The Brotherhood of Rowing

My family stopped at a rest stop on the way back from our most recent trip. It was an ordinary rest stop, except for one thing: there were rowers there. Four girls, in various rowing t-shirts, walked out through the doors as I walked in. I spied their “Australia Rowing”, “Funkin RowNuts” and “Independence Day Regatta” shirts, and gave them a smile. One of them noticed, and looked a little confused about my seemingly random smile until she saw my “Dad Vail Regatta” t-shirt and she smiled right back. We never said anything to each other, but we knew that we were part of a group, a small cross section of the population who had something in common, and that deserved a smile shared between strangers.

And later that trip…

            “Look, boats,” my mom said, craning her neck out the window to stare at a trailer that had stopped to get gas. “I wonder where they’re from. You might know them!”

I wondered too. But as I’ve recently been noticing, it’s a fairly common occurrence. For a sport whose fan base is relatively small, rowers are everywhere.

            We’re the guy who sits in the library with the Wintech and Vespoli stickers plastered to his laptop, compulsively checking row2k.com. We’re the girl who carries a unisuit around in her bag, just in case the opportunity presents itself. We’re the car with numerous Head of the Charles competitor stickers all lined up in a row, the way those who frequent Nantucket Island line up their sand permit stickers. We’re the man who keeps sneaking Rowing News into his briefcase, for a minute of downtime. We’re the person who shakes your smooth palm with our rough one, beat up and calloused from miles on the water and the erg. We’re the 220 lb captain of a collegiate men’s varsity team or the 105 lb Master’s coxswain, the lonely single sculler or the cheerleading two-seat. We jump in on any conversation regarding the merits of different types of spandex. We have big lats, sock tans and weird scars on the backs of our calves. We don’t giggle when we overhear the word “coxswain”, but try to lean in and see if we can hear a story about anyone we know.  We know that 7 a.m. isn’t actually early morning and shake our heads when fellow students complain about waking up for 9:30 a.m. classes. We spend our weekends in rowing meccas like Philly or Boston but don’t understand why people want us to have visited the Liberty Bell and Bunker Hill instead. We are a league of our own, small, but fiercely loyal to our sport.

A while ago I was at dinner with my family and parents of one of my brother’s friends. When the father found out that I was a rower, he seemed surprised.

            “You seem too normal to be a rower,” he said, giving me another once-over.

            “Well, rowing isn’t actually all arms, “ my mom jumped in, coming to my rescue. “Tory doesn’t have big arm muscles because rowing actually involves the leg muscles and-“

            “No, I know that,” the father interrupted. “I mean you seem too normal in general. All the rowers I’ve known are weirdos.”

            I think my non-rowing mother was a little offended on my behalf, but I just laughed. Of course we’re weirdos. What kind of normal person would go through all that we go through just to get some silly bowball across the finish line first? We are hard-working, spandex-wearing, early-rising, ass-kicking weirdos and proud of it.

I wished my friend from the rest stop had been there. She would have understood.