Yesterday's post

All's I have to say: Time -- positively Daliesque. A little morning, a little yoga, a little lunching, stretching, rowing, a little much-needed showering, some good times with Scattergories, and *poof* -- the day! Gone! I contemplated a late-night (for me) posting, but suspected it might be something like:
Dear Diary, Today was a very good day. I had a lot of fun. The End

Yesterday broke as another day of greyness, following pretty consistent rain all day Saturday. But rain brought warmer temps, so it was another stunning, stunning day on the water. 9 more miles! I think it hit 60, making for another mid-November day rowing with bare arms and legs (my concession: 2 tank-top layers), with zero wind, which made me positively giddy. I used the term river glass before, thinking it a pretty turn of phrase, but it turns out, it's exactly accurate. There came a point on the way back that the water was so smooth and unbroken, the surface such a crisp reflection of the ready-for-winter branches above it, that I couldn't put my blade in the water, couldn't do it. I stayed in a lopsided glide, leaning away from the perfect reflection as long as I could before marring the glass surface. This, the embodiment of glorious.

And the row sped by as most of the row upstream was me zipping along (as fast as a twingey back allows one to zip, mind you) by the presence behind me of a rower from CRI (an upstream boat club). The exceedingly odd thing about her was that she was wearing headphones. People caution about female runners wearing headphones as a safety hazard -- a rower wearing headphones is sheer, simple insanity, in my book. I, for one, want to HEAR the cries of "heads up!" "single!" "sculler!" "Riverside!" whatever someone may choose to shout to warn me I'm about to hit a bridge, a log, another boat, or some other hazard up ahead. Needless to say, I COULDN'T be passed by this headphone-wearing sculler. And I wasn't. She did have bouts of speed, I'll grant that, but they were happily interspersed with slow rowing or breaks, allowing my slow-but-steady tortiseness to remain ahead. (Victory!)

The way back, dusk was settling in, I'd neglected to run back to my locker for lights, still in denial you need them on the water by 4:30 or so. Once back to Riverside, I began to spin my boat to dock, and came face to face with the pink sky opposite the boathouse, the clouds across it making stripes of lavender. I stopped in wonder, the water below catching and mixing the pinks and purples in with darker patches of shadow. Once on the dock, Pepper (the boat, people!) put away, I emerged to see brilliant pink and orange lighting up the sky. I stood and witnessed, clad in rowing shorts and two tank tops, on a mid-November night, amazed.