Opening Day
I was reading a post by my friend Sonja about her family tradition of watching Opening Day at UW. She recapped a pre-race experience with her high school team and that stirred my memories of the Cut, my absolutely hands down favorite places to race.
1. Head of the Lake freshmen year. What I remember most about that race other than the freezing temps - the straps were frozen shut - and that our coxswain had us take powers to try and hold of one of UW's varsity eights was when my boat decided to check out the cut post race and watch the rest of our team come through. As we walked along the wall I slipped and nearly fell in. What kept me from making a spectacle of myself was grabbing a bunch of blackberry bushes somehow managing not to get a single thorn in the hand.
2. Opening Day sophomore year. Our team had split up with most of the varsity going back east while the novice and J's - jayvee - headed north for Opening Day. The crew that used my four prior to us had set the boat down onto the dock thus pushing the skeg through the boat. They pulled it out and didn't bother to tell us before we launched. We didn't figure out what was going on till we were bouncing off the wall on the port side and water was rushing into the bottom of the boat. Despite this and despite taking last by at least a good minute or so it was still a great race. And of course on the way back through the Cut the boat ran straight and true. Go figure.
That's it for the memories. There are a couple others like Head of the Lake being canceled in 2006 just before I was to cox it and watching our novice four finishing second at Opening Day but those will have to wait.
1. Head of the Lake freshmen year. What I remember most about that race other than the freezing temps - the straps were frozen shut - and that our coxswain had us take powers to try and hold of one of UW's varsity eights was when my boat decided to check out the cut post race and watch the rest of our team come through. As we walked along the wall I slipped and nearly fell in. What kept me from making a spectacle of myself was grabbing a bunch of blackberry bushes somehow managing not to get a single thorn in the hand.
2. Opening Day sophomore year. Our team had split up with most of the varsity going back east while the novice and J's - jayvee - headed north for Opening Day. The crew that used my four prior to us had set the boat down onto the dock thus pushing the skeg through the boat. They pulled it out and didn't bother to tell us before we launched. We didn't figure out what was going on till we were bouncing off the wall on the port side and water was rushing into the bottom of the boat. Despite this and despite taking last by at least a good minute or so it was still a great race. And of course on the way back through the Cut the boat ran straight and true. Go figure.
That's it for the memories. There are a couple others like Head of the Lake being canceled in 2006 just before I was to cox it and watching our novice four finishing second at Opening Day but those will have to wait.
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