This is not me coxing, nor is it the right crew, nor is this Lake Washington. That hill in the background is not Mount Rainier. We had many more clothes on, in particular me, the cox. Since I have not yet taken the float test, I wore a huge jacket with a life preserver built into it, which kept me toasty in the bit of a breeze. Our boat was taupe, not blue, and there were four rowers. The boat was rigged for sculling not sweeping, two oarlocks and two oars per rower. You will get no information from this photograph to help you visualize this morning. Mount Rainier was starkly present, not a ghost mountain. It wore no lenticular cloud beret. I however wore a WWU Vikings baseball cap with the microphone strap tight around it. My mic cord plugged into my cox box (not a dirty phrase) which plugged into the boat so all four women could hear me fabulously well when I yelled my idiot questions to our coach in the launch or counted under my breath to be sure I would have them shift to another rowing task "in two" at the right time. As my counting became shaky when I was distracted, Mount Rainier, swimmers off the port bow, buoys, wake, breeze, steering lag time, Sally the stroke counted under her breath as she rowed to cue me. Here's the wide awake and brilliant thing: I remembered to unplug the cox box from the boat before stepping out when we returned to the dock. I did not ram or graze the dock. I will never be able to work for the Washington State Ferry System.
No comments:
Post a Comment