June 19, 2014: This is Training?

I’m eight days away from pushing off on a 550 mile row, and I have yet to touch an oar since 2013.

“So, Al, exactly how have you planned to be ready? Surely there must be some preparatory activity in advance of, like, you know, the actual…rowing?”

Ah, Gentle Reader, an understandable question. And in asking it, I can pick up an endearing hint of concern in your voice, the tone one might hear six miles down the road in being asked, “Honey, did you turn off the oven?”

Let’s see. Training.

Well, Peg and I are on Chicken Duty this week, taking care of the ten chickens and six chicklets that live right around the corner from our apartment here on campus. If you were to accompany us on a typical round, you might readily agree that Chicken Duty counts as training, calling as it does for perseverance (waiting out a chicken as she decides whether or not to enter the coop at the end of the day), pain tolerance (absorbing the relentless pecks of the chicklets before you can place the feeding tray on the ground), and self-discipline (“Get up and do it again,” as Jackson Browne sang in ’76; the chickens are there every day, day after day. So, of course, is Saguenay.)

Not sufficiently rigorous? Well there’s more, of course:

Since The Norton Center for the Common Good is moving to new quarters this summer, I filled several boxes with books and papers- heavy books and dense papers- and then I deconstructed my Harkness Table which was built by a guy who does not know the meaning of “portability”.

I got a haircut on Tuesday and ate Sushi.

I walked to town for stamps on Wednesday. I’ll need stamps, I think, and I went to get them.

I watched Shark Girl on cable last night.

I’ve eaten a lot of the perishables in the ‘fridge. Can’t have them going bad while I’m gone.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this row, and I’ve been looking at maps.

OK, OK….I see your point: there’s not a lot of rigor here. It may be that as on other rowing adventures, I‘ll get in shape by getting into the boat on 6/27 and starting to row. But there’s something to say about Professor Harold Hill’s inspired “Think System” (The Music Man, 1962). Hill, you may recall, opines, “You don’t have to bother with the notes” in mastering music. In the end the kids play the music, the parents are delighted, Hill is vindicated, and he gets the girl…a happy ending all around. Maybe I don’t need to bother too much with the strokes yet, either?

I’ll leave the Sojourn to Saguenay metaphor to you, Gentle Reader. You’ll do fine.