So was it a good thing?

Hatashite yokatta no ka?

Rowing Ruminations Part 18

Looking back, I can see that I got to do what I said I wanted to do in crew. I wanted to cox (check). I wanted to row (not scull) on a women’s boat (check). I also got to do something I wanted to do but didn’t say out loud, which was cox the first varsity boat (check).

There were guys on the squad who were put in slow boats year after year because they didn’t have the height or the flexibility or the strength or it just kind of worked out that way because there were too many guys who were bigger and stronger and better rowers than them. I was lucky. I got a seat on competitive boats most years.

But there was stuff I’d wanted to do that I hadn’t said out loud, and couldn’t make happen. I’d wanted to excel at coxing, but when things got too hard, I shut down. I wanted to understand the guys better, but I gave up when they wouldn’t open up to me. I wanted to be better friends with my women’s boat, but when they said they couldn’t get close to the guys, I rolled my eyes. Shutting down when things get too difficult is a recurring pattern in my life. Sometimes it’s the right thing to do, and sometimes it isn’t. I know I do it more frequently than I should. Crew taught me I wasn’t as strong or as smart as I thought I was, the way university physics did. This is important information.

I’ve ruminated on and on (thank you for reading), and it’s all ranting and no raving. If you’ve never rowed, you are probably wondering why on earth I stuck with it. I guess the more appropriate question would be why I didn’t leave. 

If you row, or have rowed, you probably understand. You've probably ranted but not raved about it and your friends and family have said to you "so why are you doing this again?"

I didn’t leave because I didn’t want to be the third girl to quit. I wanted to be the first girl to stay. I didn’t leave because if three girls quit, it would seal the fate of any future girls who wanted to row for our school, as in, it would never happen.

I didn’t leave because if I met alumni at work, they would see me as the person who quit, and that would color their view of me. I lacked a penis. That would have been color enough in this line of work back then. It might have colored their view of all persons lacking a penis in this line of work. It wouldn't have been the first time something like that happened.

But most of all, I didn’t leave because it didn’t seem like the thing to do. I know that sounds strange, but it’s something many of my friends who were in athletics in university say. Quitting didn’t seem like the thing to do.

In The Shell Game, the author says somewhat similar about rowing for Yale. The guys who couldn’t handle the training physically were the first to quit. After that, the cerebral guys who had a very clear image of what they wanted to happen, but decided that it wasn’t worth the effort, quit. The guys who were left were the closet fanatics. That’s me. The one who hadn’t put enough thought into the whole crew thing.

(In other words, I was too stubborn stupid to quit.)

A part of me wonders if things would have been different for me now if I hadn’t been in crew, and I’d spent more time studying or travelling or pursuing internships (both domestic and international) or doing something like sing (a music education major tried to recruit me to sing with the main campus choir when she heard me cox. I don’t know what this tells you about my coxing or the main campus choir.). I wonder what would have happened if I’d cut my losses and left when three of my classmates did.

But those are pointless ruminations. The past won’t let me change it. Rowing synapsed into my neural networks long ago, and to this day it influences every job I do and every decision I make and every word I say and every breath I exhale in microscopic ways. And it changes the way I read books. This book would not have coated every single neuron in my head with something more difficult to remove than failed caramel if I hadn’t thought about ergs and power cleans and hatchet blades and rudders and force curves as much as I have.

I can remember the past and think about it, but I can’t change it. It’s all rather one-sided and a bit unfair. But what I do today with what happened while on the water long ago has been and always will be up to me.

(And that’s about 12,000 more words than anyone should ever say about a single book.)

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(P.S. There are some minor inaccuracies and omissions in this narrative. I’ve purposely avoided details about some people and some of the things that happened for privacy issues and also because it made my story unnecessarily difficult to understand. If you are a rower, or if you went to university in Japan, you may have noticed some of them. Or, if you know me personally from Real Life or Social Media, you might be thinking “but what about the time you said xyz about abc?” Feel free to PM me and ask, and I’ll probably elaborate.)

I don't want to remember

Omoidashitakunai

Rowing Ruminations, Part  17

My last year in crew, I became the first woman in my school to cox the first varsity four.

We all wish it hadn’t happened.

Our boat was older than the boats the other schools used. The lineup (including me) was OK, but not spectacular. The big race was held on a river. (I think that sealed the deal.)

One thing we had was a good start. We knew we weren’t the fastest boat, so we decided early on we’d work hard on our starts. “Fly and (hope you don’t) die” is rowing strategy 101: if you start ahead, you stand a chance of staying ahead. Our start sequence was 10 strokes longer than most other boats’. I still remember those starts, and I still think they were good. The top edge of the seat would dig into my back on each stroke, and they’d give me bruises. I was proud of those bruises. I would have shown them to my friends the way I’d shown them my blisters and biceps, and they would have been supportive of them, except they were a shade too far south to be shown in polite company, and during the spring season I hardly ever saw my friends outside classes. I wasn’t about to pull down my pants in the lecture hall. (Even I have standards.)

Two decades later, I have found nothing like sitting in that boat on a day when the guys had found some kind of, I don’t know, swing, and we nailed our starts. That sensation of human power transformed into acceleration is something only a coxswain on a boat starting well can feel (the rowers feel it too, but they’re going backwards, so it’s not quite the same. Plus, their seats don't have backs). The closest thing might be taking off in an airplane, but it’s still very different. 

We had good starts. The rest of our race, not so much. Not awful, just not spectacular. Which wasn’t good enough to do well that season.

(Flat Water Tuesday spoiler alert)

(Although, is there such a thing? If you know what your food is going to taste like before you eat it, do you enjoy it any less?)

(begin spoiler laden rumination)

(You have been warned)

I almost could not read the part about the first race of the season. The crew had hit a slump, mostly due Rob’s technique (or rather, lack thereof). There was also some crappy race strategy by Connor (he rowed too fast at the start) and Ruth (it’s her job to call Connor on rowing too fast, as many times as it takes, until he rows at the rate SHE thinks he should). While they are losing, Ruth makes a lot of really desperate calls about how the other boat is slowing down (they’re not) and their boat still has a chance.

That was me, my last season.

“xxxx is two lengths ahead! (More like four.) We’re still in this! (Well, we would be if there were 500 meters to go instead of 100.)”

Reading that section made me short of breath. I felt like my heart was going to jump out of my throat.

(Does this count as PTSD?)

(Of course, I would never lose my shirt like Ruth did because we never bet shirts.)

(end spoiler)

If you lose a race, it’s the coxswain’s fault, I guess. Even if it weren’t the case, if more people believe that is the truth than don’t, it will be treated as the truth. (That’s probably how wars are begun, but that’s a big tangent that’s material for a political blog and not a blog showcasing Japanese phrases.)

That summer left me with a sense of defeat, the bruises on my back, and very little time to study for my post-summer holiday exams. The first woman to cox the first varsity boat for our school couldn’t get us past the semifinal. Only a few years later, my position as the only woman to cox the first varsity boat for our school would also become secure, when the club failed to recruit new members to replace the graduating class and folded.

Fortunately, I passed all my post-summer holiday exams, and I got my diploma on schedule, and I got the job I wanted when I was thirteen, and I still have it. So, all’s well that ends well, I guess.

It struck a nerve

Kachin to kita

The running lapsed for two weeks because of the previously mentioned snow and a lack of discipline (but not motivation. Never confuse discipline with motivation, though the two certainly compliment one another). I finally got out there this past Friday for the first time in two whole weeks. While my mind was praising itself for its discipline, my body began protesting violently at about 2 in the afternoon, and continues to protest two days later.

I finally snagged a copy of The Shell Game, which is another rowing book. This one is nonfiction. It’s by a Yale rower who was chosen to but did not go to the Olympics because he was chosen in 1980. Fun to read, but the ending seemed to be a bit bland after the meticulous detail in the beginning. Maybe he planned on writing more when he finished, and wanted to leave the ending open.

Since the Pumpkin City Public Library does not have an extensive collection of books in English, when I want to read something in English, I am almost always obliged to buy it. So now I have The Boys in the Boat, The Shell Game, and Flat Water Tuesday on my bookshelf beside 頑張っていきまっしょい (Ganbatteikimasshoi) and the レガッタ (Regatta) series. Add the couple other books I want to read (including but not limited to Course Correction) and I’ll have the biggest English rowing library in town.

When people see rowing books on my bookshelf, they’ll either think me cool or geeky (but everyone knows that geeky is cool. Right? RIGHT???) What they will think of me if they see Wrong on my bookshelf is another matter altogether. I clicked on this one on Amazon because the author is someone I know from the comments section of a currently dormant website about an American TV show. She was a fun person on the site, so I figured this book would be these things too. And it was. It didn't make me feel things the way Flat Water Tuesday did (that one altered my respiratory function for at least three months). I won't rave about it the way I did about the Boys in the Boat. It was trashy, smutty fun. But...

The basic premise is that there’s this college student who has a crush on a customer who frequents the coffee shop where she works, and he turns out to be a gynecologist at her school’s student health center, and they get into a relationship. This story requires an “other woman” and since the man is a gynecologist the other woman will, of course, be a surgeon. And...I won’t go into detail because someone might actually want to read the book (go ahead, if you’re into smutty trashy fun) but the surgeon is painted in a really bad light and I couldn’t help but wonder if she went through the whole “balancing career with romance and potential family” thing during residency and fellowship, while the young, shiny baggage-free college student...doesn’t. 

I’m probably reading too deeply into something that’s intended to be nothing more than witty, fun porn, but it kind of struck a nerve. I'm keeping this one on a back bookshelf, the way teenage boys hide their porn from their parents (or so I've heard...)

They're wet!

Nureteiru!

Rowing Ruminations Part 11

(Contains insignificant reference to the book “Flat Water Tuesday”)

In my second year, I was on a varsity knuckle again, but with an almost completely different lineup. My old number two seat was now my stroke. I was finally on a boat with someone in my year. One extra cool thing was that the first varsity cox from the year before decided he wanted to row again, and he was on our boat. Any time I needed to know something, I could ask him. I think having him on my boat for a season is the reason I’m not afraid of stake boat starts.

(Stake boat starts: A race official sitting in a fixed boat holds your stern until the start. The race official might be an older friend of a local chapter chairman of the Japan Rowing Association who rowed when he was in college, or a first year high school student who didn’t make the third boat this year. Pro: you don’t drift away from the start line even if there’s a current. Con: you have to back the boat into the official’s hands. Keep in mind your boat is about 12 meters long and your steering mechanism is a rudder the size of a credit card. Solution? Use your rowers. Tell them to row harder or lighter depending on which way you want to go. And never use more than one rower on each side.)

We held a boat meeting immediately after the lineup for the season was announced, and the ex-cox, our de facto boat captain, suggested we practice on a shell until around June. No one protested. Like I said before, a four is much more technically demanding than a knuckle, and we were up for the challenge. It was also lighter to carry from the boathouse.

Launches presented a new problem, but only for me. When we launched knuckles, we set it down on the beach, with the stern sticking out into the water. We didn’t worry about scratching or putting a foot through the hull, because it was quite sturdy. I just stepped into it from the beach, walked to the coxswain’s seat, then stroke, three and two followed with their oars while I put the rudder in its place. Then bow pushed the boat all the way into the water and climbed in, I’d make the call for stroke pair to back row, and we’d be on our way.

The shell reminded me I had short legs every time we launched (as if I didn’t know already). We didn’t have a dock, so every day was a beach launch, which was a lot of fun because to get the boat far enough out into the water not to scratch the hull, the water had to be deeper than (my) mid-thigh level. I’d roll my pant legs as far up my thighs as I could, but it was a good day when I got into that coxswain’s seat with dry pants. It didn’t help that my thighs were (are) heavy and I couldn’t get the cuffs all the way up my thighs the way the others could.

The other day, I watched YouTube video of a beach launch. If you watch the video, at around 0:25 or thereabouts, one of the rowers picks up the cox and carries her to her seat.

I was almost as shocked as when I realized Ruth Anderson in the book Flat Water Tuesday used a microphone to cox a sternloader four. Almost. Wusses. Here, take my wet pants. Don’t worry, it’s just lake water. On second thought, I need them back. I’m not wearing (knee-length) leggings underneath today.