Sweet Escapes: Breaking Out of Arco and Into the Community

Our time in Chula Vista is at its end for this season. People have headed back to their own places in Boston, D.C. and Princeton, somewhat thankful to be returning to their own beds, their own cars, friends and loved ones. The OTC in Chula Vista is a great place to meet new people, relax, and focus on training but at times can be somewhat socially and culturally limiting to a large group of young people who are stuck in close-quarters for long periods of time. Fortunately during our stay at the OTC we had several opportunities to break out of Arco and enjoy a lot of what the southern California rowing community and the beautiful San Diego community-at-large have to offer.

the Weekend at Casitas
During the third weekend in Feburary, the team took a trip up to Carpenteria, California to be the guests of Helen Frykman and the Thacher School in Ojai. The impetus for the invitation came with the inauguration of the Thacher School’s newly formed junior rowing program which is to be based at Lake Casitas. Casitas was the site of the 1984 summer Olympics and the last gold medal won by U.S. women’s rowers—a women’s eight incidentally coached by Washington legend Bob Ernst (Go Huskies!).

After a lengthy tour up the coast on Friday which featured nearly all of the California mass-transit options, we walked from the train station along the starlit beach with Helen to find enormous pans of lasagna waiting for us at one of two multi-million dollar beach-houses which would serve as our quarters for the weekend.

The bigger and older of the two houses is the last of the original “old” beach houses that were constructed on this particular strip of beach in the 1930s. The story goes that the original owner built the house for herself and her son after taking all of her money out of her investments—against the advice of her financial experts—immediately before the stock market crashed. During the Depression she built the house and bought a long strip of beach front property, which she later sold off to her friends for the bargain price of $1000 per plot.

The house was large enough to sleep twenty-two, and had a full kitchen, an outdoor shower, a library, tennis courts, a lovely courtyard, a fire pit, and large stone steps leading down to the beach. Staying there was somewhat like attending a large, semi-adult summer camp, and more than one of us were up late running around, giggling, singing and playing games. Seeing as how the house was also equipped with a full closet of beach toys and boogie boards, we also spent some time playing in the ocean on Saturday afternoon, despite it being about sixty degrees and overcast.

The dog and pony show on Saturday morning consisted of us showing up at beautiful Lake Casitas met by the Thacher School representatives and some brave souls from the University of California-Santa Barbara women’s crew. The UCSB girls loaned us the eights that we rowed that morning, and also came out for a spin in an eight and a four. Due to a minor injury (and a lack of better candidates) Caryn Davies (6’4”) squeezed into the coxswain’s seat of the second eight, and spent most of the row laughing while steering us quite successfully around the lake. We rowed around an island in the middle of the lake, which took about forty minutes in the extremely choppy water (we rowed mostly by sixes). We then came ashore for a great barbecue put on by the Thacher School reps.

Sunday morning had us out on a short but scenic hike outside Santa Barbara, rumored to be in Oprah Winfrey’s neighborhood. A quick trip up and a quick trip down had us back at the house and enjoying the beach for a few short hours before piling back on to the train and heading south. The kindness, generosity and hospitality we experienced on this trip were absolutely phenomenal.

San Diego Crew Classic Stewards Luncheon
One sunny Sunday afternoon in early March had the team venturing out to the Seattle Yacht Club as guests of the San Diego Crew Classic Stewards. While mingling and munching on lunch, the girls got to meet the minds and wallets behind the west coast’s favorite springtime regatta. After lunch the room was opened up to a quick and informal Q&A with the girls telling some of their own stories about how they began rowing, where they went to school, and what they planned to do “after rowing.” Afterwards, some of the women at the luncheon seemed a little surprised at how intelligent and articulate the girls were, as they told us later on during a visit to ZLAC. This event served as a precursor for some of the other outings we took later in the trip, including a trip on a sixty-four foot yacht, and a special dinner at the ZLAC rowing club.

The Yacht
The following weekend, the group was invited out once again, this time to experience the luxuries of San Diego yacht culture. The attraction was a huge, three million dollar yacht owned by the step-parents of our assistant coach, Laurel Korholz, which took the ladies on a short water tour out of the San Diego Yacht Club and up to La Jolla. Bearing bikinis and taking in refreshments, the girls made friends with other yachters and surfers while soaking up some sun. The yacht was rumored to take nearly $6,000 to fill up the gas tank, and then burn the fuel at a rate of about two gallons per minute. Despite a few mishaps involving a certain open weight sculler gracefully falling off of the top deck of the boat, a great deal of fun and much-appreciated relaxation was enjoyed by all.

Dinner at the Shumaker’s
A perhaps less-glamorous but no less-enjoyable escape for the team came on March 14 with a dinner invitation to the home of Jay and Martha Shumaker, dedicated UVA crew alumna parents, and active San Diego Crew Classic Stewards. The Shumaker’s home, designed by Jay himself, is centrally located in downtown San Diego, but had all the feeling of a quaint country home. We were welcomed with open arms and pitchers of margaritas, and an enormous spread of taco and tostada goodness (with vegan and vegetarian options for our veg-heads on the team). We spent a lot of the night perusing the newest “Washington” issue of Rowing News and playing with the Shumaker’s lovable Chesapeake Bay Retriever, Marley. But the Shumaker’s warmth and hospitality made the night a true and memorable escape from the monotony of the OTC.

ZLAC Barbecue
Our final group venture off Arco grounds came on March 17th, with a barbeque invitation from the president of the ZLAC Rowing Club. The event had us enjoying a tour of the clubhouse and the boathouse, and learning about the now-retired sling and pulley systems once used to launch the enormous eight-woman barges rowed by early ZLAC members. The women at ZLAC are very proud of the fact that their club was recently recognized as the oldest women’s rowing club in the world, dating back to its inauguration in 1892. The original founders, Zoolette, Lena, Agnes and Caroline were ambitious risk-takers to found a women’s athletic organization in pre-twentieth century western America, and that same spirit is maintained today in the hearts of the masters women who carry on the ZLAC traditions. After gorging ourselves on the amazing food presented to us and jawing over dinner, we mingled with the ZLAC women and were marvelously entertained, especially by Micke Ferrell, a former San Diego police officer who used to roll (well, sort of) with the Hell’s Angels. Her advice: every woman should carry pepper spray.

What I thought was especially cool about this particular outing was that my parents, who were in town to visit for the long weekend, were also welcomed to the event with open arms by our hosts. Not only did they get to enjoy the wonderful food and the charisma of the ZLAC women, but they were able to see for themselves and understand just a little more what it is that we do, and what it means to be a part of the PTC group in respect to the rowing community at-large. Something like that isn’t always easy to put into words (though it seems that’s exactly what I’ve been attempting to do for the past 1,200 of them or so), but it really is remarkable the reception that awaits us with all these wonderful, generous, experienced people, and what it seems that we are able to reciprocate that seems so minimal, but in the end it can mean so much.

A big thank you to anyone and everyone who reached out to us in San Diego while we were there, we loved every moment of it.

I’m wrapping up this entry aboard an airplane bound for Newark, arriving at EWR around 4:15 pm. It will be great to see my friends in Princeton, and especially my roommate Ellen who was dearly missed while in San Diego, though I am less-than-pleased about having to leave behind the sun and the palm trees.

With NSR-1 less than two weeks away, you can expect some “excitement” on this end as I prepare to race my first 2ks in the single.
Fortunately there are no bridges on Mercer Lake.

See you out there,

--MK