were the results from picking up tree branches, I started to explain and I looked down only to find this:

My legs were covered in bites! I counted 48. After I finished counting, I looked around some more and found a few that I had missed. I had at least 50 bites from my knees to my ankles. I worked outside every day this week, but I was in doors on Thursday and Friday nights. There is only one that has been itchy and bothersome, the rest have simply existed. It seemed like a lot of bites to be mosquito bites and I couldn't think of anywhere I had been where I would have been attacked so badly. Seth thought they were spider bites, which wasn't at all comforting considering the fact that most spider bites come at night while sleeping in bed. I washed my sheets, vacuumed, and dusted my room when I returned from the activity. I was a little nervous to shave over the bites today before church, but I didn't rip anything off and nothing itches today. Hopefully all of these bites won't result in West Nile.

So what is the Cardboard Regatta? First of all, a regatta is a boat race. For the past three summers, my ward has held a regatta with other wards in the stake. The rules are simple: the boat and paddles must be homemade from cardboard and duct tape-that's it. We started assembling our boat a couple of weeks ago. We had three or four engineers from the ward working on our boat design. They penciled out ideas and even calculated the dimensions. It took a lot of time and even more duct tape, but it was worth it. Other wards already had plans or weren't able to participate so we raced our cardboard boat against a raft. It was a grand time.

Getting ready to put the boat in the water

The race has begun and Colette and David can't figure out how to paddle together to make their rubber raft go in the right direction...so the homemade boat is winning

Seth, Mike, Beckie, and Jani rowing into the finish line (if you look closely, David and Colette are behind the canoe)

The Winning Team-Seth, Jani, Beckie, and Mike

And once they crossed the finish line, David threw Colette in the water

After racing the homemade boat with the raft a couple of times, we feasted on sandwiches, played a little volleyball, and headed out. It was a fun activity even though we didn't have another cardboard boat to race. The homemade boat lasted two races and a half hour ride that include a few little rapids. The boat was so water logged by the end that we just cut slits in it to allow the water to drain, severed major joints, folded the boat in half, and disposed of it in a dumpster. The activity was a success!