Bonding With Your Children

As a parent in the 21st centuary, you would like to bond with your children. Just look at HTBS’s Greg Denieffe who took his young daughters Hannah and Maeve to the Olympic Rowing Regatta at Eton Dorney (in a cute post published earlier today). I try to bond with my children, too. Yes, you guessed right, I try to lure them to different rowing events as well. So far, they have been to a couple of the Yale-Harvard Regattas on Thames River in New London, and to one Head of the Charles in Boston.

Before our son Anders, soon to be 7, was born, Mrs. B. and I took our then barely 3-year-old daughter Ingrid to London, where I, of course, dragged them both out to Henley-on-Thames to visit the River and Rowing Museum. What a visit! Poor Ingrid was ill, and it truly was a vacation in Hell! (There is no room for details on this blog.)

Ingrid is doing much better now, and just look how she is handling the sculls in the picture above.

I don’t know if Anders will ever be into rowing, but with his length, weight, and attitude he would be a brilliant cox. Of course, right now he is mostly interested in playing with his Lego toys. Thanks to the British newspaper The Guardian’s Olympic ‘Brick by Brick’ series, Anders and I found a very happy father and son moment when we watch the Guardian-Lego version of the Men’s Coxless Fours’ A Final where GB’s Alex Gregory, Pete Reed, Andrew Triggs-Hodge, and Tom James took an Olympic gold.

Watch the race below:



I will try to remember this very special moment Anders and I had next time I step on a little Lego piece on the rug in the living room….

Plying The Oars On The Mystic River

Trying out the new boat. Not a perfect stroke, but a happy rower with a boating 'belle' in the bow.

In my former job at Mystic Seaport – The Museum of America and the Sea, I moved around a lot, but since I was appointed editor of Mystic Seaport Magazine in January 2011, I have mostly been sitting still in front of my computer. The only exercise I get is hammering away at some articles and lifting the receiver of the phone trying to get a writer to understand that the dead-line date that I gave him or her was not at all just a suggested date to send in the article, it was actually the date when I needed the piece.

I still remember vividly my glory days as a person who frequently, almost daily, got good exercise using an old wooden single scull rowing around the canal in my home town of Malmö in the south of Sweden. The rowing club, Malmö Roddklubb, was a block away from my little flat, so I rowed in the mornings before I went to the publishing company where I worked as an editor. I would usually also scull for an hour or so after work. That was now 14 years and quite a few kilos ago. Frankly, it now shows around my waist that I am not getting my daily dose of exercise plying the sculls.

Yes, I have tried the erg, and a month ago I had a good run of exercise, but then the ergs at the YMCA, where I was rowing, all broke down, and the manager did not seem to be in a hurry fixing them as very few people were using the machines.

Enough is enough I said, what I need is a rowing boat! But then, when I gave it some serious thought, I realised that what I need was not really a racing shell, a single scull, but a wider rowing dinghy, something that was safe enough to take the children in without capsizing. I mean, after all, we have been living close to the Mystic River for twelve years now, it is high time that the children learn how to scull, especially as their father is claiming to be, never a former rowing star, but at least interested in rowing history.

Anders viewing Mystic Seaport from the river side.

It was the WoodenBoat Show at Mystic Seaport some weeks ago, and there I happened to meet my friend Bill, who is a rower, too. When he heard that I was looking for an old wooden boat, he said he had just the one for me in his backyard. Now, not only is Bill a nice person and a rower, but also a boat builder. He has built kayaks, sailboats, and rowing boats. Bill said he would happily have me take over the first boat he ever built, thirty years ago, a 10-foot pram designed by the famous American boat builder John Gardner. I immediately agreed to take a look and to try out the boat.

While I tried it out a week ago, certain things were not working out well. I misjudged the tide, it was low tide and the boat got stuck in the mud at the launching area, which gave me a hard, good work-out just to get the boat in the water. It was a hot, humid day with the sun blazing down on the river. A light breeze fouled me so I ended up with a really bad ‘farmer’s tan’ after a one and a half hours row. The oars that I had borrowed were too short and did not really give me the right stroke in the water.

A happy, young rower, starting early to pratise for her rowing scholarship to an elite school. Look at her perfect grip, both thumbs were they should be.

Yesterday, however, was a perfect day for an outing on the Mystic River with the family. It was not too hot, we launched the boat when it was high tide, and I had borrowed half a foot longer oars, which did the trick. We got a nice voyage on the river, although our son, Anders, after a while complained that he was bored. Just the other day, he had learned how to ride his bicycle without the ‘training wheels’, so he was more eager to ride his bike than being out on the river. Our daughter Ingrid was, however, more than willing to have a go at the oars. She did very well; I see a rowing scholarship at an Ivy League school coming her way…

I guess, there will be more stories to tell about plying the oars on the Mystic River in the near future.

 How do I look, dear? Am I too late out of the water?

Let's see, was it left over right, or the other way around? And where is the slide?

A happy man, he who has a boat!

Happy Halloween 2011!

BOO!

The Boy, Me, And 'Captain Hook'

It was the boy, me, and Captain Hook and we… no, no, let’s start from the beginning…

After some days with rain, finally we had a lovely Saturday, yesterday. My daughter Ingrid wanted to go to the roller rink to try out her new roller skates that she got for her birthday. My dear wife was willing to take her, so it was left for me to come up with an idea to entertain her little brother Anders, 5 years old, for a couple of hours.

Unbelievably as it sounds, this summer I have been too busy to go for an outing in one of the rowing boats they have at the Boat House at Mystic Seaport Museum, so I thought that might be something for us to do. I did not have to do a lot of persuading, Anders was ready and out the door before I even was done with the sentence: “How about we go rowing on the river this afternoon, dear boy?”

At the Boat House, two nice ladies suggested a fine looking, sleek ‘skiff’ with the name Captain Hook. Anders immediately liked the name, being interested in pirates and recognising the name from Peter Pan. I put Anders on the stern thwart, put the rowlocks in the holes of the gunwales, the oars, without buttons, (collars), went in the rowlocks, and we were all set. One of the ladies gave us a gentle push and we were out on the Mystic River. It was really a nice day, and I was surprised by how few boats were out on the river. After a while I even got used to sitting still, having no sliding seat to help me get longer strokes. Anders was a good look-out and told me ahead of time when the steamboat Sabino was approaching her dock after she had been downriver by the drawbridge in downtown Mystic.

We rowed along the Shipyard area, downriver, till we came to see the mighty barque C.W. Morgan, the last wooden whaling vessel in the world. She was built in New Bedford in 1841, and she is now being restored by the skillful shipwrights at Mystic Seaport. She is a ‘must-see’ if you ever are in this corner of New England. The Morgan is resting in a dry-dock, but museum visitors are still welcome to go aboard her, but although Anders has been onboard her several times, he looked at her with big eyes, as we now saw her from an unusual angle, from a rowing boat on the river.

I turned the boat around, and started to row upriver. We passed the visiting vessel Amazon, with homeport in Malta, went round the Lighthouse bend to get a closer look at the Joseph Conrad, another vessel in the museum’s collection of slightly more than 500 watercraft. The Joseph Conrad is a little full-rigged ship, built in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1882. Then, her name was George Stage, a training vessel for Danish cadets in the Merchant Marine. In 1934, she was bought by the Australian seaman and writer Alan Villiers, who gave her a new name after his favorite British-Polish author, Joseph Conrad.

I steered Captain Hook’s bow towards the Boat House, where we were received by the dock attendances. Anders threw the line in his best cowboy style, and while the ladies were kind and tied up the little boat, Anders and I were happy being back on the dock again. “That was fun, Pappa,” he said, “Let us do it all over again, next Saturday.”

Birthday Boy!

Today’s entry is a very personal one: our son, Anders, is turning 4 years old. As the photograph is showing him rowing (well, sort of) in a dory, I thought it would be appropriate to post it on my blog. I can reveal that he is not getting a single scull as a birthday present. I would like to buy one for me before getting one for him…

HAPPY BIRTHDAY – Dear Boy!