A little mishap on the Liffey

Everyone experiences small embarassments or little "fails" in their daily life. Tripping up the stairs in front of people, dropping your tray at lunch time in the cafeteria, forgetting what you were going to say in front of class - these are all small fails. Once in a while, you might expeience a bigger fail, like tripping up the stairs in Spartan Stadium, or in rowing, maybe, flipping a single. Flipping a single can be funny, tragic, or both. Either way, it usually is over pretty fast. What i did today, goes a little beyond that.

I just started rowing with the University College Dublin Ladies' Boat Club a week ago, so i don't know too many people and i haven't really been placed in any specific boats yet. I've rowed 3 times on the water now, twice in a pair, and once in a single. Today i went out in a single. I was both excited and nervous about this, since i hadn't sculled very much since high school. It was a little windy today, so it wasn't the best row, but i was doing pretty well considering. Over half way into my row i got caught in the weeds in the bend of the river and it took me a few minutes to get out, just because of the wind and where i was on the river. Now, i thought this was kind of embarassing, since a few boats passed me pretty closely while i was struggling for a few minutes. Once i got out, i thought to myself "well that was probably the worst thing that will happen all day, at least it's over!".

A little later i was back near the boat house and i decided to bring it in. I tried to bring it in the same way that i had the day before, from across the river. I checked and didn't see any boats coming, so i started rowing across the river, so i was probably at a 45 degree angle with the dock. All of a sudden i turn around and i see a double, coming straight toward me.I yelled "way enough!" which now that i think about it, probably is a completely different command here, but we both checked it down.....it was too late though. Their bow went straight over and onto mine and then we both stopped moving. I was scared that there was going to be damage, just because of the sound that it made when we collided, but it didn't look like there was any. That didn't make things too much better though, due to the fact that their boat was completely on top of my bow, and if i'd leaned over i could've given the bowman a high-five, except for the fact that would have been completely inappropriate at the time. Also, this double was a trinity double, which is apparently our rival school, so it would've been like if i'd collided with some double from Michigan, awesome.....So we tried to get out of this situation, by pushing eachother off, and both backing down, but nothing was working. Luckily, we were right in front of the boathouse and some guys from the club had seen this happen (along with other boats on the water, and at least 20 people just hanging out in the park right across the river) so they ran down and got into this training double, which is basically just a tub. They rowed out and after like 10 minutes of pushing my bow down, theirs up, and removing one of my oars, we were free.

I'm pretty sure both boats were fine, no one was injured, and i somehow managed not to flip the single, even though at one point i had one oar in, and had my feet out because i was sitting behind my seat, trying to shift the weight, but that was seriously the most embarassing thing i have ever had happen to me while rowing. I had only met 2 of the guys that were there before, so i was really worried that i was in deep trouble or something, but they didn't seem to think it was that big of a deal.

Ugh, so that's my epic fail, i only wish someone had a camera, because i honestly think it might've made it onto fail blogs. I'm going to go eat massive amounts of nutella now.