I hope you’re all staying warm. I’ve been layering up with at least three layers plus a comfy electric throw (except I can’t find its cord) while sitting on my couch. While sleeping I have a heating pad, a heated mattress pad, too many covers to count, while wearing too many layers to count. I was hoping for a heated body pad for Christmas but forgot to tell anyone that I wanted it.
I also didn’t get my kerosene fuel order for my furnace placed soon enough and so as of this morning my place in the delivery queue is four to six weeks out, just in time for Spring. My friend Mabel’s husband Bart brought over one of their spare electric space heaters that runs on oil in its coils. It’s helping. Kind of.
Hopefully, any of you reading this has placed their fuel order back in October. When I asked my fuel people, “What about people who are out of fuel?” They calmly said, “Fifty percent of our customers are out of fuel.” So much for playing the sympathy card.
Does anyone know of gloves that work well while typing on a keyboard? My hands are approaching frostbite.
When I was a member of the Long Beach Rowing Association (LBRA) many moons ago, my three teammates and I would practice four “sprints” of 2,000 meters at 5 A.M. We all layered up and by the second sprint, we stripped off most of the layers. We practiced all winter and into spring until the regatta, which my body perfectly timed to get bronchitis. All that work and I had to sit on the sidelines watching my teammates do what I wanted to do.
Thinking of LBRA, I looked up a WGTD that I had written two years after that regatta. I had visited the Long Beach club. Former Olympians Boris Beljak and Bryan Belacic were there. They, along with their teammates, defected after the 1952 Helsinki Olympics from their native Yugoslavia (Croatia) to Canada. They eventually landed at LBRA.
Happy to see me, Boris bear-hugged me. “Come out with us,” he said. “Surely you can keep up with two old guys.” His blue eyes sparkled with mischief. He was anything but old and we both knew I’d be immediately left in their wake.
“Sure,” I said, surprising both Boris and myself.
Gold medal winners a dozen times over, they were training for the 2002 FISA Master World Championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia with 1992 Olympian Dave Gleason as their coach. Beljak and Belacic, both 72, were poster boys for the sport of rowing. “It’s how we stay healthy, said Belacic. “Rowing’s easy on the body and after 57 years we’re still learning.”
Coach Gleason helped carry my rowing shell to the dock and then left me to get in it alone. My stomach lurched. Afraid of falling overboard, I crouched down, held onto the oars and gently placed one foot into the boat. It tipped and I pulled back. I tried again and it tipped again. I tried a third time with no luck.
Embarrassed, I yelled, “Boris help!”
Having pulled me from a previous dockside dunking, he rushed to my side, laughing. “You want me to save you again?”
My boarding was clumsy, but with Boris’ help I managed to push away from the dock, still upright.
“How’s your heart pumping now?” said Coach Gleason. “Keep your oars on the water and you’ll be fine.”
Easy for him to say, he’s dockside.
However, I did as instructed and within minutes I was able to row past the main channel buoy, toward Long Beach’s Second Street Bridge. Not wanting to be too cocky, I waited for “the old guys.”
Once they hit the water, they were a blur. They passed me effortlessly at warp speed, in sync, with a wake line that was perfectly straight. I tried to catch them, finally settling down to a solitary row, practicing techniques my LBRA coaches had taught me. Each time I hit that perfect stroke and the boat, balanced, glided through the water, I was reminded of the beauty and the challenge of the sport.
Amazingly, I rowed the 4,000-meters around Naples Island without flipping. Beljak and Belacic passed me twice, barely breaking a sweat. “You’re doing great,” they called out each time they whooshed by.
So much for waiting for “the old guys.”
What’s a girl to do? Being nostalgic, I googled both Boris and Bryan and found they had passed (2013 and 2008 respectively) so this WGTD is my way of honoring them for their passion of the sport of rowing.
Lucy Llewellyn Byard is currently a freelance journalist for the Record-Bee. You can email her at lucywgtd@gmail.com
