… is having time to make an awesome breakfast.

These huge temperature changes are really throwing me for a loop. This morning when I got up, it was 3 degrees out. I wore two sweaters and a jacket, wished I had remembered my toque, and was brushing frost off my legs. By this afternoon my single fall jacket was too much for walking around downtown. Granted, when I was outside this morning it was 5am and the sun hadn’t risen yet so you expect it to be a little chilly, but it often seems like a few months goes by every 12 hours. (NB: What am I doing up at this hour writing blog entires if I have to wake up at 5!?)

Being out on the water for a few hours every morning before sunrise has been a good swift kick in the pants kind of motivation to get some decent winter gear for once. Layers upon layers of spandex only get you so far. My quest for gloves that are windproof, waterproof, and still dexterous, has been for naught so far. I was foiled, in part, by a poorly staffed Sports Experts. Despite standing around the counter for a good while looking as helpless as I could, nobody came to my rescue. Indeed there was not even anybody in sight that I could call for help. At least the latter fact made it possible for me to do big awkward reach-arounds to get the good gloves out from behind the display case, but it was still awkward enough that I couldn’t get to all the styles or sizes I needed to try.

My quest for socks turned out much better. I checked many many stores looking for some 100% wool socks. Eventually I had to settle at some reaching for the 70% mark, but they also had “thermal” on the label so I was pretty satisfied. We’ll have to see how they fare tomorrow. And I’m considering cutting a hole in a second pair to fashion myself some pogies. It’d be nice to still have all my digits at the end of the season.

Oh my.

Rowing has taken over my life.

Practices at 6 in the morning six days a week leave little time for procrastinating. I try to get homework done in the mornings after practice as much as possible over my second breakfast of the day, and then by the time I get home from school in the late afternoon and wind down, it’s almost bedtime.

I learned a few months ago that rowing is all about bruises and open wounds. Aches and pains would be on the list too, but there’s a lot of satisfaction that comes from it. Today on the water, despite the dull pain in my hand as another blister formed and the exhaustion that began to set in somewhere around the eighth kilometre, I began to appreciate the boat gliding over the water. Then I remembered that I was supposed to be stroking and got my ass back in gear, but you get the point. Those occasional strokes where we get it together enough that all the oars clunk together, splash in unison as they drop into the water, and then glide silently over the water, are magic.

Life outside of that goes on. People to see, things to do. Every once in a while I touch a text file with a name reminding me of something to write about here, but rarely get around to actually writing anything in it. Whether I will even remember what those sometimes cryptic filenames mean when I try to write is a complete mystery. Something about existentialism perhaps?

Still, tomorrow brings my first real regatta. A race of several kilometres known for the spectacular crashes novice boats make in its narrow passageways and sharp turns. Should be fun. If I’m still in one piece when I get back there might be another post out of it, but no guarantees.

I don’t know how I did it, and anybody who knows me isn’t likely to believe it, but I’ve turned my sleep schedule on its head. Up at 5:00 or 5:30 in the morning the last few days and to sleep by about 21:00. Class doesn’t even start for another 45 minutes and already I feel like I’ve had a very productive day.

Yesterday I went exploring. Jumped on the first metro of the morning eastward bound and went to the Olympic Basin on Île Notre Dame. I was still underground when the sun rose, but it was a nice view nonetheless.

There were exactly three rowers on the water, arriving just at the same time I did. I sat in the stands and watched them go past until they were out of sight at the other end of this overblown swimming pool.

It somehow seemed much smaller than the course in Coal Harbour that I’m used to. Free of other traffic and turns and scenery and anything interesting whatsoever. Chances were, by the time you hit the 500m mark at the Vancouver Rowing Club, you had navigated past a yatch or two and avoided getting yourself run over by the Huckleberry Finn style paddlewheeler. At the Olympic Basin, when you hit 500m all that that’s happened is that you’ve rowed 500m. I suppose it has its advantages.

This morning at 5:30 I was out the door running up Mont Royal. Or at least I tried. I had big ambitions of running about 10km, my course all laid out, but it turns out running uphill is hard. Big surprise. But run I did, as far as the lookout at the Chalet, where I saw the sun break over the distant hills. Montreal has a much bigger sky than Vancouver. There was no camera on hand this time to catch the sight, though. Maybe tomorrow morning.

The time is 4:53. I have to catch a bus in 11 minutes at a bus stop that’s a 10 minute walk away. Shit—it just hit me. August is not July. It’s a tricky distinction but bus drivers tend to notice that sort of thing, especially when August has not been July for nigh on three days now. It’ll have to wait. The extra two twenty-five won’t bust my budget. That happened a few days ago, at one of the five times I bought lunch at work instead of making a sandwich.

A new rowing program starts today and its best to be on time, I thought. New coaches, new people, and a new boat as it turns out. A double. Twice as wobbly and twice as easy to make a mistake as the quad I’ve been rowing, but half as many people to make those mistakes so I guess it works out. We’re still dry by the end of it at least, despite some rather high waves at one point. It was a nice day on the water. At one point I was reminded, for the second time this week, of “Hazel! We’ve got lesbians!” and I’m now separated by two degrees from a McGill novice rowing coach. Too bad that doesn’t mean I’m any closer to making the team.

I need to buy a whistle.

On the way home I feel rather Japanese, so I put HY and Ketsumeishi on my mp3 player and stop into a little Japanese market. Tonkatsu sauce, $5 a bottle. Thirsty from being on the water in the sun I buy some Calpis Soda, not remembering at the time that Calpis Soda is not the same as Calpis. I should have bought the concentrate.

I continue my walk, up Denman and then Davie, which has even more rainbows than usual. All gay-ed up for a big gay weekend of big gay Pride. I always smirk when I see the city’s big gay newspaper being sold next to the regular weekly called STRAIGHT. It may actually be called “The Georgia Straight”, but the first two words are a tiny fraction of the size of the last, as if the paper feels the need to assert its masculinity in this very gay city.

There are many people on the street. Ahead is a perfectly average looking guy wearing a white t-shirt with a red person on it. I try to figure out who it is but give up quickly. We make eye contact and I look away, but I look back again and suddenly he gives me this big cute smile. Suddenly perfectly average guy is the cutest thing on the street, only because he smiled.

Have I mentioned that it always makes me happy when I see a stranger smiling? It’s like that time I thanked a girl for holding the door open for me and she said “You’re welcome!” I totally had a crush on her for the whole afternoon, even though I didn’t even see who she was.

On the bus back home, the ending credits music from Super Mario World came up in the shuffle, as if Mario and I are travelling back home together, him riding Yoshi and me riding a bus. Yoshi would be cooler, but I don’t mind the bus.

A few days ago the first in a series of fireworks shows was held in Vancouver. I had rowing practice until just prior to the show, so I just walked down from the rowing club in Stanley Park to English Bay beach to check it out. The streets were full of people and the beach was pretty well standing room only. It was a good show, and of course the fact that they set some of the show to a Disney song was a nice plus. (Oh, dorky dorky me.)

All those thousands of people leaving downtown at the same time make for very busy buses. To avoid the rushes, I walked down Beach Ave, and across the Burrard Street Bridge. There was a long line of boats cruising from English Bay, where they had all been to see the fireworks. Green lights on one side, red on the other. Port wine is red. Red means port side. See, I did learn something from rowing after all. “Port” has four letters. “Even” has four letters. Even numbered seats are on port side. Green meads starboard. Odd numbered seats are on starbourd. But I guess that doesn’t apply to regular boats so much as rowing shells.

I thought I could go right down to Broadway and catch a bus to UBC, but when I reached the other side of the bridge I figured I might as well walk along the Kits beach area instead. Before long I was at Broadway and MacDonald, and I figured what the hell—I’ve got to be like halfway by now, I might as well finish the walk.

Here’s the difference between Vancouver and Montreal: In Vancouver, walking along a deserted stretch of road in the middle of the night, I was less afraid of being mugged and more afraid that I would run across a skunk. I’ve seen more “snuks” in the last three months in this city than I have in my entire life before.

The walk from English Bay to UBC turned out to be about 2 hours. Along the way my mp3 player kept me motivated. There was a good long stretch where I motored along to the beat of Turkey Lurkey. Embarrassing, I know, but there’s nothing like an up-tempo big band dance number to put some spring in your step.

And for a while I used it as an oracle. Put the player on shuffle, ask it a question, and the next song is your answer. I asked it if my crew is going to win the regatta on Sunday. The answer: “Yoshimi vs. the Pink Robots” by The Flaming Lips. Well, one of our rival crews is a bunch of strong guys, and at least one of them is gay, but I don’t think that makes them “pink robots”.

Those evil natured robots
They’re programmed to destroy us
She’s got to be strong to fight them
So she’s taking lots of vitamins
Cause she knows that it’d be tragic
If those evil robots win
I know she can beat them
Oh Yoshimi, they don’t believe me
But you won’t let those robots defeat me
Yoshimi, they don’t believe me
But you won’t let those robots eat me

The really stressful part is that, as bow seat, I have to watch our course (while facing backwards) and make calls to adjust it as necessary. “Hard on starboard!” and that sort of thing. Forget disciplining my body and taking all my vitamins—I’ll be happy if I get through Sunday afternoon without crashing us into a dinner cruise.

said the coach to her newbie rowers.

After years of wanting to try (and one summer of being snubbed by a certain club, *cough* Kennebecasis Rowing *cough*) I’ve started a Learn-to-Row program at the Vancouver Rowing Club. Today was our first day out on the water and actually moving somewhere.

The thing is, you need to have your blade at the right angle and the right depth going into the water as you begin each stroke, but if you want to actually see that happen you have to turn your head to look behind you. The catch is that you also have to keep in time with the other rowers, which does not work if you turn to look at your oar. Curse you evolutionary history of mankind with the eyes ony on one side of my head! You could at least have given me one just above my left ear.

On top of that (or, more accurately, before all of that), keeping the boat balanced would also be nice. I’m actually surprised eight people trying to do all that at once for the first time in our lives were able to go as far as we did. But go we did, and we’ll do it again on Thursday.

As a side note, I was all set to post a link to the History of Rowing archives I helped put together when I worked for the Rothesay Living Museum, but it seems like it’s gone offline sometime in the last year. Maybe Industry Canada’s servers are having a bad day. The Internet Wayback Machine has archived most of it, but not the videos, which are the coolest thing since I was the one who filmed them. Take a look at the archive of Rowing: The Legacy of Renforth anyway, and pretend like you’re watching my beautiful cinematography. And oh, here’s a good chance to embarrass myself—looks like they’ve also archived the flash animations I had a hand in. Find them on the education page.

It’s not as nice as this at the Renforth Wharf tonight. I like taking the old road back from the university just so I can drive along this stretch, where the trees give way on one side and the mighty Kennebecasis shows herself. They always called it the mighty Kennebecasis in newspapers, back when Fox Farm Road actually had fox farms on it.

There are rivers in some places that aren’t as long as the Kennebecasis is wide. I always remember that when looking across to Long Island, at the same time forgetting that Long Island is actually an island in the river and not the opposite shore. I only found it was called Long Island last week.

James Renforth lost his life here and I still suspect foul play. He was the only man to get the better of the Paris Crew, but failed to cross the finish line in the rematch. Heart attack, stroke, and consumption they called it, depending on which paper you read. “It is not a fit I have had - I will tell you all directly.“ Those are the same papers that always called the Kennebecasis mighty. Today the Heritage Minutes say the Paris Crew were unbeaten, but I know better.

Tonight it was drizzly and a rare freight train was lumbering along this same stretch of river and road. The sky was low to the ground with fog pulled in from the harbour, and all the sailboats were safely away in the marina. I realised at this point that I was being that guy who holds up traffic by actually obeying the speed limit. I bumped it up to 65 km/h, made the turn right onto Old Hampton Road and made my way home for supper.