Now that was one for the record books.

Saturday started with breakfast and a trip over to campus to meet up with new rowers for a learn-to-row morning event. I brought scrottie along with me, as he hadn't seen the sun in a few days. This was the second day of my "attempt to infiltrate the rowing program" plan. Some of the experienced rowers provided rides out to the lake, thankfully, so we hitched a ride with one to get over there. I'd guess that there were around 60 people at the lake, once we arrived. I spent a bit of time talking with the team's equipment managers while the coaches got people organized, and then eventually found myself helping out a group of novice women with getting a boat out of the boathouse and down to the lake. I wound up in stroke seat, since I was experienced, and we wound up with a rower-turned-coxswain/coach in the cox's seat. After a couple of quick introductory drills on shore, we shoved off and set to work with the usual work of teaching brand-new rowers how to go through the motions.

All of this would be totally fine and low-key, except for one thing. Wind. It was windy enough that whitecaps started to develop while we were out in the middle of the lake, and we quickly went from the middle of the lake to one side of the lake that has been dammed off with large rocks. Four novice starboards weren't able to turn this giant, old boat (one of those big, yellow Dorigos) quickly enough to keep us from blowing into the rocks. Once we hit the point of inevitability (starboard oars scraping the rocks), the coxswain and I both looked at each other and jumped into the water. I yelled at bow and got her out of the boat, holding off the bow, and then pretty quickly we got everybody else out of the boat as well as I explained that we needed to keep the boat off the rocks as best we could. While I spent a couple of minutes talking to the coxswain and thinking about what to do next, a launch appeared, carrying two experienced rowers and the assistant coach.

The experienced rowers hopped out, and we sent over two of the novices to go back to shore. The two of them had the same idea I'd considered, of walking the boat down along the large rocks to a smoother part of the shore. So we set out. At that point, I was incredibly glad that I'd decided to wear wool socks, as my feet were perfectly comfortable. I should add that while it was chilly, the water was warm enough that we really had no concerns about hypothermia. Thank goodness.

As we walked the boat along the shore, the launch returned with two additional experienced rowers. When those rowers hopped out, the launch became really imbalanced, and the assistant coach struggled with it a bit to get it pointed in the whitecaps. When he was about 15 feet away from the boat, it must have hit a wave in just the wrong way, and he was thrown out. There was nothing we could do except watch, horrified, as the launch continued to go around in circles. Fortunately, the coach was thrown far enough from the boat that he was out of the way of the boat's propeller, and eventually the spinning launch hit another wave that completely capsized it and killed the engine.

In the end, myself and three other experienced rowers hopped into the bow and stern, and the four of us rowed the waterlogged Dorigo back to the shore where we'd launched. Once we reached shore, we recruited enough people to tip the boat and empty out the water, and then got the boat put away and all that. While a couple of people got wet and cold and shivered a bit, overall this was the best possible way that a situation like that could go.

I talked to a couple of the novice rowers who'd been in the boat, once we got up on shore, and they were completely undeterred by the whole thing. If anything, they said they were kind of amazed by how gnarly it was to actually row. Hah. There's another learn-to-row practice this evening, so they will get a second chance at it before the team asks everyone to commit to the season. And it seems like there will be a good bunch getting involved.

It's really, really good to get to work with this program. It's ten years old, at this point, and is basically entirely run by students. That's incredible for a collegiate rowing program. Clearly, they aren't going to be in the same league as teams like UT Austin, but they actually have some good local competition that's at about the same level of skill and experience. It sounds like I'll be able to follow through with my plan of sculling twice a week and helping out at practices twice a week. More than anything, I'm hoping they'll use me as a voice of experience and perspective, and it sounds like they're happy to have someone around in that capacity.

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I would have blogged about all of this earlier, except the rest of the weekend was just as full of adventures as the first half of Saturday. When we got back to the rec center, S and I headed back home to pack up for a bike camping expedition. However, as we rounded a corner on the ride home, I heard a not-so-good sound behind me and looked back to see S come crashing to the ground. Fortunately, there weren't any cars nearby, so we were able to get ourselves off the road to assess what had just happened. It turned out that S's chain had slipped, and in the crash, his dodgy crankarm had completely snapped, making his bike completely unrideable. So I fired off a quick message to our camping buddies, and we changed course for Aggieland Cycling. Once again, luck was on our side, as they had an extra crankarm of the right sort, so we were able to get underway with our bike camping expedition only an hour after our planned departure time.

We rode out with my friend J to Somerville Lake, about 45 miles from Bryan/College Station. The ride out there was largely along a couple of highways, which isn't the most pleasant thing ever, but we managed to get to the lake before dark. We took a different route back on Sunday, along some windy, hilly country roads that I'd ridden before on the MLK century. That made for a much more pleasant time. By the time we got back to town, I was ready for a nice, mellow Sunday evening, so we baked some bread, made some yogurt, and put together an enormous, delicious, vegetarian shepherd's pie for dinner.

Now, time for another busy work week. But I'm happier with being busy than with sitting around, not doing much. Exercise keeps me sane.