Yeah, those demise rumors? Greatly exaggerated.

February 6th, 2010, posted in Masters' rowing, San Diego Crew Classic, los angeles rowing, sweep rowing, womens rowing

So yes. We still exist. Barely, but we’re here.

This fall was hard. We had a lot of life occurances (pregnancies, marriages, grad school, injuries, moving) for our members, and for a bit there, we honestly considered packing it in and moving on.

On November 1st, I entered for two eights at San Diego with not a clue how we’d fill them. Just this morning I described it to Birk as, “For the second year in a row, I entered the races, kissed the sky, & hoped the hell the rowers would show up.”

Luckily, they have. Just when I was about to cash in chips & get my race fees back, Lizard joined up. Then she brought Justin. And he brought in Goble, and so on & so forth. In the tradition of the house that Jack built, in the space of a month we suddenly find ourselves filling boats & making plans we honestly weren’t sure we’d be able to hit.

So off we go, San Diego-bound once more. Hold on to your seats kids, ’cause here we go again.

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… have you hugged your city website today?

August 12th, 2009, posted in Masters' rowing, competitive rowing, los angeles rowing, sculling, womens rowing

So in my non-rowing life (yes I do too have one!) I’ve had a rather large project to fulfill which required me to shuffle through the civic websites of… a lot of the cities and towns in California.  And from those many, many hours sifting through many many hundreds of records while slowly watching my way through multiple tv series (who needs cable, our internet overlords bequeathed us with Hulu!), I offer you these two charming jewels from my virtual tour of California:

1. The official internet description for Wildomar:
Wildomar, California (CA) Detailed Profile – relocation, real estate, travel, jobs, hospitals, schools, crime, move, moving, houses news, sex offenders.

2. Weed, CA - no seriously, it exists.  And it has an absolutely crap-tacular website. Check it out:
http://www.ci.weed.ca.us/

But wait, there’s more!
We also got this great moment in time brought to you by Kate rooming with me for the month of August… and the letters M-I-T:

Kate: You have an interesting life. Think about all the fun things you’re learning about the city of California.
Claris: uh… don’t you mean the state?
Kate: Oh, right! yeah….
—————————————————————-

And on that note of Adventures in Excellence, Kate & I spend each morning steering large objects carrying multiple people & moving at semi-high speeds through a large body of water with traffic around us! Yay rowing!!

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Sports Graphics = rowing ninjas

August 11th, 2009, posted in competitive rowing, sculling, sweep rowing, womens rowing

I have long maintained that the Sports Graphics photographers are the rowing world’s version of ninjas — especially for head race season.

In sprint season, you pretty much know where they are — usually, you’re sitting at the start line, and there’s the guy with the big telephoto lens, capturing your first 5 & high ten in all it’s painfully ugly glory.

Head season? That’s when they put on the black pajamas & get all… stealthy-like.  Because you have a vague sense they’re about, but you never actually see when they’re there, and you only find out where they’ve been afterwards when your friends post watermarked photos of you in their facebook and all you can do is ask, “How the hell did they even get that picture?”

Stealthy presence? Mysterious powers?  Presenting you with irrefutable evidence that you’re not nearly as cool as you’d like to think you are?  Anyone schooled in comic book geekery can tell you, it all adds up to one undeniable conclusion: Ninjas, man. Freakin’ ninjas.

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the little scullers that can

June 26th, 2009, posted in sculling, sweep rowing

Sculling is a funny thing. It’s just a thing where either you get it, or you don’t. Granted, you can learn to scull, and eventually become academically adept, but there’s a difference between someone who has adapted to the mechanics of the technique & someone who instinctively understands how to make the boat move. You can be a fantastic sweep rower, and a crappy sculling rower. Completely happens all the time.

So the first time a coach puts out a group of rowers out in singles is always an interesting day. When I first started riding the launch with Z last summer, he described it to me as, “There will be the kids who will never get it, the kids who will eventually learn, and then there’s the one or two that take a couple strokes, and suddenly just take off and are halfway down the marina before you even realize they’re gone.”

And that really is true. After a year of coaching high school novices, I kind of enjoy launching single scullers for the first time just to see how the pack will parse itself out.

We did that today. Went out with five kids – two guys in a double, three girls in singles. One of the girls was learning to row this summer with us, one was a sometime stroke of the B boat, and the third is a girl who came in during the middle of the season, trailed behind the pack on every warm up run, and spent the season in 2 seat of our novice C boat.

Who took a couple strokes and started ditching the others halfway down the marina? My girl from the C boat. And the awesome thing to watch was her realizing that. Watching her gain confidence as it slowly dawned on her that she was kinda kickin’ B boat’s butt by a couple boat lengths, and that she’d found something in rowing that she could actually do better than someone else. You could see her whole world just open up & get brighter.

I love that moment. As the self-admitted former fat kind in gym class, I remember that moment. For me, it happened in boxing around the time when we discovered I have a nasty right cross. For C boat, it happened in a Baycraft. Moments like that are why I like coaching — seeing someone else have that moment of “holy god, I don’t suck at this!” is such a great feeling, and it makes me so proud of my kids.

Incidentally, I hope that girl is ready to spend the summer sculling, ’cause as soon as I get a chance, that 2 seat’s going to find herself sitting stroke. Just to see what happens.

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Well that was… random

June 19th, 2009, posted in Uncategorized

Standing on the corner of 4th & Santa Monica Blvd in Santa Monica with ZenMistressE tonight, waiting to cross the street when I hear my name being yelled.  There at the stoplight is Jack, one of our junior boys, hanging out the passenger window of a car full of teenagers going, “Hey! Hey Claris!”

I returned the greeting & bid Jack please try not to get into any trouble doing…whatever that car full of teenage boys was about to be doing.

ZenMistressE looked at me as we crossed the street & remarked, “Random teenage boys yell at you on the street. Your life is… special.”

Indeed, my friend. Indeed it is.

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PandaFaaaaaaaace!

June 13th, 2009, posted in Masters' rowing, competitive rowing, los angeles rowing, mens' rowing, sculling, sweep rowing, womens rowing

Last summer, Jess & I were coming in one Saturday morning when I spied a guy standing around wearing an Ohio State crew t-shirt. Being the shy little wallflower that I am, I walked up and said, “Hey, we’re doing 10k today if you’re up for it.”

He looked a little surprised and admitted, “I’m actually here for… Sculling I.”

And that’s how we met PandaFace. Once he got done with Sculling I & could come out & play with the big kids, we adopted him as our rowing little brother for the summer. Jess was particularly happy about this since she’s also an OSU alum, and now had someone else to be derisive of Michigan with her.

Why do we call him PandaFace, you might ask?

One day, after rowing, PandaFace got off the water & had the sweat circles of a happy face – two on the chest, one along the stomach. We were joking about his smiley when one of the juniors came by & remarked, “Aw, he’s got a panda face!”

Yeah… he never lived that down.

So a year later, PandaFace returned to our boathouse, having completed his second year of rowing, and would you believe that our little brother went & got himself all grown up as the stroke of his varsity boat and the incoming president of his club team? So proud!

Of course, as any good big sister can tell you, that doesn’t really matter because as soon as I walked in the bay I immediately cried, “PandaFaaaaaaaaace!” and thus lovingly stripped him of all manly dignity.

To show my unending affection for PandaFace, I took the guy that had been rowing sweep for a year and tossed him in our Fillipi single to see how he’d do. Luckily he seems to have remembered well from the lessons that earned me the nickname PostureNazi, and stayed on top of the water instead of in it.

Our reunion was punctuated with the following text on my way home:
By the way, that was amazing this morning. I’m in a good mood now. See you tomorrow at 8.

If only that wasn’t
a) totally about rowing
b) coming from a guy that I consider as a rowing younger brother.

Welcome back, PandaFace – remind me to tell your girlfriend all it takes to make you happy is rowing a Fillipi single.

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Modern Logic

June 2nd, 2009, posted in Uncategorized

:Claris & Kate telecommuting the Starbucks’ near Kate’s house in Santa Monica:

Kate: by the way, I always like that those grays match dso well. usually doing see that if it’s not like, a set. (Claris’ jacket & pants) Did you get them together?
Claris: No, actually I bought them like, two years apart at two different knockoff stores. I guess they just happened to use the same sweatshops. :shrug:
Kate: Oh. Yeah, I guess so. Cool.

:resume working:

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Things you don’t want to hear while rowing a pair.

May 30th, 2009, posted in Masters' rowing, los angeles rowing, womens rowing

for the non-rowers, this is what a pair looks like.

:Claris & Hollah! rowing a pair in the creek:

Claris: Okay Hollah… on the next length, we’ll try to work on getting your elbow all chicken-winged out & tapping down out of th – holy f*ck your oarlock is open!”

:after that’s fixed:

Claris: that’s probably a blog entry.
Hollah! We should just start a quotes section…
————————
So we did.

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You know you’re a rower when…

May 14th, 2009, posted in Masters' rowing, los angeles rowing, womens rowing

you’re tracing out a picture of your 8+ in photoshop & all you can think is, “Crap, I was totally dropping my outside shoulder at the catch.”

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Bird treadmill

April 15th, 2009, posted in Uncategorized

We’ve been having wind this week. Massive, over 30 knot winds where it’s so bad even the sailors won’t go out. Which is, ya know, exactly what you want right before a regatta with the juniors – a week of land workouts because you can’t take out the boats.

Leaving the boathouse tonight, I watched a bird desperately flapping its wings and going… nowhere.  It wasn’t going forward because it didn’t have enough power, but it had just enough to keep it from going backwards.  It was kind of like watching when they put stuff in a wind tunnel on the Discovery Channel.  Poor birdie.  I thought sitting in traffic to get back to West Hollywood from Marina Del Rey was bad, I can only imagine how long it took him to get home.

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