July 16, 2014 - What's Important, What's Not, and Architects

I’m glad I climbed out of the boat when I did.

Jane passed away on Sunday in the presence of her loving family. Having had a chance to see her one last time and to be with her family through the week presented the confluence of a life so well lived and yet ended. She was the best mother that a boy never had, since she would have been my mom had tragic circumstances ever met my family. This week I’ve been thinking a lot about the gift that Jane gave me so subtly through my childhood in the form of that assurance as well as that of unconditional love. Not every kid can know what would happen “if”, but I and my siblings did, and the “if” was the promise and surety of Jane as a surrogate mom who would never, ever miss a beat. Her own vibrant, loving family is the best testament to who she was. It has been one of my life’s many blessings to have grown up feeling like her un-adopted but welcomed son. In her own family and in my core memories of childhood, she has left enough behind to never feel very far away.

Now I must attempt an elegant, tasteful transition from the wonders of life and love to the relative triviality of a rowing adventure… arguably as challenging as anything I faced on the roiling waters of the mighty St Lawrence.

(Pause.) Ta da!

Yesterday I sat on my mom’s porch with Buzz Lamb, a thoughtful observer of life and a writer for the Lake George Mirror, as he asked me questions for a follow-up article he is entertaining regarding my row. He delicately asked (and I’ll paraphrase a bit), “Since you had aimed to row all the way to Saguenay and came up short, do you see this row as having been unsuccessful?”  He phrased it delicately and tactfully, as he is a man of great consideration and eloquence, but you get the idea: In June I had been willing to sit for an interview and had then named a distant destination as a goal, but I would soon be heading back up to Quebec to retrieve my boat, having declared “no mas” to Ma Nature. What’s the deal with that…what’s the story? What’s the overarching theme?  In June it was something like, “Building on earlier successes, seasoned with caution and yet leavened with confidence, an experienced-if-aging rower sets his sights on Saguenay, 550 miles distant.” How will Buzz write this next story?

I could offer some punchy leads, any and all of which could be true:

Ø  Delusional Aging Oarsman Meets Reality….and Miraculously Survives!

Ø  A Four- Hundred Mile Row by a Septuagenarian is No Longer News.

Ø  Cowardice? Good Judgment? You Pick!

Ø  Sometimes a Long Row is Just a Long Row.

Ø  Heroic Adirondack Guideboat “Old Paint” Saves Hapless Oarsman Yet Again.

Ø  That Man in the Mirror: Wise Friend, Relentless Foe, or just an Idiot?

Ø  Oh, Look at the Little Puppy!

Gentle Reader, I have no idea how Buzz will translate our conversation and I’ll not recount it here- he will, and better- but perhaps meaningful was my immediate affirmative response to his question of whether I’ll head off on another long row in the future. The “quit” here had to do with a judgment call on the relative merits of either achieving a now-embarrassingly public goal or, instead, answering the call of intuition and experience regarding increasingly dangerous conditions. If the journey to Saguenay represented 100+ more miles of just flat-out rowing, I’d be there last Wednesday. If “redemption” might be achieved by simply retracing my steps and slogging home 400+ more miles for a total of 800, I think I could do that, too, as ugly as it would be. But an old adage, “you can only manage what you can control” comes to mind. While I can manage the discomfiture of hours in the seat and moving those oars, I can’t manage tides, winds, fogs, currents, and water temperatures that present danger beyond my ability to cope.

I’ll look forward to Buzz’s interpretation. BTW, consider subscribing to the Lake George Mirror. It’s a sweet weekly invested in the Queen of American Lakes and our environment….a great example of local reporting and articulate, constructive commentary.

Speaking of discomfiture, let’s end this rowing blog entry with a story about adaptation, if not rowing, yes? I will get back to the rowing adventure next time. Honest.

On my way back from Quebec I spent the night in the Montreal bus station, having missed the 10:30 PM connection to Glens Falls. Maybe a dozen others shared my plight. In the late evening hours, I watched them disperse to various locations and seats for the night, trying to make the best of an uncomfortable situation.  I’m no student of architecture, Gentle Reader, but I am certain that the designers of public spaces are charged to eliminate any accoutrement that might contribute to the comfort of a vagrant. Like me. Sharp edges, stiffly raked seats, few and short elevated surfaces, diabolically situated knobs and protuberances…. all are tools in the designer’s kit intended to prevent people like me from sleeping in places like the Montreal bus terminal.  

As I watched my seemingly more experienced denizens of the depot settle in for their slumber, I observed that most preferred this fixture above other options:

"Your bed is prepared, sir...."

 

I watched my neighbors closely as they tucked themselves into these fixtures, contortionists-in-training, one by one. Could their experience teach me something? Am I not a life-long learner? Some went belly-up across the center table, draping head and legs across the chairs, demonstrating a range of motion that I haven’t seen since wrestling days…or at the monkey exhibit at the Syracuse Zoo with Matt in 1979. Other smaller neighbors spooned sideways on the table, curling up sufficiently well to avoid contact with the chairs altogether, teaching us all that size matters when one is looking for a good night’s sleep in the Montreal bus terminal. Still others adopted an “over-under-over” approach: tummy on the table, knees on the chair, legs under the center arm, feet up on the far arm, with the upper body and head cushioned by whatever arms, luggage, or station detritus could fill the void.

As I myself settled in (I’ll leave it to your imagination), I realized that the variables at play in this twisted game of Hunting for Nod were many: one’s body type, pain tolerance, sleeping position preferences (or mandatories), trust of one’s bus terminal neighbors, degree of fatigue, the “fluff factor” of one’s belongings, and comfort with public immodesty all factored into the coming night’s repose.

But fatigue conquers all; rested, refreshed, and crippled, I lurched to the gate in time to catch the 7:30 AM for Glens Falls, wondering on the cruelty of architects.

Rowing a boat for 9 hours is hard. So is sleeping in the Montreal bus terminal.