207. Dragon Boat Races

International Dragon Boat Races

The Lake Merritt venue for DBR is growing on me. It doesn’t seem to be as popular with dragon boat teams though, there were fewer teams this year than last year. For the first time I had time on my hands mid-day on Sunday. In the past this event has run me ragged all day, both days.

In part this was because I’ve gotten better and the other crew we work with has gotten better (they know to stay our of my way), but I think there were just fewer teams. Poor Oakland.

I do still miss the Treasure Island site. It was always fun getting there and just being out there in the middle of the bay. But Lake Merritt is at least as beautiful in its own way. It’s also fun for me because it just feels so foreign (in a Midwestern sort of way) compared with SF. I’ve learned the local bus situation now so I’m not making the long hike from BART. And just waiting for my bus on Grand at the end of the day is interesting. That stretch of Grand could not be mistaken for any area of SF. 

Of course the weather plays a part in this. We managed to dodge the worst of the heat this year (it’s been getting hotter each day since Saturday but isn’t going to peak until Wednesday). It was warm but comfortable both days this year, whereas last year it was scorching.

Here are the few photos I took on my Saturday lunch break:

This is the view from the building where they fed volunteers and staff. From left (south) to right (north):

Below there's a spectator area on the left and one of the two crew areas (with all the tents) to the right, with the modest skyline of Oakland behind.

This year I was the only one on the crew who had worked the event before -- this is one Mary, the boss, has never worked -- so I made several suggestions for how best to handle it. There were really just two issues for me: More than the usual landfill dumpster space, because most of the waste here comes from food vendors and crew teams, neither of which have any understanding of what is and isn’t allowed (lots of Styrofoam). And time at the end (and possibly assistance) sorting and taking down the stations at the end of the day. I have a nice paper-trail of emails in which Mary and I are on the same page about all this. And then comes reality.

Not only did the event not increase the landfill dumpster space, they reduced it across the board. Officially, we didn’t have a compost dumpster. Ja___, the manager for the other, hauling crew, (we also work together at Art & Soul) and I decided to ignore this and make one of the too small dumpsters compost and the other recycling. The bigger (but not big enough) dumpster was for landfill. Jo___ (the actual crew chief, who had never worked this event before so was following our lead) went along. 

End of day Saturday I was starting to fear we would get Jo___ in trouble if we ended up with a partly full compost dumpster while we ran out of room for recycling. I don’t think I’ve made it clear that in all likelihood, our compost dumpster is going to be dumped into landfill -- for reasons unclear to any of us. 

Fortunately for Jo___, when we left Sunday night the landfill dumpster was full to overflowing; (this is a problem when you’re hauling it away on a freeway. But not our problem) the recycling dumpster was also full to overflowing; and the compost/landfill dumpster was equally full to overflowing. 

There was no way we could have allocated the dumpsters provided that would have held all the waste the event generated. We at least had the satisfaction of doing our part as well as we could (see also Tibetan sand paintings) while the event was left with three messes on their hands, thanks to trying to save a few bucks on dumpster rentals. And if Waste Management (the company that owns the dumpsters) really do dump our compost into landfill, we will at least have the satisfaction of knowing they had to also deal with the nasty overflows. It couldn’t have worked out better, given the circumstances.


And then there was that other matter of my being left to sort and take down the stations at the end. Ja___, is one of my favorite people in this event greening world. We’ve worked together for years and know each other well. His crew is, at best, well-meaning but limited, but through repetition and practice we’ve learned to work well together. Closing down on Saturday went really smoothly. The dreaded black vendor/team bags came to conveniently located eco-stations where I sorted them into clear, labeled bags to go straight into the proper dumpster. We left an hour early with nothing left but a cluster of black bags a food vendor (not in my area) put out at the last moment. And Sunday was going just as smoothly... until the end. 

As I said, it was actually slow mid-afternoon. I started taking down some peripheral stations in preparation for the late rush in the center of the two crew areas. Ja___ reminded his crew to let me take the stations down. And then, out of nowhere, our third crew member, who had never worked the event before, came through and -- I think because all the crews were away at the awards ceremony -- thought everything was over and took down my key sorting stations. I was left with a couple poorly situated places to sort the black bags as they slowly appeared after the crews returned from the ceremony. 

The one thing I could never have anticipated.

In the end it worked out fine. In fact, it has occurred to me that this kind of worked to my advantage in one small way. Which leads me to a new term I’ve just coined, Greening PTSD.

When I was advocating for more landfill and some assistance at the end of this event, I had a vague sense of how nasty it had been last year closing down, but I seem to have blocked out the very worst experience. One team, I don’t know which one and I don’t want to know, used the worst trash containers I’ve ever seen in their little camp (I really don’t understand how I’ve never seen them in action, only at the end when we have to deal with them). 

I’m guessing normal people don’t have a “favorite” trash bag, but I do. Maybe three years ago now, at HSB, there was some screw up and we couldn’t get the usual trash cans, so we fell back on medium sized toters for all three waste streams. And we had these huge, heavy duty plastic liners that fit these toters. (I’m told we still have boxes of them in storage.) These bags are so strong they can stand on their own, so one person (well, me) can dump a partial load of landfill or even glass-heavy recycling from a toter into the bag without needing the usual assistance. I adore these bags and still rave about them if given half a chance.

Anyway, the team bags are just like this only instead of tough plastic they are made of opaque paper. So you can’t see what’s in them and the bottom is almost certainly pulp. And the contents are whatever anyone has tossed in over two days. They are an order of magnitude worse than the dreaded, black plastic vendor bags.

Because my co-worker had unaccountably closed down my sorting station, when these bags showed up -- mere feet from where my station had been! -- I said screw it, and had Ja___’s crew haul it all back to our dumpsters unsorted. It was only last night, while thinking over the events of the day, that it came back to me what it had been like sorting those bags last year, and how the experience had cruelly touched me in my special place. (I’m pushing the Sexual Trauma angle of PTSD here.) 

If my station had been up, I would have sorted the damn things. And while I have to admit I hope they came back to the guy who took down my stations so that he had to sort them, I really hope Jo___ just tossed them in the landfill. 

And that’s all you were eagerly waiting to learn about this year’s dragon boat races... except to report that once again this year, there was a winner in every race. 

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass

I like to think my campaign to promote HSB machochism in our little greening community is having some success. Jo___ seems to be looking forward to the upcoming work-fest as much as I am. Though it’s worth recalling that this could in part be because two years ago he was in a drug induced coma in the local burn unit at this time, so working really hard in Golden Gate Park is something of a lark in comparison.

Mary is desperate for more bodies this year as HSB and Fleet Week are overlapping -- I will be sorry to miss my usual greening of Marina Green with the airshow roaring above, but that doesn’t compare with HSB. Several of Ja___’s crew are signing on, and Jo___ was trying to tempt Ja___, which would be great, but he wasn’t buying it. 

The Class of '70

Your high school graduating class is one of those things that is only important (if it's important at all) while you are still in high school. As we were closing down our base by the dumpsters last night, and talking about greening related things, it came up that our third crew member (the one who blindsided me) and I are both class of '70. It came up because 1970 was also the year of the first Earth Day, and the year I sold my car (stopped consuming gasoline) and became a vegetarian (stopped consuming meat). 

I had deflated a rant against the environment destroying ways of capitalism by pointing out that capitalism didn't force people (me) to do the things that are harming the environment. It's a little like the elderly woman in Mesa who would complain about my working on the Sabbath while I drove her to church in my taxi. 

Let's blame capitalism for giving us the things we choose to buy. The world is full of failed capitalists (or at least failed entrepreneurs, their fellow travelers, I suppose) whose dreams were dashed when people refused to buy what they wanted to sell.

At any rate, I now know the two of us are the same age. I'm as bad guessing ages as I am remembering names, so I had never wondered how old he was, so I can't say I'm surprised that we are both class of '70. (And why does it seem like that should appear on a banner whenever you say it, even to yourself?) It does make me wish we were better friends -- he lives way north of SF so mostly works up there, where I never venture. If we were better friends I could now make senior citizen jokes at his expense.