My husband’s new toy is a mini trailer for our rowing boats, and we used it traveling to a regatta in Oklahoma City last weekend, which was a lot of fun. We parked it at the venue when we arrived on Friday, taking our boats down for a practice row. On Saturday, we rowed the standard Masters sprints 1K distance in the morning, and then we did a 500-meter dash in the evening. It was nearly sunset, and we decorated the boat with glow sticks matching our colorful unisuits, in addition to the usual safety lights. Then we put the glow sticks around our necks when we stepped up on the awards podium.
Our dash was the last event, and fireworks were going off as we derigged our double and put it back on the trailer. My husband had planned the trip well, finding an Airbnb with a long driveway where the trailer could be kept overnight. I took a photo Sunday morning as we were getting ready to leave.
I don’t have a “Travel” tag on this blog because the vast majority of our travels are to rowing regattas, so I thought it would be duplicative of the “Rowing” tag. For this post, though, I decided a “Places” tag would be appropriate because I’ve been thinking about the imprints left on us by the places we visit. After returning home from a trip, sometimes I wake up and still have the spatial map of the hotel or Airbnb in my head, and it takes me a minute to reorient myself to being in my own house.
Earlier this year I read the classic novel “Rebecca” by Daphne du Maurier. The narrator carefully observes the small details of her surroundings, while feeling haunted by thoughts that each moment is soon lost forever. I vaguely remember starting to read it when I was in high school, but I never got through it because I didn’t have enough life experience to make sense of what the author was saying. The past didn’t feel lost to me; it was just a little farther away than the present. Now, I have more understanding of how fleeting the moment is. But, even so, I still don’t look upon the past as having been lost. There’s always space for something new and fun to replace each moment.