70 Wyckoff Avenue, Apartment 2A in Bushwick, Brooklyn

First dinner with company in the new apartment. (Jono, Anna Mack, me, Leah is taking the photo).

This apartment was a nice place, maybe 800-900 square feet with twelve-foot ceilings. We put up the walls with sixteen-foot 2x4s cut to size with a circular saw on site; we hoisted the lumber up from the courtyard through the open window. Jono and his dad and uncle did all the drywalling in early August, and the place was pretty well put together by the time I moved in (which was August 14, 2003... Blackout Day, another story for another time).

We had about twenty-five feet of desk in the form of undrilled doors placed on sawhorses, a nice high counter installed in the kitchen area (another door, a heavy timber one that I got from my grandmother's basement in Niskayuna), and a high shelf in the back where the liquor lived with the de rigeur Christmas lights.

Jono gets a bit closer to Teacher (Miss Leah), who provided the sole and soul for the evening (both were poached).

Mr. Gorbachev... put up this wall!

Though built by unskilled labor (including Jono and I) the walls support my weight.

These were the bedrooms we put up at the apartment on Wyckoff Avenue. The tops of these walls were never completed, as then there would be no light.

Ear biting is also encouraged.

Neck biting is de rigeur at Drinkland.

En route to Drinkland, Leah is persecuted by the neighborhood busybodies.

Andre: the beer of Champagnes at the end of season soiree at the the College Ave crew house. Also, all the cool kids wear their visors upside down.

Jon Goulet, Loi Sessions, me.

The women's eight in Camden, spring of 2003.

Rounding the upstream curve towards the final bridge before the yacht club, heading towards Medford Square on the Malden.

Millpond conditions.

Jim with the Smith Cup. Something tells me there's beer in it.

Tufts oars at the Newell boathouse in Cambridge.

Kate (doing an impression of me, Coach Lindy) in another skit night classic.
There's a "skit night" on the Thursday night of every spring break spent training with Tufts crew. Usually the skits involve parodying the other squads, the coaches, or individual rowers.

Goulet and Max demonstrating their musical skills in a Weezer tribute spoof.

Lauren as Will the Cox. Skit night, spring training 2003.

Clearing puddles, heading downstream and cutting a swathe through the sunlit Charles.

Just off the docks, Memorial Drive is on the port side. Toques are in effect on a cold, bright afternoon in Cambridge.

Displaying early form and balance, the Carzo is cruising upstream between towards Newton.

Flatout on flat water, Rio Carlos during Spring Break.
The lineup is Mike at stroke, Andy Pelkey, Jon Goulet, Robbie, Max, Mark Roberts, Andy Mueller, and Burke at bow. Will Dunn is coxing.

Upstream on the Charles. This is maybe the Watertown or Arsenal bridge.

CRI is off port.

Up near CRI, heading downstream.

Passing under the middle span of the Anderson bridge.

Rowing to Newell dock, spring break training in March of 2002. The Mystic was iced in, so we made the journey to our old stomping ground on the Charles.

Upstream, warming by sixes and passing Newell on port.

The varsity waits for the JV to load up and get out of their way, prior to practice on a gray, wet morning during spring break of 2002.

Naked Quad Run

Rule Britannia (Robbie and Burke)

Kate's arms have never looked so toned... NQR'02.

Goulet showing fine form in a kegstand, while Robbie proclaims that the sun never sets on the British Empire, or on high fashion!

End of Fall Season Blowout / Maggie's Maine Love Shack (Port Clyde)

Boat Races, March of 2002 at Maggie Danielson's house in Port Clyde, Maine. Goulet feels the love from Max Bernstein. This is the retreat to celebrate the end of the head racing season.

Jon is taken out, with extreme prejudice, by Max Bernstein and Brandon Dickason during an unseasonably warm end-of-fall weekender in Port Clyde, 2002.

More Maine boat races. Jim Burke has misplaced his shirt, apparently.

I'm attempting to house Koeppel in a boat race, but Lizzie is distracting me with some sort of kung-fu move behind me. Pelkey holds down the anchor spot.

Losing a flexoff to Goulet is bad enough, but losing badly to Heidi is worse.

Future varsity captain Robbie Goldstein can't keep his clothes on, Ashley can't keep her hands off. Amira Baker-Jud documents the proceedings with her trusty Brownie camera-matic.

Car Breakdown and Ducks in Sturbridge, Mass.

Ducks in Sturbridge, Massachusetts in May of 2002. I had packed up all my stuff and was moving back to Niskayuna for the summer. My car broke down mid-voyage, forcing me to abandon ship at the first town I could find a Mass Pike exit for, which was Sturbridge.
My car was, effectively, toast. I was ripshit pissed, just beside myself. It could be fixed, but I couldn't continue as is. I called my mother and asked her to drive the two hours to come pick me up.
I was standing in a gas station asking for directions to a place that could come take my car to be fixed, when two ducks wandered in the open door. The clerk said, "Oh, they come in every day, don't mind them."
I bought a camera immediately and followed the ducks around, while they crossed the four lane highway (stopping traffic) and walked through another few lots before finally taking off.
I spent the rest of the hours of fading light walking through the woods in Sturbridge, using the rest of my film. I got some nice shots of rural roads, rock walls, culverts, and streams.
The anger, at the situation, at being stuck and having my trip home cut into, at having my car go kaput, was all gone. It was really an amazing day, though hard to describe.

More ducks.

Yet more ducks.

Good spacing, coming into the Powerhouse Stretch.

Coming around the bend at Magazine Street.

At the release.

Shane and Mike, showing the power.

Spring of 2001, my senior year crew. (stroke Shane, Mike, Nate, Max, Rajeev, Goulet, Burke, bow Steeb)

At the catch.

Winning the Smith Cup against WPI in its inaugural year.

Table Dancing

This was a very shirtless-intensive year for Tufts crew social events. I have no idea why; I think it may have been because the men's varsity team was dry, and we needed to amuse ourselves somehow. But it could well have been just my fault. It wasn't hard to convince me to doff my top, and then others followed.

I'm just making sure no one wanders off with Jono's lap.

At the Head of the Charles in 2001. I was unable to compete with Tufts, due to eligibility issues from national team racing. Anna MacCormack, Jono Murphy, myself, and Leah Brunski are sitting on the docks at Newell Boathouse, on the Cambridge shore just short of the two mile marker.

Ryan Steeb rocking the quality boufant, fall of 2000.

FISA World Rowing Championships (Lake Jarun/Zagreb, Croatia)

Torgy and Ben wear their medals on the way back to Hotel i from the racecourse at Zagreb.
This was at the rowing world championships in Croatia, where I coxed the heavyweight four. The crew was Ben Holbrook at stroke, Jim Neil, Garrett Klugh, and Ryan Torgerson at bow. We came second behind the Brits, by about 1.8 seconds.