The Barrel Roll

This is a story from the beginning of my second year at college...

We're back!!!!!!! I went back to that opening statement and added more exclamation marks because two words don't really pack a punch. I added exclamation marks three times. I nearly went back a fourth time, but thought that would exceed an exciting tone and just appear flaky. Too many exclamation points just gets ingenuine. I thought you should know that. Anyway, this has been quite a weekend! As was implied by the obscure opening statement, Sister and I are back in College Town! We arrived on Thursday evening, riding in style with Dad's new truck and trailer, pulling along two horses to board at the college.

Pause.

I need to do some back story telling...

Once upon a time, two sisters were going to college and had applied to board horses there. Their father had only one stock trailer, so it was assumed he would haul the horses up at some point in the future and the two sisters would use the car. The younger, blonder, gloriouser, and savvier sister ensured that all parties were on the same page. Not being a direct communicating sort of family, however, this sister chose to do so by saying things such as, “Well, it's up to you when the horses come up, because you'll have to bring them,” or “It doesn't really matter when the horses come up, just let us know when you're bringing them.” Younger Sister thought that phrases such as these, repeated as they were, would be sufficient. She was mistaken. In the last week that remained before the sisters went back to college, their father began scrolling through Kijiji ads. He was searching for small stocktrailers. In the last four days, he was making phone calls. The day before departure, they went to look at a trailer. The day of departure, they went to look at another trailer. The second trailer was so terrible that the father went back to the place where the first trailer was to buy a different trailer that was also for sale at that place. Upon arriving at that place, however, he went back to his original decision to buy the trailer he had initially gone to see. It was convoluted. Meanwhile, the sisters are at home, waiting to pack their belongings into the old truck that they are apparently supposed to use, which will hopefully be back soon, towing the old trailer that they are apparently supposed to use. Then, once upon that time, the phone rang. It rang bearing news of plans changed for the umpteenth time. The sisters were to load their stuff into the alarmingly new truck and load the horses into the alarmingly new and alarmingly long trailer and were to take that to College Town. It is alarming because of all the things that made the sisters' chances of wrecking something expensive go up. New trucks attract accidents because of karma. Long trailers attract accidents because of physics. The father did, indeed, buy the trailer. However, he needed to rewire it before the sisters could use it. The end. The moral of the story is that procrastination can make for a really hectic last minute. Procrastinating Dad is awesome for doing all that stuff for us and we are very grateful, just a little stressed sometimes. That is all. Anyway, the horses are up here and it's been nice to have them around for this weekend when nothing is going on in the arenas and we can ride any time. That's not the exciting stuff, though. The really exciting thing that went on this weekend was rowing. We came up early specifically to get the chance to row early. Even more specifically to suck up to Coach, whom we parted with last fall with promises of summer rowing. Broken promises.

Unfortunately coach had plans for labour day weekend, as normal people with social lives are wont to have. He blamed his wife. As men are wont to do. Anyway, Sister met with him as she was helping out with orientation (the keener). He gave her the keys to the boathouse and told us to row. I was alarmed when I heard the news. Partially, it was the same kind of alarm that rose when dad said to take the new truck and trailer. The boats are, after all, alarmingly expensive. Here we must take a quick break so I that I can google Hudson boats... *insert elevator music* ...So yeah, replacing the boat we were in would be a cost somewhere in the ball park of $30,000. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Because Coach instructed us to take a particular boat. Coach instructed us to use... DVORZSAK!!! That would have looked more dramatic if it didn't appear as though my hand had just seizured on the keyboard. Pronounced di-VOR-jak (the 'j' here is pronounced like 's' in 'vision'. Now you know), this double sculling boat was the first that Sister and I ever experienced the art of rowing in. And if you look back at the dramatic retelling of it from 2016, you'll see that we didn't have a great time. Dvorzsak... Our ineptitude baffled a seasoned rowing master (I'm convinced he was holding back tears) and nearly had us swimming in the murky waters of the river... Dvorzsak... Sitting at a 45° angle to the water, we drifted uncontrollably away from the safety of the docks and the baffled coach... Dvorzsak... Water slowly tricked in. Our muscles were aching with the extreme effort of leaning away from the cold embrace of imminent doom... Dvorzsak... The water was looming ever closer to swallow us up... Dvorzsak... I snapped out of my flashbacks to remind Sister of what a bad idea this was. It seemed that, though Coach referenced that disaster of a first practice last year frequently enough, he still had a lot more faith in our rowing skills than we were due. Far from flattering us, we merely questioned his sanity.

All of Friday evening, I thought about how bad of an idea it was. We set our alarms so that we could be down at the docks by 8 am. All of Saturday morning, I thought about how bad of an idea it was. We walked to the docks. As we unlocked the compound and sheds, I thought about how bad of an idea it was. We started getting everything ready to go out. After we very professionally got the oars down to the docks, it started to become exceedingly clear just how bad this idea was. Last year, you see, was a very long time ago. Last year, you see, we only sculled about three times, right at the beginning of the season. That's including the... Dvorzsak incident. So despite the whole situation just being an overall very bad idea, it is perhaps best that Coach was not present to witness the dismal sight that was his senior rowers. I don't really know how else to describe our predicament other than that we forgot how to transport the boat. We were trying to hold it on our shoulders near the rigging (kind of on each end of where we sit in the boat), but I found myself thinking, “wow these boats are heavier than I remember,” while Sister was thinking, “wow, these boats are lighter than I remember.”

We were also having to keep the boat from toppling to one side as we walked. It should not do that. You should not have to grapple with the boat. That much, I remembered.

We prevailed against the cruel nature of our own shortcomings, and managed to get the boat in the water, unscathed. The boat was unscathed. Sister and I have various bruises from the incident. I wasn't feeling super confident in our ability, but we had persisted thus far and been successful, at least in the loosest sense of the word.

It wasn't until we got in the boat that I started to panic. I am still uncertain of why I get so stressed out in the boat. I think, perhaps, it is because I cannot rely on my own vastly insufficient power to get me out of a bad situation. Even if I was a good rower, I wouldn't be able to rely on myself because there is another person in the boat who could mess everything up anyway. I am also afraid of tipping because I have never tipped. What is it like? Is it fast? Do I have time to do anything? Will my feet get stuck in the shoes? Will I drown? Will I die? Will the boat drown? Will the boat die?

As a result of this fear and stress, Sister and I, who normally get along so well, get pretty, well, short with each other. It is because, even though we know in our hearts that we are each at fault ourselves, our fallen natures lead us to blame each other for every precarious boat wobble. Of which there are a multitude. For two days, Saturday and Sunday, Sister and I went out in Dvorzsak. I can't say there was a notable improvement. We acted as training wheels for each other, which meant that only one of us was ever rowing at a time. In total, we probably attempted ten strokes together, and these were not all at once. We'd do about one, then the boat would give a spectacular lurch to one side and we would gripe at each other to 'let her run!' (stop) and 'set the boat up!' (make it not lean precariously to one side). In all that time, however, we did not tip. It was a victory. A small, victory, but a victory none the less. On Monday, it was time to row with Coach. The good news was, we were not going out in Dvorzsak. The bad news was, we were going out in Bill (pronounced Bill). Bill is a pair. A sweep. There are two oars, one on each side. Sister and I would be fully dependent on each other. If one person messed up, we'd both go over. Training wheels were not an option. The good news was, Coach was there in his coach boat to help us. The bad news was, we were going out in Bill. First of all, Coach corrected our method of transporting the boat. Turns out you are supposed to carry the smaller boats from right at the end. Who knew? Our lives were made exponentially easier, and it brightened our prospects for our future. False hope. It was quickly shut down by coach, who set his little fledglings free with two things. The first was, “I would even say this boat is more difficult than a single, because you're having to depend on your partner.” The second was, “Sheesh, it's cold out. Heh. At least if you hit the water, it'll actually be warmer than the air.” For our first time in the boat, I don't think we were doing too badly. That's the good thing about having low expectations, I guess. It was messy, rough, out of sync, and not fast, but we were managing to get full slides in. I was even starting to feel pretty comfortable in the boat. I wasn't as petrified with every movement, because I had this completely unfounded belief that if the boat wasn't named Dvorzsak, it wouldn't try to kill me. Bill wouldn't hurt us. Bill was our friend.

A more relaxed version of me is definitely a better rower, so relaxed-better-rower me was feeling alright about Coach telling us to go down to the 1.5 km mark. He was going to help out one of his club members who was possibly purchasing a boat. He would just be at the docks for a bit. He would not be far. And we would be fine.

These aren't words of comfort from Coach. These were words of comfort from relaxed-better-rower me. I can't trust that version of myself anymore. It's a faulty prototype. We will not be setting off without a crippling dose of fear any more. Not that I wasn't still extremely nervous and calling for Sister to set up the boat every few seconds. I just truly had this strong belief that we were not going to tip over. Did we tip over? In a word... yes. And it was entirely Sister's fault. That is the most important takeaway point that I want you to absorb. All the rest is just details, really, but you need to know that one. So here's what went down... Sister was sitting in stroke, and I was technically the captain, though I didn't actually have extra neurons for captaining, so we just coasted the boat and adjusted our course every once in a while. Stroke seat sits in the back of the boat, the stern, but since we are rowing the boats “backwards” (as in, facing south as we row the boat north), Sister sits in front of me, and I am responsible for matching her rhythm, since I can see her body movement. Unfortunately, I cannot see her entire movement, so there were times that she was only rowing half slides, because coach had told us to start out with half slides before doing full slides.

If you remember, these boats only operate with two oars. One for each rower. So when I can't tell that Sister is only doing half slides and I start givin' 'er with full slides, of course we are going to stray drastically to one side. Of course we are going to be tippy. And of course I am going to be hanging my tongue out in half the time that half-slide-Sister is. I was a little perturbed about why I was so much more tired and sweaty than her. Competitive me was having none of it, but also was very tired, so didn't say much.

Anyway, now you can picture the boat (especially if I upload google images of the type of boats we are using – then you will really be immersed... no pun intended) (I legitimately did not intend that pun; I literally wrote, at the end of that sentence, as a complete and genuine afterthought, that I did not intend that pun. I just want you to know that. I wanted you to know how unintended that pun was. I wasn't just being cheesy)

Aaaaaanyway, now you can picture the boat and our places, I want you to know that we were not far from the south shore, and were a little less than a kilometer from the docks. So, like, we hadn't gotten very far. Everything was going fine. Or, at least, as sub-par as it had consistently been. Until Jamie caught a crab.

Catching a crab is when you don't get your oar correctly positioned in the water or out of the water and the momentum of the boat causes the oar to be violently sucked towards the stern of the boat. This has happened to us before. In the eight-man boat, you could get some wicked bruises if that oar flew out of your hands and hit you. Coach says he saw one rower get pitched right on to the bow deck of the boat once when they caught a crab. It's a lot of force.

Now, we weren't cruising like the eight-man beast can, but we also didn't have seven other oars to keep the boat steady.

That is what flipped Bill.

Sister is what flipped Bill. We weren't even going fast, really. We had probably gotten in five strong-ish (but still verily sub-par) strokes when I felt the sudden lurch and ominous drag. After that, things happened very quickly, and yet not fast. It was a medium speed, I guess. Fast enough that we couldn't prevent it. Slow enough that I had a good long time to contemplate the river's cold embrace. Like in the John Green book, Fault in our Stars. “As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.” That was pretty much how it was, I guess. Except we weren't falling in love, unfortunately. We were falling into the cold river, albeit the river that was warmer than the air outside (thanks, Coach).

As Sister caught her crab, Bill began leaning very quickly to her side. Trying to compensate, I leaned way over the opposite way and started tittering at Sister. I would have yelled at her, but fear does this funny thing to my vocal chords where it makes them sound like a little, squeaky, girl. Years of evolution, and that's what I get? Anyway, as I made the kind of high-pitched noise, I managed to coordinate it into some English-type words: “EEEEEEE!!!SISTER!SISTER!STOPPIT!FIXIT!WE'REGONNAFALLIN!”

I couldn't muster English-type punctuation apparently, and the annoying fear-voice is only good for narrating obvious information, I guess.

Anyway, in hindsight, I think what I would have done differently is not put my oar-hand in the air as I leaned way to the other side. When my oar hand goes up, my oar goes down, which tilts the boat away from that oar (the way we were tipping). I should have dropped my hand, which makes my oar go up, which tilts the boat towards that oar. It is quite possible we could have saved it. However, we did not. When the boat gave that perilous lurch, and I gave that undesirable screech, Sister began to display with all of her power that the situation was completely out of her power. With actions largely inspired by a loss of temper at my insistent fear-whine noise, Sister showed me that she was trying to get the oar righted, but she couldn't. She did this by yanking on the crab-catching oar and growling at me, through gritted teeth, “I. Am. Trying. I. Can. Not.” The cold truth hit us. We were going in. I accepted my fate pretty calm and cool-like, I think. After the initial panic that sparked the fear-whine noise, of course. In reality, tipping the boat is not that traumatizing. Quite simply, we got perpendicular to the water enough that the water started coming in the boat. Seeing that, I gave us up for a lost cause, pulled my feet out of the shoes, slipped into the water, and began treading. I kept an eye on Sister to make sure she got out safely, too, then we just kind of waited for the boat to go belly up, making sure we didn't get a rigger or an oar to the face as it lowered down. It was not at all violent and sudden; not at all like a ball bursting out of the water when you've forced it down, which is how I thought it would be.

It was as anticlimactic as that time I got my first needle when I was in my young teens...

The nurse could see I was in distress (she didn't have to see it, really; the highly nervous chuckle gave it away even if the tears of anxiety didn't), so she told me to watch my mom. This is probably supposed to be emotionally supportive, but she was clearly fighting a laugh as Sister stood behind her and openly sniggered. So instead, Nurse told me to just take a deep breath and blow. Try to blow hard enough to move my mom's hair.

I don't think the nurse meant to make me hyperventilate. How could she know that instead of a deep, stress-relieving lungful of oxygen, I would take many rapid breaths, ragged with my sobs and the high-pitched fear-whine noise? How could she know that I couldn't see if I was moving my mom's hair or not because of the tears that blurred my vision?

Despite her lack of foresight in how my anxiety would spill over, I have to give that nurse credit. Taken aback as she may have been, she still took the opportunity to stick me with a needle instead of wasting the moment on finding me a paper bag to breath into. I'm not even mad. Just happy I didn't have to go through it again.

Not that the needle hurt. No, you see, my anxiety was ill-founded based on information given to poor, impressionable me from venerable, older Sister. She described the needle as a sensation of your arm's insides being sucked out, and that this would come after two small pokes, then a STAB!! Poke, poke, STAB!! she used to stay. An unpeaceful mantra I have with me to this day.

When I started puffing like the dickens, there was a small part of my brain still linked to reality; it felt the poke on my arm. It stung just enough to make me really, really afraid of how the STAB!! and the arm-sucking feeling would be. But then, a voice came through to me... “Okay! All done!” And immediately, the tears no longer blurred my vision, the hyperventilating ceased, and I looked over at my arm with an astounded and quite back-to-normal, “Really?!” Anyway, just like that, this was no big deal. Of course, once we were in the water, we didn't really have a game-plan. We did, however, have a distress whistle. Sister, still pretty much functioning under a cloud of anger, clung to the boat and berated herself for a short period before pulling out the whistle. Putting the whistle to her lips, water gurgled out of it uselessly before it blasted out with a shrill cry, bouncing off the side of the boat and ringing in our ears.

The shock of the situation, as well as the cold shock of water (it was quite pleasant, but still a shock to our sweat-warmed bodies), had kept me silent as I took quick, shiver-perforated breathes. I began to chuckle, however, when Sister started blowing the whistle. I was just imagining what we must look like, a couple of waterlogged nobs stranded beside our overturned boat, desperately chirping away with a cry for help. It's no good pretending we didn't look ridiculous, so one might as well laugh. The dialogue surrounding the event went something like this... “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” said Sister, “I'm so angry! And it was my fault, too. Rrrrrrrggghhhh, I'm so mad at myself!” *whistle blows *I start to chuckle/shiver “Are you okay?” Sister asks quickly, genuinely concerned. I think my cold-shock chuckle sounded like a nervous chuckle. She's been there for most of my hyperventilating, anxiety-induced breakdowns, so it's an honest mistake. I was touched by her concern. “Yes!” I laughed. And then kept laughing. *several even more frantic whistle blows “Wait... Are you okay?” I asked. She answered in the affirmative. “Let's start swimming over to the shore; I don't know if Coach can even hear us from here,” I said. I wasn't in any hurry. The boat floats well enough to carry us even if we did get tired of treading water, but it was the safe thing to do. We just sort of meandered our way over to the reeds, close enough that we could reach the bottom. And then a bit closer because we had to reach the bottom and also be able to sink into the slime up to our knees. Yep. Pretty gnarly.

Sister started blowing the whistle again, punctuating the shrill blasts with exclamations of annoyance at herself.

I was still laughing. Now cut scene to the boathouse, where Coach is helping a senior rower get a boat back in. He turns to the rower and asks, “What's that weird noise?” As it turns out, they did hear our whistle, and answered with their own to let us know they were coming. Being right beside the boat, mostly we could only hear our own breaths bouncing off the hull and back at us. When Coach got there, he instructed us to position the oars and flip the boat back over. He then drove up alongside us and helped us to steady it while we used hand pumps to get the excess water out. To my delight, my water-bottle had somehow survived this entire excursion, and was still in the bottom of the boat when we flipped it!

Once the water was pumped out, Coach said we had to get back in. I don't know why he insists on thinking we have abilities that we do not, but he does. He was casually telling us what we were to do, as though it would be very simple and we should get it immediately.

I don't think we could have gotten it at all if he hadn't been hanging on to the boat for us, and if we weren't able to stand up in the water. We did manage to get back in, though, which I am very pleased about. We each went on one side, and Coach helped us coordinate our movements so that we were off-setting each other through the whole process.

When we finally flopped fully in like a couple of beached whales on some sort of drugs that make beached whales even more ungraceful than beached whales usually are, I noticed that Sister and I somehow ended up facing each other. “Ha,” I thought, “Ha. She will have to turn around now. How embarrassing. First she tips the boat, now this. Sheesh.” To be fair to myself, I thought this partially because Coach always calls me by Sister's name, and he told Sister to turn around. But it was actually me. I was the bass-ackwards one. So I turned my bass around and quickly went to work in not drawing attention to myself. After that, we made our way back to the docks. More cautiously this time. And that is the story of how we barrel-rolled Bill. Coach has not given us up. He hasn't put us back out in Bill, or even rowed Sister and I together again, but we've been improving ourselves outside of those two combinations that didn't work out so well before.

As new novices come in, we have been put in charge of captaining the boats. I won't pretend this was a majestic breakthrough for either of us, or even that we understand the logic of Coach putting two people who can barely keep their boat afloat in charge of other noobs. The beauty of pushing someone, I suppose, is that at least they are falling forward.

I have also found a new favorite boat, though the beast of an 8 that we rowed last year will always have a special place in my heart. Its name is Tubby the Trainer. It is a cheaply-fashioned boat for one rower, but it has a broad shell, so it doesn't tip so easily. I've been out twice in this magical thing and been able to figure out my balance a lot better.

I have also not been so afraid of tipping over ever since our barrel-roll. I don't get so scared and shaky when the boat lurches and wobbles, and even when Coach cast me out alone in Tubby, I was pretty relaxed. Except when I got to some deep water with swirls of algae going on. For some reason that freaked me out when I looked down and the phrase from Princess Bride, “Eel-infested water!” kept bouncing around in my head. Other than that, I've experienced a near-complete psychological healing.

Here are some pictures of the types of boats we row.... 1. Like Bill, pair (sweep) 2. Like Dvorzsak, double (scull) 3. Some parts of a boat. 4. Like Tubby, single training boat

Rowing - Bill

Rowing - Dvorzsak

Rowing - Parts

Rowing - Tubby