testing

Greetings from the Denver International Airport, gate B23. I write this comfortably seated on the floor with my back pressed against the cold plate-glass windows, which separate myself and my teammates from all the glory of the mile-high wintry wonderland. Normally the view from the Denver terminal is phenomenal, with the Rockies towering in the distance.

On Wednesday afternoon I shaved my legs for the first time in about eight weeks. Going Amazon didn’t start out as a conscious act; over winter break in Wisconsin and Seattle where no one cared about my body hair, I simply wasn’t compelled to waste the time and the water required to shave. When we returned to Princeton, the only man I was seeing around the boathouse was Tom, and since he wasn’t complaining about my hairy legs, much to the chagrin of some of my more squeamish teammates the hairy trend continued. It wasn’t until we were informed we would be having a thirty-minute test as our last workout before leaving for winter training in San Diego that it became a conscious compulsion—a superstitious act, if you will. Holding on to some of the invaluable information passed down to me by older, more experienced rowers while a rookie at Washington, I maintained the lessons learned from our salty Romanian seniors that absolutely under no circumstances were you to ever before a race: do your nails, cut or color your hair, or shave your legs. To do so meant imminent failure and bad luck for you and your teammates. So regardless of arguments of the aerodynamic properties of shaved vs. hairy legs for racing, the Amazon look had to stay through the test.