*boom* *crunch*

i awoke this morning to the wind tossing around the tree tops outside my bedroom window. in the very early morning light i could see the shadows dancing on my wall. dancing shadows on my closet door mean only one thing: possibly no rowing. that qualifier "possibly" has to be there because one is never sure. no matter what the weather, even if you strongly suspect you might not row, the unwritten rule in boathouse culture is that you come down to the boathouse anyway. weather is fincky and knowing how luck seems to run, if you didn't head down the wind would die down or the sky would clear and you'd spend the rest of the morning wondering if you'd stood your crewmates up.

so, this morning i donned my new unisuit (more on that in another post!) and i biked down to be greeted by the sight of my crewmates milling around and our coach standing with her hands on her hips hemming and hawing at the sky. it was windy and dark. even if the wind died down it was still definitely going to rain -- not that rain is ever a deterent. i've gone out in rains that would make a duck squeemish. the real danger is lightening.

we decided amongst ourselves between two options: head home and back to a possibly still-warm bed, or stay at the boathouse and pull a piece on the ergs (rowing slang for the rowing machines or ergometers). two of my crewmates and i decided to hang back and erg while the other (smart) ones headed home. we pulled the ergs out from the back room and put them on the pavement in front of the boathouse and started to pull our sixty minute pieces. the wind was still blowing and occasionally there were drops of rain, but nothing too threatening. it was actually quite pleasant as an erg goes. around the thirty minute mark we heard booms of thunder. around the thirty-five minute mark the sheet lightening started. not relishing the idea of rowing outside on a long strip of metal with a sliding seat, we cut short our workout and wheeled the ergs inside just in time. the rain started coming down in sheets.

a friend was kind enough to offer to drive me home as i had biked to practice. in the short sprint from the door of the boathouse to her car i got completely drenched. we laughed as we were driving home, dripping wet, listening to the pop music playing softly on the car stereo. what a joke, we thought, to forego going out on the water because of the weather only to get hit by lightening while erging. to us, amid the warm confines of the car and crew commraderie, that irony seemed distant and laughable. as my friend pulled away from the stop sign to drive up the hill to my house we got hit by a truck.

neither of us saw the truck coming. the rain was coming down so hard that you could barely see three feet in front of the car. my friend inched away from the stop sign and slowly began to crawl through the intersection. out of no where a truck came barrelling down the road at an unbelievably high speed and hit the driver's side of the car with such force that we were spun around in a circle. just for good measure he nicked the back of the car mid-spin.

both my friend and i are fine. other than another bruise on my knee where it hit the front of the car upon impact, we were fortunate enough to walk away unscathed. the car, however, will be a total write-off.

there's a strange sort of awkwardness in that window of time between ascertaining whether or not you are both okay and the arrival of the police. though we've rowed together for two years and though we've shared moments of strong crew commraderie, my friend and i live very different lives. we found ourselves swapping the strangest stories. she told me how she and her husband met (over a cadaver in a life sciences class!); i told her about the nasty break-up i went through with my most recent ex. we talked about other things that one might not feel comfortable voicing in everyday interactions such as what we thought of the strange feeling of tension that has existed among the crew lately. when he finally did arrive we agreed that the policeman was definitely a cutie and that he had a nice butt. sadly, when my friend borrowed his phone to call her husband to come and pick her up she noticed that the first number programmed into it was for a "kristy".

is that what it takes to break down the walls of reserve that are built up between people? those moments extraordinary when all of the true insignificance of the dross of life is revealed? as clichéd as it sounds i was just plain happy my friend and i were alive; there were moments when the car was spinning in a violent circle in which that wasn't looking like a possibility. it bothers me that in tracing over and over the familiar contours of our lives, we often don't allow for those brief moments of connection and that it takes a downpour, the threat of lightening and a careening truck to transgress what are boundaries that really don't amount to much. what will it take for people to be more opened?