Ode to Rowing-- Now, Please

You can only wait so long to get on the water, only watch another day open from a torpid night to a sky of crud born from steel shavings and oatmeal. It's a damn good thing that Rockers are endurance athletes because enduring has been our fate this spring of '11.

But I did pull over tonight on the way home from Boston to shake it off and walk the broad sandy strip of Lynn's beach. The fog had lifted, completely lifted, and Egg Rock appeared very close in the serene flatness of Swampscott Harbor. All spring -- if that's what this is -- looking across the blackness that sperates Route 1A from Ireland, Egg Rock has been uninvitingly distant and increasingly ugly. But tonight it was right there, incredibly tempting as an easy paddle of a couple of miles out and a couple of miles back.

I'm done waiting. I want nothing more of enduring the weather. I want to endure blisters, sweat, repetative motion, steep swells, pirate punch, sharks -- but not more demure, personality-disordered grayness.

On the beach I resolved that if we don't row this weekend, I'm cutting off the roof off my garage and will go rafting Monday morning around Brown's Island. I'll cancel my appointments (assuming we survive the end of the world, which is supposed to happen Saturday around noon, right after the cartoons end on the Fox Channel).