This is how it all fits in the trunk and on the roof. The handles of the oars rest on the dashboard. Not shown are the slings we made from pvc pipe, or the swivel rack--those go on top of the oars and the rigging. To onlookers it might appear to be quite a job getting myself and my gear to the water, but it only takes me 7 minutes from the parking lot to actually rowing, so I can't complain.

Getting from here to there

This is how I get my Wintech E21 onto my vehicle. It is very light and easy to carry up from the water, but then to lift it onto the Yakima roof rack, after an hour of rowing, is hard for me. My husband built the swivel stand you see behind the car -- the top of it spins so I just grab the other end, walk to the front of the car and lift it on. Piece of cake!

Pretending to be on the Bon Secours

Wistfulness

Sometimes people come up to me wanting to talk about my rowing shell, usually women, but not always. Often, there is a sort of wistfulness when they look at it. They either grew up near a river where the sport was popular, or they had a boyfriend who rowed in college, or they've enjoyed watching it on the Olympics. My age group is pre-Title IX, remember. Since I do not look like an athlete at all, they are usually surprised when they realize here's this middle aged lady, wider at the beam than her boat, doing this difficult sport. (Well, difficult, of course, is relative. Difficult for me, for sure). They linger a long time, and I offer them the opportunity to try it if they'd like, but so far only one has actually sat in the boat.
Yesterday, a gray-haired lady with a boy of about 10 came to look at the boat. We talked about the sport, and the boy seemed enthralled. I had already carried the oars and rigging to the car or I would have let him try it. After ooohing and aaahing for a while, the woman said, "you are quite a gal, quite a gal."
We have so much hard-earned strength at this age. So much untapped potential. Here was a woman having a beach day with (probably) her grandson, who seemed to be enjoying himself spending the morning with his grandmother. SHE is quite a gal, quite a gal. Aren't we all?

Special Places

Sometimes as I row in my lake, I am reminded of special places I've been. There is an inlet where the water is glassy-flat, and the trees seem to grow directly from the depths of the lake. Birds chatter, cicadas chirp, dragonflies fly. This little spot takes me back to a fabulous trip we took to Alabama, of all places! We used a timeshare at Orange Beach, and I googled kayaking in Orange Beach -- Beachnriver popped up. http://www.openzine.com/aspx/Zine.aspx?IssueID=1983 What an incredible adventure we had! We were the owners' very first customers ever, and we couldn't have been happier. We were a little nervous about kayaking into the depths of the bajou, where every floating log was a gator and every hanging vine a poisonous snake, but as you can see by the ridiculous photo at the above link, we were crazy about the place! We even went back the next day to do it again! Hopefully I've learned to buckle my pfd correctly!

Who I Am and Why I Blog

A 57 year old woman learning to live life as fully as I can. A mom, a grandmother, a wife, a sister. A traveller, a homemaker, a small business owner. Owned by a cockatiel and the world's most unsatisfactory cat. Coffee addict. Chocolate addict. Keeper of old friends, maker of new ones. Voracious reader with no memory, capable of taking the same book out of the library within months of returning it. Athiest. Fiscally conservative Democrat. Feminist.

At 50 I decided I was going to do stuff differently. And I was going to do a lot of it. Although travel is one of my passions, I was afraid of flying, so I did two things: I went up in a helicopter (cuz I'd never done that), and I underwent hypnosis for my fear. Surprisingly, I loved the helicopter, and cured my fear of flying in airplanes with the hypnosis. Now, getting on a plane is like getting on a bus -- no more white knuckles! ( http://www.mysmokefree.org/faq.htm). And I started working on being a little less inhibited -- not crazy stuff, just kinda corny stuff. Like being at a luau in Maui, getting up to learn to dance the hula. In front of everybody. Or, when the comedian on a cruise ship asks for volunteers, being the first to jump up. I am not gonna just SIT there anymore. This all started on a Duck Boat in Boston in 1999, when the driver turned right into the Charles River and then asked his passengers if anyone wanted to steer. I really really wanted to steer, but I didn't. No more stupid little regrets like that!! Since then? I steer, dammit!

So I'm blogging now to record the stuff I have done since turning 50, in the hopes that other women my age will read it and say hey, maybe I can do that. None of the stuff I have done is earth-shattering, mind-blowing, or cure-the-common-cold important in the grand scheme of things, but for me, they are life-changing. Oh ok, maybe not even life-changing, but maybe just a little get-out-of-rut-free kind of stuff. Like rowing.

Rowing

My 9 foot, thirty pound kayak stuck out of the trunk of my little red four door sedan. I used to take it to the Gravel Pond, just south of Chatfield Reservoir in Littleton, Colorado. The pond is about 800 meters long, and I would paddle lazily around the perimeter for a while, then beach the kayak and sit in the sun eating lunch and reading.

In September 2006 as I sat reading, out of the water like Neptune himself came a tall, thin, handsome man maybe in his late 50s, carrying the most beautiful single shell I have ever seen (of course, I'd never seen ANY up close). “I've always wanted to do that!” I exclaimed, and to my wonder he replied, “well, this shell's for sale!” “It's mine!” I answered. Who knew this was a crazy thing to do? That afternoon my husband and I drove to the man's home, handed him a bunch of cash, and he drove my new boat back to the pond, where he crouched on the beach for two hours holding her stern as I tried desperately to balance in this crazy skinny boat! What a patient man! I sat there thinking who can I possibly sell this thing to without this nice man ever finding out??? I was 54 years old, 30 pounds overweight, with so many negative voices in my head that it is a wonder I could ever do anything new at all.