Pleasure and Pain Together Again

The Head of the Charles is about extremities. Pain and pleasure are never so close as they are on the Charles River.

The pleasure is on the shore. Talk. Food. Laughter. More talk. More food. More laughter.

The pain is in the boats. Rowers rowing. Muscles aching. Rowing. Aching.

The people on the shore hardly pay attention to those in the boats. Occasionally the people will glance up to see what boats are passing. It is hard to distinguish the colors of the rowers' jerseys.

"Is that a red shirt?"

"No, I think, it's orange."

"Must be Princeton."

"No, I think it's MIT."

The people in the boats hardly pay attention to those on shore. They focus on the next stroke. Pull. Okay, the next one. Pull. Okay, the next one. Pull.

Given nice weather, more than 200,000 people will line the banks of the Charles Sunday to watch single boats barreling through the water. One after another, boats appear, disappear down river. Another boat. Another disappearce.

On the shore, heads rise and fall.

"Is that Harvard?"

"No, I think it's Columbia."

"But those are crimson jerseys."

"No, they're baby blue."

Pass the potato chips.

For some, for most, the race is an excuse to see friends, drink beer. For them, the rowing is incidental. They might as well be watching speed boat races. Or a dolphin show.

On the Waterfront

Do the rowers care? Trapped in their prison of pain, their goal is the next stroke. And after that, the next stroke. And eventually the finish line.

Rowers, like practicioners of martial arts, live by strict rules of conduct. If you win, you are allowed to gloat. If you lose, you are not allowed to show your face.

Losers surrender their shirts to the victors. It is a mark of shame to go bare-backed.

How seriously do rowers take their sport? Last year, a Harvard lightweight rower said his year would be a failure if his boat failed to win the Eastern Sprints.

His boat won. His year was a success.

Only after their race is over, when they have lifted their boat out of the water and set it aside, do the rowers get to join in the merriment.

They, too, get to mingle on the banks and ignore the boats that stream by.