fin - photo montage

today, our crew raced its last race of the season, the head of the trent in peterborough. after a summer that moved with its own unmistakable rhythm of practices, short races, and the rocked-out bliss that follows the 1000m adrenaline rush, racing in the fall has been characterized more by transition than consistency. the long races of 5km + were the movement through that liminal space between rowing and not rowing; the horn that announced the end of our sub-19 minute trip down the trent course also announced our arrival at a finish of another sort entirely.

it was difficult for me not to become maudlin at the thought of change. thankfully, for some reason, my camera (at least when i was taking the pictures!) captured some of the most humourous shots of my crewmates and the regatta setting that i've ever had the good fortune to see. i've included those along with some more picturesque shots of the atmosphere of trent. it's hard not to concur with mla's happy, persistant belief in the trent campus as a sort of ontario arcadia.

option a) truck; option b) desk

mla is not amused by my stealth picture taking

what mischievious thoughts are masked by lisa's oh-so-innocent smile?

"do you people realize i've been up since the crack of dawn?!"

"shannon, what did you do now?"

diana, looking a little confused as to what she should be doing with her hands

there was a big debate as to whether jane's bow number should go on her uni or her shirt ... then there was the debate as to which shirt she should be wearing ... and then there was the debate as to whether the shirt should go under or over the uni ; jane's swift changing skills would have left a runway model slackjawed

for purposes of easy identification

"the coachboat killer? who? me?"


welcome to a rower's arcadia, where the breezes are cool and light, the water is smooth and the crowds cheer you home ...

the nascopie, guts up

a flight of singles in the chute

which of these things is not like the other? even the arcadian landscape can sometimes be disturbed by intrusions from the outside world

nowhere else are the crowds this close and this supportive!

though this bridge no longer leads anywhere, i'd like to think it suggests more rowing in the future

the state of our union is strictly political

i think i may have a new favourite movie. now i'm not suggesting that anything could take the place of adam's rib, but this week i stumbled across a copy of state of the union, a little-watched, little-lauded tracy/hepburn flick that i've been waiting to have come out on dvd. it was released this year and i promptly snatched it up and popped it in my toshiba. as i said to mla, who is also an avid kate hepburn fan, i bet you a donut that aaron sorkin was watching this when he was dreaming up the west wing.

based on the 1946 pulitzer prize-winning play of the same name by crouse and lindsay, the film was directed by frank capra and made in joint agreement with capra's capitol films and mgm, the studio that held both tracy's and hepburn's contracts. there is a lot of movie folklore associated with this film. claudette colbert was originally picked to play mary matthews, the wife of the man encouraged by his mistress to run for president. colbert flatly refused to work evenings at the studio, so the story goes, and thus the role was offered to hepburn at the last minute. after the film's initial release, capra bought the rights to it thus ensuring its limited accessibility. since mgm no longer owned the film, the original credits were scrapped and new ones inserted; in these second credits, not only is hepburn's name mispelled ("Katherine Hepburn" rather than Katharine Hepburn") but so too is the name of adolphe menjou, who plays the political boss that works with angela lansbury's character, kay thorndyke, to catapault tracy to fame.

there is so much about the film that intrigues me that i've already watched it four times! i'm currently on the hunt for my very own copy to shelve next to adam's rib and pat and mike. digging up a dvd of the philadelphia story wouldn't hurt either. i have to admit, however, as mary does early in the film when discussing her relationship with her estranged husband, that the state of this union is strictly political -- i see potential here for an article.

babes in the bow

i am now part of a very exclusive club, though my membership was bestowed on me only after much pleading -- perhaps not the best strategy when one is trying to climb the social (boat) ladder, but hey, whatever works. this weekend, a 4+, comprised of mla, jane, me and michele (an ex-Kingston rower who now lives in ottawa) met up at the Head of the Rideau regatta, held annually at the rideau canoe club. deferring to michele's many more years of rowing and racing experience, i found myself sitting in 2 seat in front of jane. as we sat waiting at the start i had one of those moments of realization, akin to something one might feel in elementary school when, out of the blue, you are asked to eat lunch with the cool kids. i was sitting in the bow, and not only was i sitting in the bow (as i've done before when i've been in 4 seat) but i was closer than i'd ever been to being a bow babe.

there's something about the first two seats in a boat that gives them a special sort of magic. the rowers that occupy those seats are often very proud of being in the bow, for just as with stroke (and really, any other seat in the boat), 2 and 1 seat come with a cluster of special responsibilities.jane and her usual bow partner, diana (pictured on the right from right to left) share a special bond, built over many mornings of testing the balance and helping to guide the boat. they've knowingly formed a little, exclusive club of two and often refer to themselves as the "bow babes". as we sat at the start of HoR, i wanted nothing more than to be a bow babe, if only for this one race.

as we sat trying to huddle for warmth against the cold autumn wind that was turning our bare legs into pimply gooseflesh, i leaned back against jane's legs to keep them warm and she vigourously rubbed my arms which were starting to tremble with the cold. i chose that moment to ask, pehaps a little too pleadingly, if i could be a bow babe too. at first jane was reticent, and rightly so; when making up a boat, the coach will often put the smaller folks in bow, and i am by no means small, as jane was quick to point out. i think she sensed the pain of the rejection and immediately altered her response. she supposed i could be an honorary member. though i didn't go about it in the smoothest way, i was now one of the cool kids.

i don't know that i rocked the bow with jane as much as she and diana do during a race, but we certainly worked hard and though there were no other boats in our class racing we managed to pass three boats that had headed up in the flight before us -- 2 of which were 8+s full of varsity development girls from Queen's. our time, made less spectacular by rowing into a wind and through some very rough water, isn't so much a testament to our speed as it is to our gutsy determination to finish the race, even under some adverse weather conditions. i'll remember it as the first head race of this season, but also as a race in which i tried on a new identity in the boat, thanks to the tolerance of others, and really liked it. below is a picture of our HoR 4+ before the race.

queen victoria was a gemini

that explains so much about my current life path. confessing mermaid has been posting different things about starsigns in her blog recently and this made me curious enough to check out the low down dirt on mine -- gemini. along with finding out that vicki was a fellow fickle creature, i also gleaned these interesting assessments about the traits of a gemini (i also learned that i have the same birthday as gene wilder and jacques costeau). some are quite enjoyable.

The sign is linked with Mercury, the planet of childhood and youth, and its subjects tend to have the graces and faults of the young. When they are good, they are very attractive; when they are bad they are more the worse for being the charmers they are. Like children they are lively, and happy, if circumstances are right for them, or egocentric, imaginative and restless. (someone once said i was naive and childish -- i think she meant childlike, but the slip may have been more freudian than she realized)

Geminians can be successful in many walks of life though their general characteristics tend to make them unreliable. They are often skilled manipulators of language, in speech and writing, and may be: debaters, diplomats (though in politics they are more interested in theory than practice), orators, preachers (brilliant rather than profound), teachers, authors, poets, journalists, or lawyers. (the language thing is right on target)

They easily grasp almost everything requiring intelligence and mental dexterity, and are often able to marry manual skills to their qualities of mind. Their intellect is strongly analytical and sometimes gives them so great an ability to see both sides of a question that they vacillate and find it hard to make decisions. In their intellectual pursuits, as in other departments of their lives, they risk becoming dilettantes, losing themselves in too many projects which they follow until they become difficult. (if you're my committee waiting for my dissertation chapter, this paragraph makes a lot of sense right now)

In love they are fickle, not intentionally so but because of the basic inconsistency of their emotional nature, which has an amoral aspect to it. There is a side to Geminians which can become deeply involved emotionally, and another, hostile to sentimentality, which stands back from a romantic situation, laughing at it and the protagonists in it, including themselves while analyzing it intellectually. Gemini subjects take nothing seriously. So, in love, in spite of their temporary depth of feeling, for the intensity of involvement lasts only while it is new, they are superficial, light-hearted, cool, flirtatious and unimaginative in the understanding of the pain they may give others. (zing. ouch. any of my ex-boyfriends will confirm this for you ...)

They can make excellent members of the Armed Forces, for they take danger no more seriously than anything else and can earn themselves a reputation for devotion to duty and heroic acts. Negatively they can degenerate into confidence tricksters, thieves and even adepts in the black arts. (my fantasy of being a spy isn't too far off the mark!)

HoT from bow to stern

yes, as a crew we are ... but the acronym actually refers to what will be the last race of this season: the Head of the Trent. technology has finally caught up with our boat and i'm working on a way to rig up an iPod to the speaker system used by our cox box. for our final race together i'm thinking we should spin the playlist below as we row the 5k from the launching dock to the start; each song, i'd like to think, is evocative of one of my crewmates, from bow to stern.

1. Jane (bow): Volvo Driving Soccer Mom/Everclear
2. Diana (2 seat): Let's Get It Started/Black Eyed Peas
3. Kelly (3 seat): Ready To Go/Republica
4. Shani (4 seat): Don't Ya Wish Your Girlfriend/Pussycat Dolls
5. Susan (5 seat): We Will Rock You/Queen
6. Kate (6 seat): Sleep in Late/Molly Johnson
7. Mary Louise (7 seat): Olympia/E-Type
8. me (stroke): One Girl Revolution/SUPERCHIC[K]
9. Karen (cox): C is for Cookie/Frank Oz
10.Leslie (coach): Rockstar/Nickelback

jane and diana, the babes in the bow, come to mind whenever i hear the two songs by everclear and black eyed peas, respectively. jane is one funky volvo driving hockey mom, and diana is always ready to get something started in those early mornings when i'm still wiping the sleep out of my eyes. kelly is the republica song -- on the water, during those brief moments of rest, she is always urging us to row longer and harder. how many guys wish their girlfriends where as hot and as much fun as shani? many, i think. the first time i heard susan say she wanted to kick some don rowing club a** i was a little shocked, but she rowed at henley with an edge. i hear this classic queen song and i think of her. kate could have written the lyrics to the molly johnson song, but only after lunch; morning kate doesn't do lyrics ;o7. it was a tough decision for a 7 seat song. mary louise knows how to car dance stunningly to christina aguleira's "fighter", but her need to listen to e-type's "olympia" before a race made me pick it over the other. i wear a wonder woman shirt to practice whenever i need to remember to really drive, hence the superchic[k] song. during a tense moment as we approached the starting gate at the worlds, karen broke into an impromptu rendition of "c is for coxie", a mash of the classic cookie monster song and lyrics of her own. last but not least, track 10 is for leslie, our coach. i heard her singing along to this song one day at the boathouse when it came on over the radio. dude, she really does rock! thanks for a great season of racing girls; it is a privilege to row with all of you.

or perhaps i should just go to venice ...

with an old hand-cranked 8mm camera and a suitcase full of dresses that require slips, and take an italian lover. there would be no balloon animal making involved.

i saw david lean's summertime for the first time this weekend and i'm fascinated.

i wanna run away and join the circus ...

... in paris. i know no one is really surprised about that last bit. my desire comes in part from a wish for more of the fantastic and surreal in my life than there is at the moment -- so i'm a girl who likes her fantasy ... what of it? -- and in part as a result of my nose getting stuck in the circus and victorian society by brenda assael (virginia up, 2006).

perhaps if i timed it right, i'd be there in time to particpate in the international circus festival of tomorrow taking place at cirque d'hiver bouglione.i'm sure i could master a cartwheel and a handstand and buy myself some big floppy shoes and red nose by january of 2007; learning to make a successful balloon animal is another matter entirely, however.

just a working girl

this playlist is dedicated to confessing mermaid, who, like me, has realized that she has a whole lotta work to do. hopefully, it will keep both of our noses to the grindstone. melanie griffith movie, anyone? i love that working girl was a short-lived series on nbc starring sandra bullock in 1990.

Working in the Coal Mine/Devo
Working for the Man/Roy Orbison
9 to 5/Dolly Parton
Welcome To The Working Week /Elvis Costello
She Works Hard For The Money /Donna Summer
There Ain't No Good Chain Gang/Johnny Cash with Waylon Jennings
Five O'Clock World/The Vogues
You Can't Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd/Roger Miller
Whistle While You Work/Unknown
Work Song/Nellie McKay
Allentown/Billy Joel
A Hard Day's Night/Beatles
Let the River Run/Carly Simon
Maggie's Farm/Bob Dylan
TGIF/Le Tigre
Take This Job And Shove It/Johnny Paycheck
Keep On Truckin'/The Road Hammers

pretty peggy-o (with apologies to bob)

i had dinner tonight with friends who told me another, much more ... uhm ... scintillating peggy story than my own related in my previous post. keep in mind that this is one of those stories about a friend of a friend and thus just gets better in the retelling!

friend of a friend, lets call him "ralph", was attending the opening festivities of a premier cultural institution in TO recently. he was seated at a table with peggy and was telling her, with a certain air of 'disgruntled intelligentsia', about a cutting insult he received from a grumpy TO social matron.

"she told me that i was 'sycophantically vicious'!" ralph complained to peggy.

"oh ralph, you've never been a sycophant", peggy responded.

ouch. i think i got off lightly.

it has been said ...

that i am 28 going on 80. since when does excitement over buying a vacuum cleaner (if you had as much cat hair in your apartment as i do in mine from my two furry beasts, you'd be excited too!) and love of green veggies constitute a premature descent into old age? maybe margaret atwood (aka "peggy") was right. i am getting old.

okay, that peggy reference was unnecessarily vague. prior to the beginnings of this blog, i had the good (bad?) fortune of meeting up with margaret atwood at a book festival on my birthday. as she was autographing a chapbook of her new release that should be hitting the shelves soon, i playfully mentioned that it was my birthday. she responded by coldly asking how old i was. i told her, and joked that i was getting old. she looked up from the front page of the chapbook, peered at me with those scary eyes over the rims of her glasses and said in a very chilling voice, right out of the handmaiden's tale, "yes, my dear. you are getting old." shiver. i'm surprised that it hasn't become a recurring nightmare. pherhaps when i actually am 80 (going on 28?) she will come back to haunt me.

now seriously!

a few have asked for more "serious" race photos, so here they are:
the A4+ @ around the 600 m mark (we're the white boat at the top of the picture) we ended up bow for bow with the other white boat, missing the bronze by 8/10 of a second

A4+ returning to the dock. when i saw this photo, i was surprised by how calm we look. while it was no row 'n barf performance, we were all somewhat shaky and lactic-acidy

C4+ moments after winning the bronze; as they came close to the dock we screamed "how much do you love racing?" -- one of our many mantras

to balance the intensity of the serious moments, there were many lighter in tone:

i tried to take a coachly picture of leslie checking the riggining on the nascopie but she insisted on hamming it up

the scholar who rows (and her graduate student sidekick); mla and i set up a "library" near the boat trailer -- a circle of chairs where everyone had to be quiet and read. we were the only ones with homework!

there was some confusion over our national affiliation. though the records said we were representing canada, for some reason, our badges had the union jack on them. one of our race cries became "row for the mother country" :oP

to confuse matters more, kate pulled out all the pomo identity stops: an american (and former texan ... but she didn't vote for him!) rowing for canada, under the british flag. i wore a us rowing shirt on our last day just to add to the fun

if heaven was a boathouse ...

i think it might look like princeton's:









on the other hand, if you're the nascopie there are times when heaven seems really far away:

coach's corner

here's the press release our coach sent to the whig standard:

A contingent of 11 athletes from the Kingston Rowing Club competed in the 2006 FISA World Rowing Masters Regatta held 06-10 Sep 2006, at Caspersen Rowing Centre on Mercer Lake near Princeton, New Jersey.

This particular regatta is for athletes 27 years of age and older, divided into age categories, with the oldest competitor at this particular regatta being a startling 87 years old.

Kingston had crews in the women's A coxed four, women's C coxed four, women's B eight with coxswain, women's B double and men's D single.

The women's A coxed four, with Kelly Smith, Kate Petersen, Shani Doucet, Shannon Smith and coxswain Karen Blachford placed 4th in a time of 3:55.986 [we missed third place by eight tenths of a second!] while the women's C coxed four, facing all American crews, comprised of Jane MacDonald, Diana Hopkins-Rosseel, Mary Louise Adams and Lisa Eyles and the watchful eye of coxswain Karen Blachford, placed a solid third, half a boat-length ahead of their nearest competitor, in a time of 4:06.152.

The women's B eight, pulled together with the crews from the coxed fours, was a lone Canadian boat in an all American race, The field of seven boats were neck and neck all the way down the 1000 meter course. It wasn't until the last 100 meters of the race that the pack broke up and placement was determined. The Kingston crew placed seventh, with only five seconds separating first and seventh place.

The women's B double with Lisa Eyles and Isolda Penney had an incredible start but a boat-stopping crab, followed by another crab, (crab is when the oar does not cleanly exit the water and is pulled parallel to the rowing shell by the force of the shell's forward motion) severely impacted their ability to place. They did recover and determined not to be left behind, succeeded in catching the pack and placing sixth out of seven boats.

Rick Trapp, rowing in the men's D single, had a strong race from start to finish, finishing a strong third in a time of 4:04.606.

and here are a few more pictures, this time from mla's camera:

traffic jam at the launching dock

kate warming up before our 8+ race

lisa and isolde, our super-fast, super-fit, and super-hot (yes, isolde!) double. they kindly stepped in to fill in two empty seats in our boats so that we could race ...

and in turn, we screamed ourselves silly at the 750m mark during their race to show our support (the girl in the ball cap in the middle isn't part of our crew. she found herself surrounded by yelling, crazy women near the finish and decided the best course of action was to join in the fun!)

rick, leslie, lisa and isolde

steve and leslie celebrating after the C4+ won bronze

FISA world rowing masters regatta 2006

i think virginia woolf really had something good going with the whole stream of consciousness deal. at the moment, my mind is moving like the pages of one of those flip books that is filled with little stick figures; when one flips the pages, the little stick man looks like he's moving, dancing, doing cartwheels, etc. so many great, warm, scary, anxious, inspiring, funny, frenetic moments from my past 5 days in princeton, nj @ the FISA world rowing masters regatta, so little desire to try and marshal those memories into any shape that resembles a traditional narrative. virginia, the next paragraph and the pictures that follow are inspired by you:

the diner @ tannerville and jane's liver and onions; mla's feet on the dashboard; trying to take pictures of the moon; the grumpy hotel desk jockey; the sound of the club truck pulling into the parking lot and dark and stars and jane yelling "we're here leslie and steve!"; shani, kate and kelly trying hard not to wake me up and my feigning sleep; hotel sheets (that were too short for the bed) cold from days of air conditioning against very tired legs; alarms and being thirsty and warm hair against my cheek and wrinkled pyjamas; itchy unisuits, stiff backs, leslie reassuring, calming, rationally explaining why not to row the new empacher; steve and the great hunt for a "package store"; bright lights and rows and rows of perfectly aligned boxes of kashi go lean crunch, upper middle-class, middle-aged women debating over the merits of dr. huschka's moisturizer (which was on sale); giant salad bars and passion potion tea; the pink parallelogram on my back from falling off the boat trailer, grass and dirt and sand and rocks felt through the bottom of my pink (red?) deck shoes; karen singing "c is for coxie"; sun-warmed back, legs, itchy palms, wonder woman, a man with a funny german accent calling lane numbers, event numbers ("race whiskey to the prestart"), and club names, 3 minutes and 55 seconds during which the only thing i remember is the pain of the rubber oar handle shifting the callouses on my right hand and the sensation of my heels driving in to the stretchers, karen's voice "the biggest ten you've ever pulled, gimme ten for leslie!"; breath so hard to catch, lungs burning, seven-ups; did they move the finish line farther down the course? salty sweat drying on my skin, knees hurting too much, can't get out of the boat, shaking, shaking, shaking; sweaty, warm hugs; the post-race chocolate covered pretzel; this is the library (hegemony, counter-hegemony, only a page and half before he mentions gramsci, political economy of culture, defining "ideology", talking about writing with jane, fingersmith) treks to the "real" washrooms; competing for the "mother country", kate's canada rowing t-shirt; yellow tail chardonnay at the olive garden, 3 very big bowls of salad, countless breadsticks and a good-humoured waitress, telling the cubby hole man story, sunlight on the floor of the princeton boat house; lisa putting lip balm on her nose, "how much do you love racing mary louise?"; the middle 500m, kelly's field glasses against the lenses of my sunglasses, power, new race, power, new race, my voice cracking; shoe princessing, cold diet coke for diana, madison avenue "who the hell are you?"; pussycat dolls "don't you wish your girlfriend?"; dirty feet in the shower, my good jeans, defining the "cute, little top", forgetting what it feels like to wear eyeliner; heels in a grassy field? i'd like to see you dance in those! shrimp, sweet things in clear bottles, fiddles and fiddlers with funky shoes, jane step dancing, kate forgetting the words to the american national anthem, being spun around the dance floor by a crazy russian man, mary louise's boyfriend from florida who rows with aligators, peter the naval attaché, screaming the words to "sweet home alabama", dancing like i'm part of the cast from my big, fat, greek wedding, karen and the husky dogs, the moon a white face in a dark sky, dirt and grass between my toes (where are my shoes?); sore calves, sore back, sorer head; must remember to drink water; jane's keys nestled below the driver's seat, miles and miles of cows; 89 and no graveyards!! venti coffees and the impromptu walking tour of downtown binghamton, diana being apprehensive about finding coffee at a hooka bar on a sunday morning, christina aguilera "fighter", jane sleeping in the back seat, yogurt covered raisins and bbq chips, sweaters on the teeth, fiona/gidget the gadget, late afternoon sun and spots of dust on the windscreen.

the diner @ tannerville, where the corn is still frozen, the mashed potatoes are instant, and the liver comes with onions

we had a chance to row a newer, possibly faster boat for two of our races; after consulting with leslie we decided against it. we thought it better not to change anything, including the pre-race ritual of taping our feet into the shoes in the 95

the A4+ before our first race; our team cheer was "ice cream". though it's difficult to see, i'm wearing my wonder woman t-shirt

the A4+ heading to the start

kelly and shani, post race

the bow number on the nascopie for our 8+ race

a single in stretchers in the princeton boathouse; it was the perfect time of morning to sneak in and poke around

talking race strategy at the trailer

the C4+, the crew that brought home the hardware -- world bronze medalists!

over the 5 days we were at the course, leslie was constantly being pestered by this guy who worked holding boats at the starting gates; he also worked at holding my backpack

from this shot of mary louise's game face, you would never be able to tell how much she loves racing. the pig tails made her row faster

kelly, lost in the music

c is for coxie, but who is the mystery man? too bad the picture is a little blurry!

diana, fiona/gidget the gadget (jane's gps system) and mary louise, demonstrating the fine art of car dancing while we blasted christina aguilera's "fighter" driving down the I81 home