Even in Kyoto

...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.



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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.

It was only when we started the boatbuilding class at the Center for Wooden Boats that I discovered that the boat kit did not include the actual drop-in rowing units. Our instructor noted that the units were in short supply; they were out of stock on the website of the company that makes and sells the kits themselves.

Clever me, I looked up the name of the person who makes the units, and placed an order through that person's website, stat. Shortly thereafter, there was some communication about further delay due to delayed parts shipments for components that have to be custom-manufactured.

In January or so, the company that makes and sells the boat kits announced they had more of the units in stock again, finally. They also made noises about having them in stock more regularly going forward. "Hooray!" I thought, "My units can't be far behind!"

In mid-March, I was surprised when my call to the company to inquire about the status of my order actually got through to a human being, who promised my rowing units would be shipped out by the end of that week.

Today, I called the company that makes and sells the boat kits, to verify that they still had the drop-in rowing units physically in stock. Yes, they did. Then I placed an order for two units (they were even on sale!). And put in for a cancellation with the person who makes the units.

Will I actually ever see the money again from the person who actually makes the units? We shall see. My mind will probably just be permanently boggled over what happened. What a terrible experience to go through with a small business I would have liked to support.

But I would really like to be able to finally row Petrichor, sooner rather than later.

Yesterday, when I checked the weather forecast for today, it looked warm enough in the morning to allow us to go rowing, but rainy enough in the midafternoon to make me pivot the plans for my Bicycling class to an indoor meeting instead of riding bikes.

We were indeed able to successfully launch and get out on the water this morning (I led practice and drove the Safety Launch)! However, while we were out the wind picked up and created sets of swells in the stretch of river between the I-90 bridge and our dock. With occasional whitecaps. One out of four boats was in the exact wrong place at the exact wrong time, and got swamped. Everyone did make it safely back to shore, minus one missing sandal (but with somewhat miraculous retrieval of two water bottles that had floated off).

Still, that wasn't exactly how we might have wanted practice to go.

And this afternoon at 2 pm, it was warm and sunny. But too late for the bicycling class because I'd said they didn't need to bring helmets or bikes with them.

Now I'm a little nervous about riding home this evening (which won't happen just yet anyway because of other work things).

For the third morning in a row, I did not make it to rowing practice. When I woke up yesterday morning, my right foot hurt, in a way that I now know is associated with plantar fasciitis. It hurt again this morning, and I had to figure I should probably avoid overdoing things.*

So instead I loaded up the bike trailer with a bin full of megaphones and coxboxes, plus a second bin to hold the updated boat light charging station, and biked over to the boathouse to install everything.

This is a temporary installation location, which will hopefully be out of the way for when the construction crews go through and replace the cladding that has corroded away:



Previously, most of this stuff lived just to the right of the breaker box and power outlets, so the existing power strips were an appropriate length and configuration. We should probably get some heavy-duty extension cords for this temporary arrangement, though.

Then I went to our usual rowing coffeeshop destination, except none of my teammates were there because they were helping a different teammate move his new deck from his front yard to his back yard.

So from the coffeeshop, I headed north to Troy to the farmer's market, where I dropped off 5 empty milk bottles and 3 empty egg cartons, and picked up a small bottle of milk, a small bottle of cream, a dozen eggs, a loaf of bread, 3 onions, some heirloom cornmeal, and 19 bottles of maple syrup.

One of my rowing teammates recently made me aware of a relatively new bike shop located in downtown Troy, so after the market I stopped by the hardware store and bought a some new bypass pruners, and then went over to try and find and check out the bike shop. The shop owner didn't have my favorite tires in stock, but was familiar with them from touring in Africa, and he did have the 3 U-locks I need for my Bicycling students. The Troy shop might become my new main shop simply because it is far more pleasant to bike to it than it is to try and bike to the 2 shops located just off Central Ave in Albany. Plus, trip-chaining. After he reads this scrottie will once again advocate for moving to Troy, and I will concede he's probably right that we should (or at least move closer!).

Then I dropped off 18 of the 19 bottles of maple syrup at the boathouse:


They are the prizes for the winners of the 5k walk/run event that the rowing club holds every spring as a fundraiser (IceBreaker Challenge 5k!). I happen to think they're a mighty good prize, for about five different reasons, but especially including that they support one of our local maple syrup producers.

After the second boathouse dropoff, I headed up to the grocery co-op to pick up a couple of things, and then returned home for a brief while. George and Martha were very curious about the contents of this paper bag I pulled out of my pannier:


I am pretty sure they were smelling the butter from the croissant inside, but they did not manage to nose the bag open to get at the croissant directly.

Then I headed back to the boathouse again, this time to work with a couple of teammates to mark out the course for the 5k on the bike path:


We used the measuring wheel to help ensure our distances were accurate. We also cross-referenced the measurements against my hiking GPS and also an app on my smart-o-phone. Louie the dog helped us remember to appreciate the fact that we were outside, and he also marked the course, in his own way.



And now I am home again, and the weather radar image contains some interesting bright colors, and it's rather windy. I'm glad that the weather was relatively sunny and warm for the time while I was out running errands, delivering things, and marking the course. This year was far easier than last year, when we had to trudge over patches of ice and snow, and also some downed trees near the turnaround point.



*My current hypotheses for what might be going on relate to some recent changes to my footwear, and a worn-out bike saddle. So I wore a different set of shoes for biking and walking today, and things seem maybe *slightly* better than yesterday.