“Come Forward to Row”

These words made no sense to me only a few short months ago, but this week they had the power to stop my breathe and spark terror in the pit of my soul as my 7 fellow rowers and I rolled forward on our slides, buried our blades in the water, stared straight ahead, and tried to look calm as we waited for the cannon blast to sound and chaos to unleash.
This is a little dramatic, but last week was Lent Bumps, one of two 4-day-long races that every Cambridge rower dreams of, obsesses about, plans for, and discusses for months… so drama is in the air. Bumps also marks an unusual instance of my feeling like a complete stranger in this place. Several times during this emotion-charged week, in which college pride and athletic competition and the excitement of the start of springtime merged into just a few minutes’ worth of adrenaline rush and make-or-break rowing each day, I suddenly understood how anthropologists feel when observing a society that makes no sense to them and is fascinating for its seeming lack of explanation. Experienced rowers on my team have been trying since October to explain this Cambridge/Oxford-specific type of racing where 11-15 boats line up one in front of the other along the narrow River Cam, each 1.5 boat lengths apart from each other, then they all start at the same time and try to catch or “bump” (which usually means “pass” but can also mean “RUN INTO”) the boat in front of them while avoiding being “bumped” by the boat chasing them. When a boat bumps or is bumped, both boats involved pull off to the side of the river immediately to allow the boats just behind them to continue racing. Imagine… 1.5 boat lengths is really not very much (maybe 75 feet? I actually have no idea) and these boats move FAST, even in the lowest division of women’s teams! So basically, our narrow little Cam becomes a swirling mass of flying boats very close together with people screaming from either bank, with the ducks and swans looking on in mild interest.

WHAT?!?!?

What is this barbaric idea?! The confusion of Bumps is described literally as “carnage”, and there are uncountable Bumps war stories of people being propelled out of their boats by misplaced strokes, boats crashing into each other (our Clare Hall boat was hit by another boat at last year’s Bumps and literally had a hole punched through the side!), boats crashing into the banks, boats crashing into the houseboats parked along the banks… carnage.
But people love Bumps, and it is a cherished tradition with lots of history and competition and energy behind it. So, as the weakest, most inconsistent, and most inexperienced rower in the Clare Hall boat, I was also the most terrified.
Anyway, to save you guys the life-shortening terror that I felt at the starting line the 2 days I rowed in Bumps (and to save me having to live through it again!), I’ll try to keep this short…

Tuesday: I wasn’t rowing, so I was part of the “bank party” which is the team’s support crew from the riverbank. The 4 of us rode our bikes down to the starting point, helped pull the boat to the bank to get ready for the start, kept track of how long until the start, carried rowers’ water bottles and jackets in our backpacks, and cheered like mad. I had the special job of “whistler”, which meant I was supposed to ride my bike along the riverbank during the race and blow a whistle in a certain pattern of blasts to tell the rowers (who row backwards) how far they are from the boat they are trying to bump. I tried to talk my way out of this job because I broke my arm in a bike fall this summer and I was not confident about riding at breakneck speed alongside a racing boat on a riverside path full of every other team’s bank parties doing the exact same thing… but somehow I ended up astride my bike next to the boat, whistle in mouth, waiting for the starting cannon and shaking like a leaf. It turned out to be fantastic fun, and a total rush because we started out really fast and right away were close to bumping the boat in front of us! Then somehow the 6 other people biking next to me on the 3-foot-wide dirt path got to be too much and I was suddenly in the mud inches from the river, still somehow blowing my whistle in the right pattern! Then just as suddenly I was back on my bike, back on the path, next to my boat, still whistling. ?!?! Adrenaline does amazing things! But not amazing enough that day, as one of our oars popped out of its holder and one of our seats came off the slide… so two of our rowers had major technical difficulties and basically couldn’t row… so we got bumped. Darn.

Wednesday: I had class… but the team apparently was really nervous and had trouble rowing together, so we got bumped again. Heartbreak.

Thursday: Day off.

Friday: I was rowing for the first time and was a bundle of nerves. In 4 years of high school cross country races, I have never been so scared. Rowing involves trusting other people and most of all being trusted to not screw up, and there’s also a lot of metal around and a lot of water and not much control and you’re moving REALLY FAST. As the rower most likely to make a mistake, I was just terrified. Amazingly, the team in front of us “caught a crab” which means one of their rowers stuck their oar in the river at the wrong angle and got so twisted around that the boat had to stop and regroup. Of course we weren’t far behind and caught up and BUMPED!! Joy! Our bank party brought us “greenery”, or leafy branches from the bank that you have to stick in your hair so that people will know that you bumped as you row back to your boathouse in triumph after the race. (It must come from Olympic laurel wreaths, right? See photo!) So we did that. And our cox gave us a stern talking-to about the bad luck that would come our way if we left the boat while still wearing greenery… (You have to drop it in the river, and THEN get out of the boat.)


Saturday: We had bumped on Thursday and thus avoided getting “Spoons”, which is the designation you get when your team gets bumped every day and that is the worst most embarrassing stick-your-head-in-the-sand insult a team can get. (Spoons are the kind of oars that beginning rowers learn on, apparently. The opposite, “Blades” (the name of the expert type of oars), are the ultimate glory, earned if you bump every day.) So the pressure was off… and I still sweated out about a gallon of nerves before the race. I just wanted to not screw up, and live to tell about it. In the end, we were bumped. We all survived. We had a really fun, though greenery-less, row home that felt panic-free and celebratory for the end of such a crazy week, despite being bumped 3 days and bumping 1 ( not the greatest results, but not the worst either!). Later, as we compared blisters in the pub, we rehashed the week’s events and emotions and excitement, and established our oral history of Lent Bumps 2009.

I’m sorry this is such a long, drawn-out story, but I’m trying to show how this world of Cambridge rowing is like how entering the Amazon must have been for 19th century European explorers. Being confused and disoriented and wanting desperately for someone to take you aside and just tell you what the hell is going on is an important aspect of being in a new place and in a new community. I learned a lot of new things this week, not just the word “bung line” (the metal chain each cox has to hold just before the race starts, to connect the boat to the bank and prevent any boats from getting headstarts) or the traditions about being a good sport after the race (like yelling “hip hip hooray” 3 times for the team you were racing, and yelling “well done” to any team that is wearing greenery) or the incredibly loud sound of a real live start cannon (seriously!! And it was an ornate metal tube maybe a foot long that looked like it belonged on the side of a pirate ship!), but also that rowers pass a chocolate bar back along the boat so everyone gets a piece just before a race starts and that horses and dogs live in the fields alongside the Cam and that it is really fun to be part of a team doing something that might seem ridiculous but is invested with meaning and that’s why it’s important and why it doesn’t really matter why things are done the way they are…
Rowing has always felt incomprehensible to me, from its completely foreign vocabulary to the bizarre way you’re supposed to move your body to its required connection with being outside in the very early and cold morning. But I think that’s why I like it so much. How can something this weird be so important to so many people? It definitely requires further study… and there’s only 3 more months until May Bumps!! Yay!