It was a bit like a dream. Lucy, Swifty (two of my grown kids) and I were standing outside the Port Townsend Maritime Center which is a complex of a coffee shop, boat shop, and crew house in a little town in the far north end of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state. It was mid-June. We found ourselves watching this group of citizen athletes put up the rowing shells after their morning practice. Ted, the coach and “row master” came into view and said “Lucy, what brings you down here”. Apparently earlier in the year, they had made acquaintance when Lucy had worked at the local watering hole –The Pourhouse. He had seen her as a possible recruit. She was feeling the importance of doing one thing at a time. She said, “I just wanted to show my dad and my brother the Port Townshend crew house”. Ted said, “But, we still want to get you to come on down and row with us. What are you up to, now?” Lucy said she had just graduating from her school program at the port Townshend school of Massage and she was going to be getting to work. Ted said “sounds like you have time for us now”. And he said, “Who are these big guys with you.” Lucy introduced Swifty and I. He could tell were all interested in this scene since we all had rowed in former lives in college. Swifty was now out of commission because he had recently nearly cut off a few of his fingers in a firewood accident. But, Ted could see our enthusiasm and met ours with excitement of his own. At this point, we were completely off track on the mission of getting coffee. But we were on no hurried schedule to get to the mountains either. He said, “Do you want to have a look in our boathouse?” We all said, “You bet.”
Photo courtesy Dianne Roberts
