Polo Wars

It's not what it looks like! (The author on right)

It was 1992 or 1993. In our downtown apartment over looking the lake and city lights, my roommate and I thought it would be a good idea to settle a score at long last.  Who was preppier, him or me? 

Instead of side arms, we entered this preppy duel equipped solely with the cotton arsenal in our closets and dresser drawers. The rule of the contest - who had more individual pieces of Polo Ralph Lauren clothing. (We were bored seniors in college and mildly intoxicated, so this seemed like a stellar idea.)

Back then, Polo was the standard bearer for quality and preppiness just as one could argue it is today.  Being young fools, we had wrapped so much significance in this brand of all brands to the point that we equated one's future success in life (wealth and enduring popularity with the opposite sex) with how much Polo we owned.

And so with a Shiner Bock (or was it cheap scotch) in hand, we headed to our respective bedrooms to  tally our ponies.

Me:  (3) button-down oxfords; (6) short-sleeved polo shirts; (2) pair of shorts; (1) twill baseball cap; (3) pair of boxer shorts; (3) pair of socks; (1) old bottle of Polo cologne

My roommate: (4) button-down oxfords; (3) short-sleeved polo shirts; (2) pair of shorts; (2) twill baseball caps; (6) pair of socks

Smugly, I thought I had this in the [tote] bag! 19 Polo-branded items to his to his paltry 17. But just as I was reaching for my bleeding madras crown, he slapped me down. "Not so fast, young Jedi," he said. "I don't have 17... I have 20." He reminded me that we said "individual pieces of clothing." I counted pairs of socks, and he counted individual socks. Beaten on a technicality.

He would go on to be a high powered attorney in New York, writing contracts. I would go on to IT middle-management in Pugetropolis, writing blogs.  But to this day, I still get great satisfaction from the fact that he didn't catch that my cologne was not an article of clothing.

The devil and the preppy are in the details.

Rowing

I love rowing, but I love the idea of rowing even more.

Who is that man in the green cap?

I rowed for The University of Texas "back in the day." I know - Texas is not exactly synonymous with the life aquatic or rowing, to be sure. But with my intentions being as pure as the lake we rowed on, I took it up as a club sport. (More on that in a sec.)

Sidebar: In Austin, most rowing is done on Lady Bird Lake, which is really just a dammed-up spot on the Colorado River. The lake used to be  called "Town Lake" because it courses through the middle of downtown Austin. The "lake" is spanned by the Congress Avenue bridge, which is home to the world's largest colony of urban-dwelling bats.  (Can you say "guano"?) The lake - none too pure.

Back to a now-Cascadian, then-transient prep trying to explain r-o-w-i-n-g in Texas, for Pete's sake. At the time, rowing wasn't just any "club sport."  If you are like me, the idea of  "club sports" in college evokes images of frisbee golf, competitive hackysack, or late night dwarf-tossing. But rowing, as a club sport, was different in that it enabled marginally-athletic guys like me to think we were cool on campus. It also gave us that  "je ne sais liberal arts smugness" hard to achieve with, say, club rugby or club pickelball. It gave us a chance to travel, wear henleys, talk about how we don't drink because we're athletes, not talk about how we ate magic brownies after regattas because we're club sport athletes, etc.

 

                                                                                                                                                                   

It's different now.  Texas actually has a nationally ranked rowing program... #15 in the country! This fact takes the fun out of it for me, since my motivation was to impress liberal arts lassies, not actually work hard and take it seriously. There's no messing with successful Texas sports programs.

"The Cut" with Montlake Bridge in the background (Seattle)

In Cascadia - Washington to be exact - it's the same as it has been for a long time... they row well here... really well. So well, in fact, I had to ask myself why such a locally popular and strong preppy sport didn't radiate more preppiness through out the land.

I think I found the answer... it's because the traditional rowing powerhouses from back east are being challenged by schools from the West Coast, the Midwest and the South Central. The whole paradigm is shifting.  Cheating Tiger Woods in golf. Derrière-picking Nadal in tennis. Football-loving Texas in rowing. Don't get me wrong... I love each of these three sports establishments, but they can dilute the spirit, obscure the history, and cheapen the lore. Preps need spirit, history, and lore.

Division I

1) Tie - Cal & Princeton

7) Washington

9) Yale

12) Harvard

14) Washington State

15) Texas (seriously)

Division II

1) Western Washington Univ.

2) Seattle Pacific Univ.

(source: http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/rowing/d1)

The rowing Winklevoss dudes who "founded" FB... sorta

Opening Day of Boating Season was Saturday, May 7th, when  the Pacific Northwest's premier regatta - The Windemere Cup - is contested.  The fours crews rowing this year were Cambridge, Stanford, Oklahoma, and Washington. Washington won.

(A few pics taken in Tigre, Bs. As.... more reasons why rowing is great.)

Buenos Aires Rowing Club

La Marina Regata Club

Rowing Club Argentino

"Ersatz" and other college words

–adjective

1. serving as a substitute; synthetic; artificial: an ersatz coffee made from grain.

–noun

2. an artificial substance or article used to replace something natural or genuine; a substitute.

The University of Washington in Spring

One can not overstate how important a good vocabulary is to one's success. Having a solid command of your homeland's primary language can only help port you into the upper echelons of business and society. For those of you who do not feel you possess any luck in lexicon, don't give up!  Like anything else, it can be improved with fastidiousness and practice. "A Word A Day" can be emailed to you; you can engage in crossword puzzles, and so on.  For those of you who do have a potent parlance, don't shy away from using it!  It would be disingenuous to do so and patronizing to play down to those around you.

The University of British Columbia

Here in Cascadia - home to two of the nation's smartest cities -Portland and Seattle - and home to #34 on Webometrics Top Universities in the World - Vancouver, BC - we don't take education lightly, but we do seem to conceal it. It almost feels like formal education is to be shamed, as being that of the bourgeois, as well as something to say sotto voce.  That's why I'm thankful for the Tech Boom and Bust. To all of those IT whiz kids who thought that by being able to string together a few lines of code, in jobs that paid $100K+, they could skimp on formal education, how is that working for you now?  It seems that being able to string together a few well-formed sentences wins, again.

There is no ersatz for an education at university and there is no ersatz for a robust vocabulary. (Now where's my Stevia?)