Even in Kyoto

It's both good and bad to reach a point in the summer with a bit more breathing room. On the one hand, ahhhhhh, finally a chance to THINK and get organized and whatnot! I can tackle more of the miscellaneous rowing projects I've been wanting to tackle!

On the other hand, those darned manuscripts and reports still don't write themselves, argh.

Focus, brain, focus!

It was beautiful out on the water this morning. The rowing club is reaching one of those stages where we're having the opposite problem compared to what we had at the start of the pandemic: too many people! I mean, not really too many, just...we aren't accustomed to having to manage this many rowers and boats at every practice. It's a lot. I'm talking, 27 people signed up for practice this morning, 9 boats planned to go out. That means getting out extra safety launches, and managing ourselves effectively when launching and landing from our dock so we get actual rowing time.

Anyway, given the numbers, I volunteered to be the second coach for the morning, and I think overall that made things better for everyone. On the other hand, sitting in my office now, I can tell you that mornings in the coaching launch are still not equivalent to mornings in a rowing shell, doing the actual rowing.

But I'll get back to the actual rowing again on Thursday.

In the meantime, back to writing an assessment report, whee.

Sometime soon I am hoping to start on the project of refinishing a lot of the rowing club's oars. On some of the blades, the surface has worn down to the point where we're starting to scrape through the fiberglass layers. Other blades have chips and cracks. Not good. Those things ain't cheap!

Certain things clicked into place during a conversation with teammates about how to honor one of our teammates who has just moved down to NYC for three years while his fiancee undertakes a pediatrics fellowship there. P mentioned the idea of giving J a map of our section of the Hudson River, with our usual landmarks illustrated, so J would remember his rowing roots. When searching online, he wasn't able to find anything of the sort, but that all gave me Ideas.

Here's the original dirty old blade I worked with, one of a bunch of blades I salvaged when teammates wanted to throw them all away as Useless Boatyard Junk:



After sanding the blade down and coating it with primer, I put the first layer of paint on with a bristle brush, and quickly concluded I didn't like that application method, for reasons such as what can be seen here:



I switched over to a foam brush for the subsequent layers, which worked well enough for this purpose. Oar blade painting is almost as stressful as putting on coats of varnish, except at least oar blades are much smaller and easier to reposition. When it comes to repainting the oars the club uses, I'll mix in a couple of paint additives that a teammate recommended based on her prior efforts to repaint oars about a decade ago.

I used SignPainter's One Shot for the major design elements:


Then some Sharpies and more One Shot for the finishing details. Overall I'm pleased with how it turned out! I don't know how durable the SignPainters One Shot is, but hopefully durable enough?



As I told J, I'm now hoping that he can convince his future father-in-law to come up with a good method for mounting the oar for display, since his future father-in-law is a really good woodworker. And if the FFiL does...maybe additional ones can be made for the other 5 blades in the pile? That has been one of the aspects of Art Oars that I just don't really want to deal with.

I should point out that I've been carting around one of the oar blades in the pile since the Texas days, so it might be another decade before I'm struck by inspiration again, heh. Still - these are nice materials to work with for the sake of making display/art items for rowers.

----

Project 2 came from thinking that my research students and I should make something to commemorate our summer of research work. Just based on our personalities, I came up with the idea of some sort of "Easily Distracted by Ants" concept. One of my research students is artistically inclined, and agreed to create a design based around that concept. After working on it, she got inspired to make a second design featuring the name of the ant species we're working with.

Once I showed the designs to S, he asked if we would like to do DIY screenprinting if supplied with a screen, ink, and squeegee. But of course!

On Sunday I picked up a stack of blank shirts at Goodwill, and yesterday I got additional shirts from 2 of 3 students, to print on.

The first design, which also went on the front of all the shirts:


Design on the back of all the shirts:


Shirts waiting while they dry:


I am SO PLEASED with these. There are definitely going to be more rounds of shirt-printing in the future.

So now you have some idea of some of the things that have been keeping me busy lately.

Today I decided to go back to the boathouse after rowing and coffee, to continue work on various boathouse projects for a couple hours.

First, I rehung the boat light charging station on L-hooks, and while I was at it, hung up a second shoe holder to serve as a walkie talkie charging station. I was able to get everything powered up thanks to having obtained some 8-foot extension cords at the hardware store yesterday.

I also moved all of the supplies for keeping megaphones and coxboxes charged up, onto a temporary portable step unit.



This now gets all of the rowing electronics into one place inside the boathouse, instead of having everything scattered in different locations. It also gets all the electronics to a spot where they can be recharged regularly.

Once that was done, I turned my attention to our first aid cart. During this transition, it, along with some of our electronics, has been living inside a shipping container.

Something about the first aid cart has been bothering me for years. The original person who assembled it, assembled the wheels incorrectly. See if you can tell what I mean from the photo below. Up until now I really haven't been in a position to do anything about the problem. Vexing. Especially when you consider that people periodically want to wheel the cart to new locations during our special events.



I kind of feel like there isn't a WORSE way to assemble the wheels!

At one point, the wheels were so poorly fastened that one of the wheels came off entirely. So when I took things apart to swap the wheels to the correct positions, I encountered multiple sizes of nuts and bolts. But at least now the cart will actually roll properly, and with any luck no one will have to tilt this beast on its back to fix the wheels again anytime soon!

Along with the wheel problem, there has been some sort of long-term lingering issue with one of the bottom drawers, where it refused to stay completely closed. Super annoying. When trying to work on the wheels, I ascertained that I would need to remove the bottom drawers to access the wheel nuts from inside the cart. That eventually led me to watch an internet video about how to remove this type of drawer from this type of cart (and it turns out there are two different overall types of cart/drawer; initial hits were for the other type. Complicated!).

The internet video I eventually found helped me to understand that one of the plastic drawer removal latches had snapped off, making it extra difficult to remove the drawer.

A couple extra minutes with a small screwdriver and a bunch of swearing did the trick.

Intact latch:


Snapped-off latch:


In the end, I did not reinstall this "trouble drawer," as that seemed unwise.

Once the wheels were fixed, I relocated the cart to a new, more prominent spot inside the boathouse:



It just seems to me that having a first aid cart in a prominent, accessible location is a good idea.

I was so pleased to find that the cart fit exceptionally well into the space where I wanted to put it. The only issue was that the ground was far from level in that location. So I used a chunk of an old wooden platform that used to be underneath our oars, to provide a stable surface for the cart to rest on.

Totally satisfying projects!

Now I can turn my attention to the next boathouse project, constructing a long-term charging station for the coxboxes and megaphones.

...since annikusrex asked for pictures, haha, here's one:



I feel like the mustache made me look like a Super Mario character!

One of the problems with these is you can't laugh while wearing them or they'll fall off.

So I had to just try and look "manly" instead.



Here are some of our kids having a ball with the Stylish Mustaches:





So great.

For this morning's practice we attempted to keep all 7 boats in proximity to each other, starting by having the slower boats launch first. That gave me a chance to get this photo while we waited to launch:



Good practice for waiting in line at regattas! (and then also hustling once we have our turn to launch; these aspects of rowing really do cater to twitchy people like me)

It was a bit chilly, but the water was pretty calm and the current has settled down.



Getting 7 boats across lined up is a bit of a project, and we definitely aren't used to doing it.



Thankfully we only really had to do that once.

But from this photo, you can probably begin to appreciate why coaches are always trying to get their crews to bunch up together.



It's really hard to communicate with everyone when a group is spread out like this! And this is right after we tried to regroup!

A good row, overall. I was really glad to be back in a 2x with J, since that's our priority race for Saturday morning's regatta.

After some coffee with my teammates, I went back to the boathouse to finish constructing the main "wall." I wanted to get it done before I leave to go bike touring next week. And, success!



It might not look like much, but it lets me move forward with constructing a second charging station for the walkie-talkies, which can now hang in another shoe holder next to the light charging station. Prior to the wall, there wasn't really a place to put things - you can see there's just the shed's metal outer cladding that's behind the wall. And then I can eventually start work on an updated coxbox/megaphone charging shelf.

And then I worked on just one of a jillion equipment repair projects. This one was an interesting one. Here is the footstretcher assembly out of one of the club's singles:



As you can see, the sole of the right shoe tore out.

The reason why the sole of the right shoe tore out, is because the shoe had been bolted directly through the footstretcher board, with a pair of bolts.

Most modern rowing shoes are attached to a separate plate via a set of FOUR screws, and that plate is then bolted to the footstretcher board. (of course, I recently emulated this same direct bolting technique on shoes for my own boat, heh!)

However, most likely in this instance, at some point or another there was a hunt to find a footstretcher board of the correct width/dimensions to fit into this particular boat. This footstretcher board hardly looks original (although one can certainly purchase a replacement for the original, for the mere price of $265).

And with that hunt, a challenge, because boatmakers don't care to standardize things between boat brands. So maybe the board was found, but there was no shoe plate that would work with the board. In some cases I've observed that our coach has sawed (sawn?) down footstretcher boards to get them to fit the width of the boat he needs them to go in. Sometimes that works, sometimes not, depending on what the footstretcher board is made of.

Last year I did advocate for paying the hefty sum to replace one of the other really badly bodged sets of footstretchers in one of the doubles we use and race frequently.

Anyway.

With all that information, I did find a box full of spare shoe plates, and I did find a really nice, brand-new pair of shoes among the supply stockpile, which you can see on the right in the photo above.

But do the bolt holes for the nice-looking new shoes actually line up with the bolt holes in the shoe plate I found? (note, it has to be a narrow shoe plate for this narrow boat, so that did involve quite a bit of rummaging through that parts bin).

No, of course not!

But, there was another pair of worn-out shoes in the separate, bigger "footstretcher parts and shoes" bin that DID fit the bolt holes in the plate.

So the only other remaining step was to drill yet another set of holes in the footstretcher board, so the board could accept this particular (superior IMHO) style of footstretcher plate. That poor footstretcher board, though, can only handle so many holes!

And then assemble everything, after rummaging around a whole bunch more to find some acceptable bolts, too. (don't even get me started on thread pitch differences across our equipment!!!!)



There are also some brand new shoes on order anyway, but they aren't going to arrive in time for the regatta this weekend.

So when I go home, I also need to remember to find a couple pieces of foam to insert into the heels on these worn-out shoes, so that anyone rowing the boat doesn't get their heels all cut up.

And with this project, perhaps you can begin to grasp the extent to which there is a massive, massive equipment maintenance backlog to address.

We have the exact same problem with the rowing equipment, as I initially had with the first set of bicycles I obtained for my bicycling class. Used equipment, assembled back together, will work for a little while.

Until something breaks.

And when things start to break, the nightmare begins, because none of the parts are standardized. So every repair requires that someone become the champion of that particular project, and see it through from start to finish.

With the bikes, I largely addressed this by arranging to buy a fleet. I've added more bikes since then, but the fleet is the core of the bike collection. And it has been such a relief, to be able to ride and not have to worry so much about limping the bikes along.

With the rowing equipment, I think my biggest dilemma at this point is related to communicating about this whole situation to the rowing club.

Our head coach, who has been on hiatus for 6 months now (out of town in Chicago with family), has been talking to me about this problem for *years*. But he has also clearly been incredibly thrifty and clever about bodging repairs, to the point where I'm just not sure whether any of my teammates fully understand the scope of things. I mean, I'm not sure that *I* fully understand the scope!

There's also the element that it's usually a whole lot easier to convince people to contribute towards the purchase of a shiny new boat, as compared to contributing to the upkeep of many of these older, tired shells.

But it's worth keeping up at least *some* of these older shells going, because they're the boats we have right now, and we're using many of them often multiple times in a single day.

So that's where I am, with things.

And obviously I also need to be strategic with my time, since this boat stuff is a hobby and not my profession.

It's too late for today, however.

I was originally thinking that today I would try and build a wall in the boathouse, but ultimately I chickened out on that project, because it will involve hauling 5 sheets of half-inch plywood from the lumber shop to the boatyard, and it was still rainy this morning, and I'm still mostly riding Princess TinyBike around because Frodo is still in the shop. I'm just not sure about hooking Princess TinyBike up to the Big Mama. I could have hooked up Froinlavin, but I also know from prior experience that Froinlavin definitely isn't built to haul heavy loads. And I could have hooked up S's GT, but it lacks fenders, has too much reach for me, and can only take front panniers right now. I suppose in theory I also could have hooked up Old Faithful, but that also would have been a disaster of a different sort.

So anyway, I didn't do any of that.

But another next big project at the boatyard, is getting tools and supplies all organized, so that some of them can go back on the workbench in the back of the boathouse. We call it "Yuri's workbench," because he is the main workbench user, and is the person responsible for its general state of organization/disorganization.

He uses an organization system based on "security by obscurity," where he has squirreled away a whole bunch of useful boat parts and tools in places where he can find them quickly, but almost nobody else can, because they're stuffed in-between bins and boxes full of kipple. This is partly motivated by the fact that the workbench is very much an open space, where anyone using the boathouse could walk up and just grab things off the workbench. In any case, Y isn't around at the moment, and the rest of us DO need to be able to find things relatively quickly, so it's time to undo his organization system.

I wasn't around for the initial stages of moving everything off of the workbench and out of the boathouse; I was only around for the later stages, after about 50% of the stuff had been cleared off. So I didn't have a chance to develop much of a mental map of what came off the workbench, or where it went.

Instead, this morning, I first cleared all of the remaining bits and pieces off of the workbench, and vacuumed the whole thing, and then worked on the shipping container.

This is the cleanest this workbench has been in a very long time.



I have a teammate who really wants to paint the top of the workbench. For some reason this doesn't seem like the greatest idea to me, but I can't articulate why not.

After all that, I spent a whole bunch of time going through every single box that's currently in the shipping container. That then made it possible to finally consolidate a bunch of stuff, according to type. Now, all of the new oarlocks and oarlock bushings are in a bin together, and those are grouped near the enormous collection of brand new oar sleeves and the bazillion clams (Composite Load Adjustment Mechanisms). All of the footstretchers and shoes are also together, as are all of the coxbox speaker wires, all of the skegs, all of the hatch covers, et cetera, et cetera. It's also now clear that we DO need to order more new boat shoes. Also, the bins with items that are rarely needed are stacked together in the way-back corner. And all of the various solvents and paints and other chemicals are also grouped together. And the epoxy and all kinds of gloves (all kinds, I tell you!) are in that general area, too.

Most of the tools are also now in or near the tool chest. The most commonly used wrenches are grouped in a box, and almost all of the half-disintegrated cardboard boxes full of randomness are now completely out of the shipper.

Here's how it looked right before I closed up for the day, noting that I did not touch anything in the tool chest to the left, because that is our first aid cart:



It helped that our youth rowers are at the state championships this weekend, so all of the supplies they needed for the regatta are currently out of the shipping container, freeing up more space for me to fling the remaining things around.

Some of the things in the shipping container also needed to be moved elsewhere. For example, the safety logbook is now back in a place where it's more accessible to people who don't have access to the shipping container:



I eventually put a handful of things back on the storage shelf under the workbench, and also set up a temporary walkie-talkie charging station back there, while I was at it:



The most fun thing back there is now the giant blue bin, which I have labeled, ?? Mystery Items ??.

Regarding the walkie-talkies, I want to feel vindicated for a little bit. I advocated for purchasing them a couple of years ago, first and foremost for our annual regatta, because we really need them for it. (phone calls or texts are WAY too slow!) More recently, it seemed to me that we should test out using them during our on-water practices, because sometimes our boats get spread out pretty far apart, to the extent where a coaching megaphone isn't going to help at all.

Some teammates were a little reluctant to start using them, wondering what sort of protocol we might need to put in place. But from day 1, they have immediately demonstrated their worth. They are making it SO MUCH EASIER to coordinate with each other, and I also think they are much better from a safety standpoint! Plus, using them during our practices means everyone will have a much better idea of how to use them at the regatta. The kind we got are water-resistant and will float, and we quickly learned that if they come in contact with water, the included flashlight will start to flash. Great stuff. But another item that needs to be kept charged.

While organizing the shipping container, I also encountered a handful of items that really needed to go in our storage shed instead, where we keep specialty items for the events we host and whatnot. So that then also led to some additional reorganizing of the storage shed.

This is the most organized the storage shed has ever been, in the time I've been with the club. I also moved some things from the shed into the shipping container.



There are so many bins full of t-shirts in there. But there is NOT a giant tent that no one has used for at least a decade!

The new organization isn't perfect, but it's definitely an improvement compared to how things were jumbled in there previously.

The entire 5 hours that I worked on moving stuff and things around, the river looked like this:


No signs of any change with the tides. The water is the color of chocolate milk, full of silt and giant tree trunks. The flow got up over 92,000 cfps, moving fast enough that I was not particularly keen to go out there (and we didn't try to this morning, we just headed to the fitness center for cross-training). But the flow now appears to have crested, and is back down to 86,000 cfps now, so with any luck we'll be able to row again starting Monday.

Anyway, when all that was done (for now), I was very tired. I biked home, showered, and still managed to get in a grocery store run.

Tomorrow I should have at least a little time to finally work on some garden things! And it is even supposed to be sunny! Imagine that.

Our rowing practices always start by sweeping the goose poop off the dock.



Sunrises often change so quickly I don't have a chance to capture the changes.



Further upriver:


Waiting to regroup near the Red Triangle, as we know it. When I showed this photo to R, and how she's giving the camera some major side-eye, she just laughed.



Trees along the river still haven't fully leafed out yet.


We made it just north of the Menands bridge.


The water looks calm here, but there were lots of fishing boats out, waking us as they raced to the next spot to look for fish.


As is true most mornings, I am grateful I was able to get out and row.

Some recent choices:

Yesterday: I chose to work from home, since I could. The weather was clear and sunny, so it seemed like a better day than today (Saturday) for tackling a couple of the more time-sensitive gardening items. And it was. Today has been windy and rainy.

I recently ordered some more sturdy t-posts for putting up fencing around the garden so the bunnies don't nibble everything to death. I'm not sure I'm using the fence post clips correctly to attach the fence to the posts, but since I'm not trying to contain larger livestock it might not really matter that much, as long as the chicken wire basically stays up.



The fencing also allowed me to put up some shade in front of the rhubarb plants, to actually test the hypothesis that the reason they keep making flowers instead of delicious, juicy stalks is because they're getting too much sun.

And then I could uncover the tulips so they aren't trying to bloom through the protective hardware cloth I put over them before I could get the fence up.



-

I was also confronted with a choice to make for Saturday, one of those choices that makes a person frown: I could either coach another rowing practice again, or I could not row because practice would be canceled due to a lack of coaches. (Can you imagine if I said no and then went and rowed Petrichor by myself instead??? Thing is, I don't know how to launch Petrichor into the water all by myself, plus again, I haven't drilled the final holes to rerig her as a single! Plus also, as it all turned out, the morning was pretty stormy).

Then, after a meeting, and some time spent rearranging some oars, plus some more time eating a quick lunch at a pizza joint, I went in to work to take care of animals and plants and to bring home the rest of the massive grading albatross.

I'll be spending most of the rest of this Easter "break" grading lab reports, now that I've at least gotten all of the other grading finished.

This spring I committed to leading a total of four rowing practices with an emphasis on technique and skills development. This is in lieu of getting to row, myself. I also offered this last spring, and observed that it was really helpful for a subset of my teammates, particularly those who had first learned to row in the prior fall and who weren't entirely confident about jumping right back into fitness- and speed-focused work. There's definitely a skills and knowledge gap between our learn-to-row classes and our ongoing team training.

Anyway, last year the sessions seemed to make a really big difference in terms of helping our squad manage the transition from winter training back onto the water for spring.

This spring...has been an unpredictable one. Last week, we had to pivot back to indoor rowing on Monday, Thursday, and Friday (I tried to reschedule Thursday's session to Friday morning, and, well, that clearly didn't work). So I then extended my coaching plan to include this past Monday and this morning, too. Monday morning, once again it was just too darned cold to go out on the water safely. It was quite lovely later in the day, for my bicycling students, at least.

This morning looked like it would be another edge case, so I was hugely relieved when I got up at 4 and found that we were just barely warm enough to be above our cold temperature safety threshold. To the boathouse!!

The other challenge this spring has been the really good challenge, of high numbers (for us). There are around 17-19 people signing up for practice every morning. This is simultaneously thrilling and stressful. Thrilling because we've come a long ways from the pandemic days of 4-5 people max, but stressful because that's a lot of people to manage safely. If we focus just on sculling, our largest sculling boats are quads (4x), which hold 4 people. With this many rowers, we're running out of enough quads to boat everyone! And it's still far too cold to put out singles. Doubles *can* be okay, so long as the rowers in the double are adequately experienced.

Last night, after looking over who signed up for the morning, I realized: we need to put out an 8+. So we did. Of course, that involved running around to get an 8+ all rigged, and digging through the giant pile of sweep oars to find most of a matching set. I then had to come up with marching orders for 3 boats with very different needs. I sent off a fast quad to go get in a workout, so they did. I sent off the technique quad to work on the technique things we'd started to work on during the previous tech row. And I told the 8+ I'd stay nearby for the most part because they would need the most coaching help (and they did).

I have teammates who really want to row in big sweep boats, so they were so happy for the 8+. And I am happy for them, because I have really strong opinions about how to get 8's up and going in a way that makes for a good row instead of a crappy one. When I'm in charge, I can make the right things happen. Other teammates appreciated their time in the 4xes. So aside from chilly fingers in the coaching launch, it was a really good morning.

Thank goodness.

Now, hopefully, I will also get to do some rowing soon, myself.

I will say that getting to be out on the Hudson River in the coaching launch is at least a fantastic change of pace from winter gym rat life, heh.

Because I've routinely been getting up early, and haven't been home much to play with the cats, they have learned that Happy Hour should start at around 4 am. I'm grateful that in this time when I've been working a lot on both paid work and unpaid rowing volunteer work, the cats will still play and wrestle with each other. George would love it if I would play with him more, but he can deal.

Anyway, this morning I started to wake up because of the sounds of the cats scampering around, and then suddenly had the thought: I forgot to unplug the glue gun yesterday afternoon after ant care! Yikes! (we use hot glue to seal small gaps in the nests so tiny ants can't escape)

I had originally been planning to go to Saturday morning practice, but there was no way I could do both that AND go deal with the glue gun, so I texted in my change of plans, got up, had some coffee, and headed in to campus.

There, I observed the best possible outcome: the hot glue gun was unplugged. One of my research students must have noticed and dealt with it. Thank goodness.

On the ride in, there were snowflakes the size of dinner plates falling from the sky. They were smaller on the ride home. After that there was a rowing meeting about all of the boathouse work.

And then finally, after lunch, I gave myself permission to get to work assembling the drop-in rowing units.

I have some really fun pictures from that. I'm pleased by how the units are packaged and constructed. They're as great as I'd hoped they'd be. I still have a lot of work to do to finalize rigging adjustments and drill the holes to actually mount them in Petrichor, but I'm motivated to make all that happen in order to finally get to row Petrichor.

Friends also came by to help me get Petrichor flipped back over again and loaded back onto the trailer. When I ordered the second set of rowing units, I also ordered a custom cover for Petrichor. It even came with a center pole and vent, so that most water should run out of the boat instead of just pooling on top of the cover. I'll need to adjust it further, but I feel so much better with a proper cover on the boat.

Time to finish cooking dinner, and maybe get some of the weekend grading done. It's hard to motivate to work today.