Even in Kyoto

On Friday we started a new strength workout at rowing practice, and between that and a rather spicy Saturday morning practice, it's a wonder I got as much done the rest of the day Saturday as I did (to wit, grocery shopping, then I don't remember what).

Thankfully by Sunday I felt rested enough I could continue chipping away at various projects. It also helped that the warmer daytime temperatures persisted, more or less (more like 40°F than 50, but we'll take it!!).

So, back to Oar Factory mode.

These are now up to their third coat of paint:


They look pretty good from a distance, but there are still some surface imperfections I'm not entirely happy about.

I have gotten several things sorted out, but have some additional refinements to make to my painting process. Among the things sorted out is my paintbrush cleaning/management technique, since stashing the brush in the freezer really didn't work for me (gaps are too long between painting sessions). I have a jar full of used mineral spirits, where the old paint gradually settles out. So when I'm finished painting, I pour the supernatant into a separate jar, then pour a fraction of that into a plastic tub. I work the paint out of the bristles over a series of 3-4 mineral spirits pours, then I use a brush spinner to spin the excess mineral spirits out of the brush. From there I head to the basement and clean out the mineral spirits with warm water and dish detergent, and hand-spin out the water. I wound up losing or misplacing the original packaging for the paintbrush I'm using, so instead I am wrapping it in brown paper to keep the bristles together as it dries. This all leads to a much better painting experience for each coat of paint.

For surface prep, I found that it's definitely a good idea for me to use rubbing alcohol and the right sort of rag to wipe off the sanding dust between coats, otherwise I get some terrible bits of grit in the paint.

I got some brush-on primer for this whole project, and this is the first set of oars where I've tried using it. For the next set, I think I need to apply two coats of the primer because just one coat was too thin and I can still see the underlying color irregularities on the blade surface. It turns out that the last person to paint oars used spray primer; my understanding is that it winds up being more expensive to do that. But if I don't get satisfactory results with the brush-on primer, I'll switch back because the spray primer is way easier (and fast) to use.

Meanwhile, in the Oar Repair Factory (aka basement)...

Most of my last round of epoxy work turned out pretty well! With a little bit of sanding, 3 of 5 blades are now ready to paint. There was one major exception, which was where I tried to rebuild some of the surface of blades where years of scraping against the dock wore the blades down through the carbon fiber. In those cases, my rebuilding attempts did add fresh surface, but there were small voids left behind as the epoxy settled onto the surface underneath the piece of polyethylene plastic. So in this case I figured heck, why not experiment, and basically just painted on a layer of epoxy to try and fill the voids.





This isn't going to be perfect, either, but hopefully it will give me enough surface material to sand things basically flat.

Really, this would be a great situation for some peel ply, but I don't have any at the moment, and it might be a while before I put in an order to a place that carries it.

In general the best news is that for the first 2 pairs of oars I finished painting a while ago, I also finally finished adjusting them to the correct length and inboard, so they are finally ready to go back to the boathouse! I am going to work on a series of driving errands on Tuesday to transport heavy and bulky things, so I'll be able to get them moved out and will pick up the next 2 sets soon.

I am also thinking I might be able to create a porch configuration that will let me work on 4 sets of oars at a time with overlapping painting cycles. Good stuff. It has been frustrating to have stalled out on this project for so long.

But for now, time to head in to the ant mines paper-grading mines...

Oh, one really random question: do any of you know of a good source of cotton terrycloth fabric, most ideally in orange? (I guess I could dye it, too). I want to use cotton terrycloth to make oar blade covers for when we go to regattas, but terrycloth seems like a tricky item to buy online.

After a failure like not even managing to get to the event at all, just making it to the starting line of an event starts to feel like a victory.

( blah blah blah bazillions of rowing details )

To begin with, I just want to note that it's insane how quickly 2026 has filled up with various plans already.

But that is what it is. I don't need to do all of everything instantly. I CAN be patient.

So in the back of my mind, I am thinking about one of my longer-term goals, which is to row on the Hudson River from Albany down to NYC, in Petrichor. It will not be practical to try doing this in 2026, but it might be practical in 2027.

I think when I do it, I am going to call the journey, "From Siena to the Sea." That's the college University where I work, where I have colleagues and students who are also interested in things like environmental justice and local/regional water quality issues. So I think there may be opportunities to work with people here on the trip, and make something more of it beyond just "Rebeccmeister goes row-camping on the Hudson for fun." Or, you know, "One Woman in a Boat (to Say Nothing of the Cats)" (lololol, still good though; haven't done any sea trials with George or Martha in Petrichor yet!).

I don't want to turn completely into one of the other people I've encountered in the Hudson, writing Books or Poems or whatever about their Voyage. For me I think it would be enough to just learn more from direct experience about the history and pre-history of the river, and to meet communities and people along the way, and to do all that from the perspective of Connections. It also goes with my overall agenda of wanting to say, "Hey, all you waterway advocacy people, pay attention to this part of the river, too!"

Still all very much in the idea phase. But this is the right time to be in the idea phase.

And really, the Idea phase is so much more fun than the grading I'm already supposed to be doing. (deep sigh) Okay, okay, I'll get my grading done.

Edited to add... I did it! I got my grading done! *pats self on back*

Now, about those manuscripts...

Tuesday afternoon, I hopped aboard a ferry to Bainbridge Island, for a long-overdue visit to see ivy and finally meet her dog, Hazel! I was commenting to her that visiting blog friends often feels like something of a crossover episode. We had so much to talk about, but most especially all of the "blah blah blah rowing" that is incredibly interesting to rowers but generally not anybody else, heh.

On my way to the ferry terminal, I've come to realize that this recently-opened Overlook Park is kind of analogous to a park thing that opened up in Albany a couple years ago, the Albany Skyway, in that both are just fancy pedestrian overpasses to get humans up and over motor vehicle/train obstructions so they can access a waterfront.



Of course, that's exactly where the similarities end, for in Seattle, the park connects the bustling Pike Place Market to the equally bustling Seattle waterfront, whereas in Albany there are some modest tourist buildings on one side and a very basic park on the other.

But I digress.

( gonna be mostly just more photos from here on... )

This is going to be a quiet year for me, and that's totally fine. I did get up and crank out a bunch of meters for the Concept2 Holiday Challenge, because that's always a great way to work up a good appetite. Then I managed to finish a small art project that has been lingering (gift for friends). In a bit I'll finish cooking a Portobello Wellington and a pumpkin-apple-pecan pie, and then I'll head over to a friend's house for dinner.

The first time I think I really became aware of the challenges of "stuff management" was back in high school, when a documentary called Affluenza highlighted how a lot of Americans wind up getting trapped in a cycle of materialism and overconsumption. That, plus many moves, make me occasionally mutter to myself, "Stuff: Do I own it or does it own me?"

Anyway.

Since my intention this winter is to do a blend of exercising on my own and exercising with the rowing team, I will be spending more time out on the front porch on the rowing machine and BikeErg. Both implements were facing towards a large pile of cardboard boxes and packing supplies, and I have to tell you I really wasn't excited about the thought of staring at all of that stuff every time I went to do a workout.

It was kind of the equivalent of that point in Arizona where all of the stockpiled tupperwares in the cupboard avalanched out onto my head one day: enough is enough! Do we need 4,000 yogurt tubs? No, we do not!

So I sorted out a subset of the boxes and padding to keep on hand for occasions where we want to send out packages, and then broke down the remaining boxes and aggregated the packing material together.

The stockpile had grown so large that I quickly filled up the garbage can and recycling bin.

Here are the remaining items waiting to be thrown away / recycled over the upcoming weeks:



It might take about a month altogether to cycle all of this out.

The three bags in the front of this photo are from a separate stuff management project. More on that in a moment.

That and a game of Scrabble and some laundry were my Sunday morning.

There was rain in the forecast for the afternoon. Originally I'd been thinking I would bike back down to the boatyard for the afternoon, toting Big Mama (big bike trailer), to finish the project of disassembling the kayak rack and to bring home it, its remaining contents, and all of the club's electronics with batteries that need to stay in relatively stable temperatures over the winter.

But rain and carryover exhaustion from taking out the docks on Saturday were a bridge too far. So I drove down instead.

Disassembling the kayak rack wound up being more challenging than I'd hoped. The star-bit screws were really IN the wood, so I stripped a couple of bits again (argh). But I eventually got the whole thing mostly disassembled so it should now be easier to transport the wood home.



I did manage to get S's windsurf board, my single shell cartop rack, and another pair of oars all onto Big Red's roof rack, so those items are now all at home.

Then I worked some more on the neverending boathouse and boatyard tidying for a while.

Here's the main space where a lot of stuff accumulates at the boathouse:



Right now the space is really cleared out; the bags in the first photo in this post are full of the abandoned clothing and water bottles I picked up. I will launder all the clothing and will then probably just go ahead and donate useable items to a clothing donation bin.

I threw away several bottles of partially-used sunscreen, figuring no one would want to touch them next spring (cooties!). I brought home five (5!) other new or almost-new bottles of sunscreen. I'll put most of them back out again in the spring, in the hopes that their presence will deter people from buying and leaving even more sunscreen bottles next year.

I think I can now basically walk away from most of the boathouse projects for a while. There are two tow dollies in need of bearing replacements, but the safety launches won't be going out again anytime soon.

Just about the only thing I might go back for are more dock-related tasks. Here are some of the dock pieces that were pulled out and stacked for winter:



At least 5 pieces were seriously compromised and need to be swapped out because they filled with water - those are what the orange X's are for. But technically the actual swapping can wait until spring.

The project that can't wait is bringing in what we call our "bubble dock," which is the temporary dock on the far right of this photo:



Disassembling it involves use of a specialized tool, but when we searched high and low for the tool on Saturday we couldn't find it anywhere. There's a good chance someone tossed it during one of the boathouse cleanup days. Ugh. So a new one needs to be ordered to ensure we can get the dock out so the winter freezes and ice don't destroy the bubble dock further.

Anyway, I'm feeling pretty owned by all the stuff right now, that much is certain.

Originally S and I had been hoping to undertake some form of boating expedition on Saturday, but then his work had some form of emergency that required he be on call for the day. So instead, I got up and made pancakes and pumpkin pie, did a bit of much-needed bike maintenance (brake pads, new chain, fender bolt replacement), and then hied me over to the Troy Farmer's Market for some market goods and Coffeeneuring.

( how about a cut for length and photos )

We had our last big fall regatta on Saturday. The weather was excellent. The rowing was all right - some tough competition out there. But a great day all around. I continue to be grateful for wonderful teammates and coaches.

Sunday was yet another projects and errands day. As evidence that I was tired, when I finally got to the point of baking a big fruit pie in the early evening, I made lots of smoke in the oven. The pie came out okay but I should try making this particular one again sometime when I am not quite so tired. It is yet another fun one from Rustic Fruit Desserts, a winter deep-dish pie with apples, pears, figs, and (cranberries but I used tart cherries), with a walnut crumb crust. I'll bake the next one in a cast-iron frying pan instead of a springform pan, and I will try and leave it in the oven even longer.

I somehow still have a lot more grading to do this week. And I need to bring Geri the Gerrhosaurus major to the vet tomorrow morning for her tumor surgery. Can't stop won't stop. Or something like that.

So, I haven't even talked about the weekend that was!

It was busy, because I drove out to Boston to spectate at the Head of the Charles, and to catch up with a couple of good friends who live in the Boston area. I also snuck in two Coffeeneuring expeditions while I was there.

Since the Head of the Charles is the world's largest rowing event, there were tons of things to see, races to watch, and people to catch up with. The weather was superb, and so was some of the rowing.

A few highlights:

The spectating view from the Anderson Bridge was fantastic, as usual.


This photo can give you a sense as to why there can often be boat carnage at the Head of the Charles:


Lots of boats racing fast in a relatively small space full of twists and turns and bridges. Exciting but also nerve-wracking.

I'm totally a leaf-peeper these days, although from what I understand this year's fall foliage isn't as dramatic as it can get sometimes, just because of how the weather went this past spring and summer.



Harvard Square is under construction:


Does it bother anyone else that Harvard Square is more like Harvard Triangle? I never really understood any of these things until I got to see ACTUAL town squares in Texas and the Midwest. You know, square ones. And then, in hindsight, I mean, I know about Boston and the cow paths and all that, but still.

I would love to know what's below this patch of sidewalk, getting that purple-infused light.



On Sunday I was pleased to encounter a small farmer's market, and promptly bought lots of fruits and veggies.



More leaf-peepin' outside bluepapercup's house:



A lovely visit, all around.

The region of an oar that sits in the oarlock is referred to as the oar's sleeve. Historically, oar sleeves were made of leather, which helped to reduce wear of the wood shaft as the oar was used and repeatedly turned from square to feather with every rowing stroke.

On modern fiberglass oars, the sleeves are made of plastic. Plastic sleeves inevitably wear out, and need to be replaced, as illustrated by these photos from the last time I worked to refurbish rowing oars, way back in 2012 in Texas.

Modern sleeves are also designed to have flat surfaces that hold the oar at very precise angles, helping to ensure that the rowing movement is efficient both when the oar is in the water and when it is out of the water.

That makes sleeve replacement fussy and stressful. Thankfully, the major oar manufacturer provides detailed instructions on how to set everything up correctly. I ensured that the oar blade surface was level across a specific part of the blade, and then ensured the shaft of the oar was also level, lining the oar up across the surface of our basement workbench.



Then I used a rowing "pitch meter" to set the sleeve with a 3-degree pitch.

One part that was confusing to me, however, was whether that needed to be a positive 3-degree pitch or a negative 3-degree pitch. Thankfully, I had another pair of oars nearby, so I could check and confirm a positive 3-degree pitch.

Once the pitch was set, I secured the sleeve by applying a 2-part polyurethane glue.



I completed the process for a pair of oars, one specialized for the starboard side of the boat, the other specialized for the port side of the boat.

Last night while on the verge of falling asleep, a question occurred to me about whether I had correctly set the pitch at a positive three degrees for the second, port-side oar. I will need to recheck it this evening. If I got the port oar backwards, I'll need to take everything apart, pry out the glue, and try again. Sigh.

While I was in the basement, I also sanded the oars to be repainted, and applied the next coat of paint.

It's really important to sand between coats to ensure the paint adheres well.



Even after just one full coat, these oars are already looking so much better than before.



The work will continue.