Viking on the lagoa

I have now rejected or been rejected by most forms of organized exercise. We’ve already ruled out capoeira, for one thing. There’s running, of course, but I am of the opinion that everyone with the possible exception of Usain Bolt looks silly when they jog. Gyms, meanwhile, are full of scary people who wait impatiently for you to finish on the elliptical machine. Football, either futebol or American football, is a recipe for me getting a head injury. (I attempted to head a soccer ball exactly once in my life, when I was 12. It didn’t go well.) My hand-eye coordination is so abysmal that it rules out basketball and Ping-Pong at one go. I don’t have the patience for yoga, and I can’t even ice skate.

So when I saw a sign outside the Botafogo headquarters advertising rowing lessons, ages 8 to 80, I perked up: among the few things I do enjoy is kayaking, and I figured it’d be more or less the same deal. I went down into the office and got the schedule: about a dozen one-hour classes a day. I almost signed up then and there, but because I was in imminent danger of being cast out onto the streets in Jardim Botânico, didn’t want to commit to anything lest I move too far away. Thankfully, I’ve only moved a few blocks. Paradise and inferno, in two apartment buildings on the same street…

Rowing seems like one of the least carioca sporting activities possible. Professional considerations aside, it’s the polar opposite of football. In football you have to be aggressive, light on your feet, and ready to improvise, and all you need is a ball. Rowing, on the other hand, is monotonous, hyper-disciplined, requires special equipment, and highly discourages improvisation. Right up my alley, in other words! At least in theory.

On my first day in my new homestay, then, I joined the shorts-and-T-shirt-clad masses speed-walking around the Lagoa. The rowing club is about a mile away, but it’s a picturesque walk. Given my aversion to looking silly, I ended up walking briskly while reading Macunaíma. So many people stared! What is it, cariocas, have you never seen someone walking while reading? Maybe they’ve all been hit by cars or bicyclists. It could be evolutionarily disadvantageous. I guess I’ll find out.

The first time I saw to the club, I was highly comforted by the fact that among the rowers in the tank were a few preteens and other similarly un-athletic-looking people. When I came to do my free trial at 8:30 in the morning, my fellow weaklings were nowhere to be seen. The place was a sea of black Spandex, rippling and intimidating. Suddenly bashful in my shorts and Community Action t-shirt, I slunk up to the front desk and asked if I could do the trial class. “Are you wearing tennis shoes?” I showed them my Converse. “All right.” I don’t think that the skepticism I detected was just my imagination.

I was introduced to the teacher, César, who made me stretch for what seemed like an inordinately long time and then took me over to where they keep the oars. The ones César gave me were the very last ones on the rack, wooden and sort of splintery, but at least they had the estrela solitária on the paddles. For some reason I had imagined that the trial class would just be setting me adrift on the Lagoa and seeing how I did. This was an exciting prospect, but having seen the little boats skimming trash and other residues from the Lagoa on my way over, I was not keen on the almost eventual falling-out-of-the-boat part. So it was with a mixture of relief and disappointment that I saw that I was going to be rowing in a tank by the Lagoa, a sort of pool with about eight sets of paddles set in a concrete “boat” in the middle.

My biggest problem with sports – physical education in general – is that I overthink things. Call it not being in touch with my body, call it what you like, but I never quite manage to coordinate all my limbs in a way that even the kindest of observers would call natural. But rowing, I somehow assumed, would be simple. Not so. César perceived this and only let me do a tiny part of the stroke at a time. First I sat there in the tank lifting the row out of the water, rotating it (so it wouldn’t skim the surface) and then returning it to the water. Then I got to do it with the other row. Then I was allowed to actually complete a stroke, but only with one row and keeping my legs straight. Only at the very very end of the hour did I do anything approximating rowing. Because it’s actually extraordinarily complicated. When you’re doing a stroke, you have to think about your posture (back straight, chin up), the motion of your arms (stretch first, then lean in; elbows rotated in, pull the rows straight back), rotating the oar out of the water, and then finally the part most people think of as “rowing”: pulling it through the water. The oar-pulling part I find peculiarly and intensely satisfying. Too bad I was very bad at every other part of the remada.

“Do you think I’m cut out for this?” I asked César after he’d spent an hour repeatedly correcting my posture and watching me fail at rowing. “Definitely,” he said, which he is paid to say. I shot him a skeptical look. The only thing that kept me from walking away from the oars forever was the view. From the Botafogo headquarters – more accurately, from the tank – , you’re gazing straight out at the Pedra da Gávea and the whole western mountain range around Zona Sul. It’s literally breathtaking. Plus, I figured I was in need of some discipline. So I signed up for a month of rowing classes.

My competitive nature soon began to assert itself. My only companion in the tank for the first two classes was a middle-aged lady named Teresa. That is, Teresa was my competition. It wasn’t fair at first, because I was still learning all the components of the stroke, but by the second class I was actively measuring myself against her. Every time César corrected Teresa’s posture instead of mine, I felt a glow of victory. I am not the worst rower. Then a small boy came over and started rowing in front of me, which tempered my glory somewhat.

Prepare yourself for a shock. It turns out that I am actually pretty good at rowing. By the third aula, César just let me row by myself. I got into a rhythm, singing a funereal version of Feitiço da Vila in my head. Quem (lift oar) nasce lá na Vila (pull oar), nem sequer vacila (lift oar) em abraçar o samba (pull oar)… It was meditative. Just me and the oars and Noel Rosa. I don’t know why galley slaves weren’t more Zen about their situation, other than the malnutrition and the slavery and all that.

4 of my 6 blisters, looking distinctly less impressive than they feel. Long live the Glorioso!Another teacher, Dudu, came over and watched me for a while. “Have you rowed before?” Started on Tuesday. He looked impressed. “Where are you from?” I’m American. “But you speak Portuguese?” I do, I studied it in college. “Brasileira já!” Friends, family, whatever you may have thought of me as – student, double bassist, translator, American –, you can forget it. I am now officially a Brazilian rower. Because normally you have to spend 5 classes in the tank, to get good enough to row in a real boat, but Dudu green-lighted me to go on the Lagoa tomorrow. “Amanhã cê vai na água!”* he announced triumphantly. Then he corrected himself. “Na água, não. No barco.”** Let’s hope so.

*Tomorrow you’re getting in the water!
**Not in the water. In the boat.