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!
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!
