Schuykill Navy

From the moment I saw my cousin's calloused hands, his arms and leg muscles taut and sinewed as hawsers, I knew there was something powerful and transformative about rowing. Norm rowed for UCLA. I would go on to row for the University of Nebraska, and later the Orlando Rowing Club, touring the eastern United States, plying the waters of the Chatahoochee and negotiating the bridges of the serpentine Charles -- starboard five in the varsity eight, and alone in the single sculls. The Huskers didn't fund rowing as an official sport, so we raised money as best we could -- cleaning up after football and basketball games, selling "square inch" sponsorships on our boats, and holding 24-hour "row-a-thons" on snowy street corners in the dead of winter. As a rower, I'd always heard of the Schuykill Navy, the collective appellation given to the ten teams housed on Philadelphia's famed Boathouse Row, but I'd never laid eyes on this hallowed ground until last year, when I snapped this pic at sunset.

The good stuff:

Bike valet

Rowing at dawn

The harvest moon

vermillion sky

Leonard Cohen tributes

heather

engineer boots

choppers

geeks

madmen