Me and Sports

So, not too much into the sporting scene in case you didn't know.  Growing up, I did some things I would consider 'sporty' though.  They all involved water. I was a decent swimmer and would swim laps with family or friends (but not competitively).  I would windsurf, sail, and water ski.  I pretty much successfully avoided all competitive sports and even avoided playing team sports for 'fun'.

Then, I got to Purdue.  Turns out those Big Ten universities take their sports seriously.  Who knew?  Every fall they had a sports fair where people can go up to tables representing all the various intramural and competitive sports clubs offered.  I went up to two tables:  the sailing club and the rowing club ('crew' if you know what you are talking about).  The sailing club was like 'you're in - come on by anytime!'.  Feeling confident, I went up to the table for crew.  Expressing some interest to the students manning the table, some six-foot-four girl looked down on me and said "Well, have you ever done crew before?" Admitting that I hadn't she then asked "What you are?  Five Foot Ten or so?"  I was so naive I didn't even know what she was getting at.  I said "About" and then she kind of sighed and realized I didn't understand anything and said "Look, the truth is the only thing we could ever use you for would be to cox for us - the shortest male rower here is, like, 6-2, and, honestly, you'd have to lose even more weight to qualify to cox." (I was pretty skinny in those days).  I left the fair disoriented and confused.

Four years at Purdue and I never went to a single athletic event.  When I got to CMU, a friend (Stephane, the guy standing on the boat in the pic) asked if I wanted to learn how to row and join the rowing club at CMU.  I said "Yes!" with a vengeance.  CMU, the college where they had to hand out free floppy disks to encourage students to go to a football game.  My kinda school, right?

So, pictured here is the beginning of my auspicious 2 years of rowing in Pittsburgh (Pitt and CMU shared a boat house on an isle in the Allegheny River in those days).  From this initial session where us n00bs learned to row on the 'barge', I eventually got to compete in the Head of the Charles race.  (I never made the connection to Boston until years after I moved here and I was watching the annual race and I realized "Hey, I did this race once!").  In practice I was frequently the stroke for an 8 and remember the cox or coach calling out goals in terms of how many bridges we had to go.  On the day of the competition in the Head of the Charles, I was in the seven seat (I think).

And that, my friends, is the entire history of my competitive sporting history.