Yesterday was a race down at the old boathouse on the Willamette river in Corvallis. When I was in college I lived and breathed crew. It’s so odd going back just for one day, and it’s all fun, no stress, very opposite from actual racing season. I did have fun with all the rowers during my four years on the team so it was really awesome to see everyone… And kind of strange, half our boat was married, 5 of the 9 of us! I was pretty nervous going into it because the race is on the river, much scarier than a lake from a coxswain’s percpective (I’m the coxswain, the one who steers, gives calls, ect.). Oh and the fact that my super senior year (I stayed an extra year in college to cox) I hit an f-ing log. This is a coxswains worst nightmare, hitting something. I’d actually gone four years and only hit tiny little twigs or debris like that (which is really impossible to miss in a swift river). Then one fateful day after being gone from the river for a weekend (for a race) we came back and I was doing drills in my boat. The varsity girls, and the newest best boat we had. I was headed down the left side of the river doing my drills like normal when all of the sudden BAM. I yelled for my stern six to back and try to get us away from it, but then BAM again. It turns out there were two logs right next to each other. I asked if everyone was alright, they said yes. It’s so hard to see the back of the boat, since I sit lower and can really only look around the rowers. I started crying, I was so so scared of what I had done. My coach was right there, we had been the only boat with him at the time so he actually took resposibility of it, told me he should have told me about it. I turned the boat around and headed up to the docks with only six rowing since the bow was busted. Charlie said when I picked up the boat it was going to look bad, but not to worry because it could be fixed. It was fixed and we did race in it no problem (thank god because new boats are tens of thousands of dollars). It turned out the log had shown up after heavy rainfall that weekend. The mens team knew about but never told any of our coxswains. It sucked. You know what sucks more… now they call it Amber’s log. The stupid thing didn’t come loose again like most do and it just sits there, my log, ahhhhhhh.
