Beast Mode

My son and I entered a three-mile race in Quartermaster Harbor on Vashon Island rowing together in a racing double we’d borrowed.  It was a Sound Rower’s event which meant it was a mass start, i.e. canoes, kayaks, Indian dugouts, shells – singles, doubles, fours, quads, eights – all human powered craft line up together.  Upon the count-down over a megaphone, with a great deal of shouting and splashing, war whoops and white water, oars and paddles flashed silver spray into foam, and everyone began at the very same time.

There were no lanes.  There are no rules.

It was mass confusion.

Sound Rowers races can be won and lost at the start.  Given the adrenaline that begins building even as the count is diminishing “10 – 9 – 8 . . .” with all craft cheating forward “7 – 6 – 5 . . .” and nervous glances at competitors crowding your space “4 – 3 – 2 . . .”

No one hears “1”.

Thanks to the advice of my brother who had trained for the Olympics, my son and I had practiced what he called “The Dirty Thirty.”  There are 30 buoys on the northern portion of our lake, spread out over the distance of three miles.  The drill, as you pass each buoy, is to row like there’s no tomorrow.  The stroke rate goes off the charts, but - though your heart is bursting, lungs gasping, and legs burning – you only do that for 15 strokes and then you settle.

Until you come to the next buoy.

I hate those buoys.

That day on Vashon Island in Quartermaster Harbor in just 15 strokes my son and I had the lead.  Over everyone.  Not only in those 15 strokes did we have the lead over everyone but we had open water between us and the nearest competitor.

And then it happened. 

I caught a crab.

If you like crab, actually quite an expensive delicacy offered usually at the more fancy places to dine, good for you.

I don’t.  For two reasons: (1) I can’t afford crab; (2) It takes much too much time to grapple with a crab, dead or alive.  Why is it, after all, that when you order crab its delivered by the waitress still encased in its bony covering requiring you to deal with it and you’re hungry – that’s why you’re there after all – and the cook knows very well you came there to eat not do his job?

Ditto rowing.

Catching a crab in rowing is parlance for having basically lost the race.  Catching a crab is when you can’t get the blankety-blank oar out of the water because the lousy thing has become trapped under the boat which, if you happen to be in an eight-oared shell, can literally pitch you – the rower – into the water.

I don’t like crabs.  As a rower I can’t afford them.  It takes much too much time to grapple with them.  You can lose a race.

But I caught one that day on Vashon Island in Quartermaster Harbor.

There was some good news and some bad news. The good news was that I, the crab-catcher, the one in our double with his oar stuck underneath the boat, was not shown an early exit.  Our shell stayed upright with my son and I both accounted for – still in it.  The bad news was that, as to the race, we were no longer in it.  Despite the early lead we now found ourselves dead in the water.  As I struggled to free the blade, boat after boat passed us by.

So much for a good beginning.  All that training to build a good foundation for this very moment - gone.  Like the victims of the car-thieves in the movie “Gone in Sixty Seconds,” in as much time our race had been stolen from us.

Or so it appeared.

I’ll get back to what the headlines would read for the big battle that would ensue in our race that day on Vashon Island, but I found this headline interesting this morning (January 6, 2013) in the New York Times:  “Big Battles Ahead – Divided GOP Begins Soul Searching.”

Here’s an excerpt: “From Mitt Romney’s loss on Election Day through the recent tax fight that shattered party discipline in the House of Representatives, Republicans have seen the foundations of their political strategy called into question, stirring a newly urgent debate about how to reshape and redefine their party.”

The GOP has caught a crab.

There are those like Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and onetime leader of the Christian Coalition who says “The Republican Party can’t stay exactly where it is and stick its head in the sand and ignore the fact that the country is changing.”

The GOP is getting passed by.

Former Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas Republican who retired this year, said “Republicans must shift their focus away from issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, gun rights and immigration.”

‘The dirty four.’  The foundation they’d built on.  What got them here in the first place.

Quarreling and disputes and bickering now describe the “soul-searching” going on in the Grand Old Party, emphasis upon ‘old’ as younger voters pass them by.

When I finally, which seemed frantically like forever, freed my oar - my son patiently and without a word waiting – we began again like we had begun – 15 strokes and settle.  We had now a big battle ahead of us but were encouraged as we picked off, and passed by, those that thought we were history.  In fact one fellow – a guy who had set every single Open Water race record, even tying for first in the singles division at the Head of the Lake which draws competitors from around the country and even internationally - said to my son and me after the race that when he saw us coming, and then passing, “I knew the race for me was over.”

But it wasn’t over for us. 

We had our sights set on the lead boat, another racing double, also powered by a father and son team.  Tell-tale signs began to appear in the water alongside us.  First there was a parallel trail of bubbles left by the wake of a boat somewhere ahead.  Then there were swirls-of-water, a vortex suction of spinning circles evenly spaced – indents and disturbances of the otherwise glass-like surface – encouraging indicators that a matched pair of blades were not far distant.

And then it happened.

We pulled even. 

And very close.

So very even and so very close in fact were our two shells that our oars overlapped theirs.  For every stroke they took, our blades passed over the very same spot where their blades had been. 

If there’s one thing worse than catching a crab in rowing it’s getting rowed through.  It can hardly be more demoralizing and disheartening for a rower, who looks where he’s been far more often than where he’s going, to see bearing down on him the bow of a competitor at ramming speed, akin to what linebackers fear when the Seahawk’s Marshawn Lynch enters ‘beast mode.’

Though there are no rules – at least back then – in Sound Rowers regarding ramming other boats, we didn’t.

We didn’t have too.

The father and son in the other double, as we pulled alongside, began to argue.  They were quarreling, between frantic gasps for air, as to why this should be happening to them.  How could it be that their arch-rivals, long left for dead in the water, should be in this race at all, let alone anywhere near (alongside)?  They began blaming each other - arguing over what should be done, what technique to employ, what strategy to engage to put us – and leave us - where we belonged.    

The squabbling we heard that day in their boat on the waters of Quartermaster Harbor,  like the bickering going on in within the GOP as described in the NYT, reminds me of that old biblical story about Abraham’s and his nephew Lot’s, herdsmen who weren’t getting along.  There was strife.  After some soul searching Abraham suggested to Lot that they’d reached a crossroads and a decision needed to be made.

As it should happen, the lead paragraph in today’s NYT’s article referenced here says this:   “When Republican leaders in Congress agreed to raise taxes on the wealthy last week, it left the increasingly fractured and feuding party unified on perhaps only one point: that it is at a major crossroads.”

It’ll be interesting to see what direction is chosen by the GOP.

Lot chose Sodom and Gomorrah.

Oh, and that race that day at Quartermaster Harbor on Vashon Island?

We stuck to what had got us there – ‘the dirty thirty’ – the foundation we had built on.

We won.