ghetto boathouses

Yay I started running again on Monday and went sculling for the first time here on Thursday! The coach took a few short videos if you want to see: http://www.youtube.com/user/jackskuban.

The Cincinnati boathouse...how to describe the boathouse...so to get there, you drive down from Cincinnati into Kentucky (about 30-35min from my house), manuver through a couple of abandoned-looking one-way streets, and find this side road which leads to the parking lot for B&B Riverboats, which gives "cruises" on old-fasioned paddleboats. Drive through the parking lot, and to the end of the .25 mile "park" on that road, and you will come to a locked gate, which means that you are either too early or that the row for the day has been canceled. But if the gate is unlocked, you can go through onto the pitted, gravel road, and drive another quarter mile to the Cincinnati Rowing Club's boathouse. I hope you remembered to use the restroom before you left, otherwise you'll have to go to the port-o-potty in the back, which seems to get used by the various tramps and kids in the area as well.

And, the dock. The dock itself is fine - a normal wooden platform; it's relatively clean because they put mothballs in the cracks to keep away the geese (apparently it works!) - the difficulty is getting down to the dock, because the Licking River is sort of in a gorge, and the boathouse is at the top. There's a mat of rubbery blocks that forms a path down, and wooden beams laid across to walk on b/c the rubber parts give no grip at all. Every single trip down I'm so scared that I'm going to twist my ankle again, but no one else seems to mind. I guess I've been spoiled by our (in comparison) absolutely beautiful MIT boathouse.

Oh, and I met four older ladies Saturday who've rowed in the Head of the Charles out of our boathouse, so that was pretty cool.

But now we finally come to the Licking River, a tributary of the Ohio. We're about 100 m from the mouth of the Licking, and people row on either river, but the Ohio tends to have a lot of commercial traffic so I'll probably be on the Licking more. As I said, it's in a gorge with cliff-like walls on either side. The dock is right next to a high concrete bridge (we launch away from the bridge), and the water reminds me of the Cooper River except darker and less wide. There are motorboats who ignore the "no wake" sign, kids from the area who eat canned corn on the dock (and leave it there), and - my favorite - these long industrial barges that go up and down the river. We have a radio so you can radio out before launching to make sure no barges are around, but proper procedure if one does come by is to get as near as possible to the inside of the turn without hitting shore & try not to flip while all the wakes pass...yea, no flip tests here. I'm a little afraid to even dip my hands in the water when they get dirty. They used to require people to do a swim test in the Licking, I think, until they woke up to just how gross the water is. There's supposed to be a current, but the water is so still it's hard to tell.

-- On the bright side, though, I am getting to row! Thursday was my first time out. I went out in a double with Libby, who is the coach's mom and has been rowing for 15 years.
And then Saturday was gorgeous: It was Cincinnati's annual "Paddlefest", where the river is closed to all commercial traffic for Friday and Saturday and all these canoers and kayakers come out and fill up the Ohio River, which is just a hair less wide than the Basin, but really pretty, especially in the morning before it got too hot. We launched around 7:30, took a long break, and got back around 11. Rowed upriver about 8 miles (from MIT to CRI is about 5mi, and we didn't go that hard, so it wasn't insane, but still a good workout) and back again, mostly in quads. So that was my first time in a quad! It was decently set, I think. No coxswain. I was second seat, and the stroke was telling me during a break that she didn't think I realized just how old the other 3 women in the boat were - I found out that she was born in the same year as my dad, and the bow seat wasn't much younger! But they all have better technique than me for sure.

Umm this is getting long. Final thought, for Kinman - we share the boathouse with the CJRC boats, and none of the Cincinnati Rowing Club members like CJRC, either. We had to stand with the quad on the scary slope down to the dock before Paddlefest while we waited for the slow high schoolers to launch. But! They didn't get to row on the Ohio, only the Licking, because their coaches' launches got ticketed by the coast guard last year for not having working fire extinguishers!