Hello Everyone, I can't tell you how proud I am to see this club flourishing. It's so satisfying to see this!! Great job everyone! Great web site & photos too. It was difficult times back then when Steve Moe and I were dealing with TRW, Zenon Barbrai who replaced Jim Simms as head coach at UCLA, and the collapse of the South Coast Corinthian YC once we were kicked out of UCLA's boat house by Zenon. I would have never have imagined the Basin D beach would be become a home but really glad it worked out. Anita DeFrance and Jim Simms really were the gate keepers that allowed the club to happen. Steve and I were in the right place at the right time. We simply wanted to row again and there was no opportunity other than Long Beach & that was too far away. It was a desperate move to store the Coffey 8 on the sand, I remember hand sewing rigger covers to protect the oar locks. I still cherish my Crew Classic poster of the club 8 start in 87 and 88. We had some really good rowers but just didn't practice enough, always kept getting 4th. Keep up the great work. I'm back to struggling again with another start up, the Whiskeytown RC in Redding, CA - been working on it for 10 years. Just felt compelled to say HI and if anyone comes to the extreme North I have a double and single for use - plus the club as a decent 4.

​Reese (TRW RC president 1985-1988)

Here is Reese describing the photos above:

I’m stroking the 87 boat, and Chuck Pappish is in 7 seat.  He was a national team oarsman from Yale, and was the best rower I’ve ever known or probably ever will.  All the others rowed in college too, that was great about TRW – with some 30,000 professionals working in Space Park, there were tons of experienced rowers that came out of the woodwork when they heard about the rowing.  It was really windy in 87 and we swamped on the way to the starting line & had to pull over and dump out the boat.  The 87 boat was all TRW employees.  The 88 boat was faster with some real powerhouses, 6 of 8 were TRW employees.  I don’t remember strokes (Claud’s) last name but remember he was really good and he and his buddy rowed a pair everyday out of the UCLA boathouse.  Chuck and I would eventually beat them at their own game at race in La Bollona Creek, and that is a really sweet memory.   At the start of the 88 race the UCLA JV 2nd boat started drifting over into our lane and we all remember Chuck turning his head and yelling at the top of his lungs to “MOVE OVER” and that startled everyone in both boats. We had experienced UCLA coxswains, that was nice.  I’ll never forget that yell, how he had the wind to do that.  I’ll also never forget how my feet slipped out of my shoes near the end of the race and we dropped from 3rd to 4th in the last 20, still haunts and motivates me today.  That’s what happens when you never practice a full-paced 2000.  It was never fair at the regattas, we had to compete against at least 2nd JV boats. There weren’t any “clubs.” We never were coached.  We rowed pretty darn good for no coaching & we all had a blast.  I remember hauling stuff to Sacramento, USC, and Long Beach.  I’m sure there are similar stories LARC crews have experienced over the years.

           Hi, my name is Brandi and I am who LARC club members affectionately call an "LTR". This means I am a part of the latest Learn to Row class. The LTR label tells them all they need to know about me in two seconds: "This is Brandi and she's an LTR" means she often catches crabs, she just learned the terminology, and she can't set a boat to save her life...improvements forthcoming. They're right by the way, but what can you expect? It took me 15 years to finally put my butt in a boat! 

           I was first exposed to the idea of rowing when I found out my college had a team. This was surprising since I went to school in Louisiana. I wanted to join but, at the time, my priorities did not line up with the practice schedule. Hey, no judging, 4am is a hard pill to swallow at age 19. So I let the opportunity pass me by and told myself there would be time later. Fast forward to "later", 15 years have passed and I live in California. I'm coming off a serious injury that makes conventional workouts hard and "relaxing" workouts like yoga impossible, and my husband says, "What about rowing?" So, I do my research and find out that there is only one option available that fits my schedule, my budget, and my novice shyness, The Los Angeles Rowing Club LTR class. The LTR class lasts a full weekend, so you can really determine if rowing is a fit, the price is right… "Why the hell not?" I sign up.

            The weekend starts with doughnuts, always a good sign, and the usual, "Hi, I'm so-and-so and you are?…" After that they split us up, one group to the safety briefing and one group to the ergonomic machines. The safety briefing is hilarious, we all find out the numerous ways we couldn't have imagined hurting ourselves and hear classic veteran stories about minor injuries and various humiliations. The stories relax us newbies. Now we know that we definitely won't be the first rowers to make idiots out of ourselves if we screw up. The vets talk to us like we're all at a barbecue and it makes us feel like we're already part of the club. Our turn on the ergonomic machines lets us know this isn't going to be a cake walk. It's a sport, a damn physical one, but we wouldn't be here if we were looking for "easy." The coaches correct everything from our posture, "Backs straight, like a table!", to our butt position on the seat, "Tooshy out, like a dancer on a pole." Say what now?!? Then, suddenly, we're in a boat struggling to put it all together. I find out I don't know anything about rowing! It's 70% legs, 20% core, only 10% arms, and a 60 foot boat is really freaking heavy even with 7 other people helping carry it. We drill and we drill, and the rest of the weekend passes quickly. I go home every night exhausted in the blissful way I haven't felt since I was a teenager and I'm pretty sure I can do this, like, really do this... 
     
            My first early morning row after the weekend solidifies the deal. We practice setting the boat, lightly bobbing in the marina as the sun comes up on my right, and I wonder, "When was the last time I saw the sun rise?" The sound of the oars in the oar locks and the swoosh of the water is meditative. Everything else drains away except my new muscle memories. The camaraderie we feel builds as we all give each other tips and encouragement, surrounded by the beauty that brought us to California. Then, I realize, I've hit the jackpot! A workout that challenges both my mind and body, with a slice of belonging on the side, I'm doing it, I'm a rower. 

              Whether you're looking for a challenging workout a few times a week, or communing with your competitive nature and hoping to race one day, LARC's LTR program is the place. You wouldn't be searching this website if the water and the oars weren't already calling you. Join us for the next class, because "later" can be an awfully long time.

My crew 'practicing'--

Los Angeles at 4am has come to feel like home.

The pre-dawn city feels like some kind of slow motion post-apocalyptic dream.  I pass a handful of illuminated 24-hour diners and taco stands on the way to the marina, maybe another car or two, a late night bus idling at a corner.  Streetlights silhouette palm trees and low-slung buildings.  There’s often a fog gently smothering the light and noise that burns off by the time most folks have twice snoozed their alarm clock.

I share this early hour with convenience store clerks and crazies.  Most mornings I stop at the 7-eleven at the corner of Lincoln and Washington and chat with Ashraf behind the counter.  There are usually a few souls sleeping out front, perhaps having a smoke or drink to soften the hours until sunrise, hands outstretched from under grubby blankets if they notice me walk by.  Ashraf smiles at me as I brandish my coffee and glazed donut and shuffle back out in my sweats.

Friends call me crazy to be up this early.  I could probably convince a fly on the wall of my room that I’m a superhero, waking up in the middle of the night, dressing myself in spandex, and coming back a few hours later smelling like sweat and dirty water, hands bloody and sore.  

But I’m not a lone-wolf vigilante bent on cleaning up the streets of LA.  I’m fortunate to keep company with eight or nine other people each morning who are crazy like me.  

With a few sleepy mumbled greetings we wade knee deep into cold water, grab oars and steady ourselves as we step into the wobbly shell.  After a few strokes to find a point we shove away into the main channel, past the blue and yellow Tron-like outline of the Marina Del Rey Hotel, past the gas dock, and towards the breakwater.

Shoulders low, head in the boat.  Square up over the toes and lift the hands at the front end to find a lock and shove away with the legs.  Now we add some pressure, send the hands out of bow faster, until our hearts pound and our foreheads drip with sweat.

I learned to row and spent eight years practicing on the Connecticut River, four in high school in Western Massachusetts and four more about ninety miles north in Hanover, New Hampshire.  Then last August I followed my girlfriend to LA, a place where a trickle over algae-covered concrete somehow counts as a river.

I’ve spent most of my life in small-town New England, and Los Angeles in many ways couldn’t be further from home.  It’s about a 3,000 mile diagonal as the crow flies, and there are apartment buildings here that dwarf the population of my hometown.  The weather is always perfect even on the days you can’t see downtown, as predictable as six lanes of stopped cars on the Sepulveda Pass.

On the water there are palm trees instead of pines, seals instead of beavers, breakwaters instead of dams, and party yachts instead of the occasional canoe.  The marina never freezes solid, and there’s no perilous stretch in the early spring where dodging icebergs is the coxswains’ chief concern.  But for all that’s different, on the flat water of the marina I’ve found something familiar.      

The first month or so I was here I felt, to use an obvious nautical cliché, adrift.  My girlfriend was finishing up some classes at a program in London, and my friends from the east coast who had previously declared they were moving to LA decided not to do so.  I spent my spare hours trying to find ways to work out in Van Nuys without a gym membership, watching Netflix, and sitting alone in traffic.

Almost a year later I still spend quite a bit of time sitting alone in traffic, but through LARC I’ve found three things that have always come with rowing: improved fitness, calloused hands, and friends.  I have rowed with and coached an astounding number of people, all of whom have made Los Angeles, a thoroughly intimidating and difficult city for someone who isn’t from here, feel a lot more like home.     

The weekly practices added structure to what at first felt like an amorphous year.  The coffee breaks at Joni’s helped me get to know people better and combat some inevitable sleep deprivation with caffeine.  And the time I’ve spent with folks outside of the wild haired, bleary-eyed morning hours has made this sprawling megacity seem a lot smaller.

And now I’m off to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to start three years of law school.  I think there’s rowing over there, which I doubt I’ll have much time for my first year since I’ll be busy working on my library tan.  But when I (hopefully) come back for an internship next summer, I hope to see all of you crazy, wonderful people on Mother’s Beach.  Please forgive me in advance if I’m not in shape.  

Thanks for everything, and stay in touch!