Smuts and sluts and gays

Last night was my 2nd night at rowing. The first night was some really brief info and then we met our teams. I was assigned to what I've affectionately called the 'cougar crew' as the overwhelming majority of crew of 13 are cougars/soccer moms in their 40's and 50's. Awesome. Two guys on our crew and one is dating one of the gals (who is super nice might I add). The other guy is a total looker - the way he was dressed last night he could be a model for Under Armour. And somehow I managed to piss off the fashion gods (perhaps with my ownership of Crocs?) and was put on the 'gold' team. Gold isn't the right word to describe our crew's shirts. Think more of the yellow line that runs down the middle of the road. So if at a cross walk I lied down, I'd blend in and get run over. *Inside voice* Must remember not to trip and fall at crosswalks on campus. It was bad enough that JJ was visibly taken aback when she saw me in my shirt yesterday. Awesome.

At last night's rowing practice we learned how to carry the $30k boats to the water without breaking them, got in and rowed a few strokes, figured out the balance of the boat, etc. We watched some funny safety videos and rowed on the rowing machines. All in all, a pretty decent night...in the rain.

While learning the proper technique for taking a stroke, our British coach (we also have a French-Canadian coach which makes for quite the interesting pairing) said "okay, I don't want to say it like this on our first night but I tell all my rowers to be sluts. When you're feathering, spread your legs." We had all women in the boat at that point and you could see the light bulbs going off. One gal in fact (the one who's dating the one of two guys on our crew) said "oh, well I can do that, that's easy." She's French. I'd like to say that something was lost in her translation. But she's French. Need I say more? ;o)

And then today, I was reading through our morning e-bulletin at work and came across this heading: Smuts Visiting Fellowship in Commonwealth Studies. Apparently the 'Smuts Memorial Fund' provides a research grant for a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge. It's named after Jan Christian Smuts, Prime Minister of South Africa and Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. And I thought I got the short end of the last name stick. Guess it could be worse. I could be Mr. Gay who is the captain of my Monday night softball team.

Smuts and sluts and gays. It's going to be a good weekend.

Epilogue: C, who used to row with this league, had a coach one year that used to coach them on pulling the oar in, where it should be positioned to your body, and then the recovery when you move back up for another pull of the oar through the water as "Tits, balls, out" (see the visual here). Apparently, he didn't yell 'pull' like the olympic coxswains do, he would yell 'tits, balls, out!' I think I could really get to liking this rowing thing. I'll blog more next week about 'catching crabs' and rowing.