Yesterday morning, I woke up with my hair sticking out weirdly on the left side, and brushing didn’t quite get it back to normal. When I went rowing in the afternoon, my bad hair wasn’t an issue because I wore a hat for sun protection, as usual. And it was also a good hair day, of sorts, because the problem I had last fall with sweaty hands making it hard to hold my oars has now been fixed—very simply, with hair bands.

At the RowFest regatta two weeks ago, I mentioned it to Rhonda, my women’s double partner, and she told me that she knew a woman who’d had the same problem and solved it by wrapping hair bands around the oar handles. They improve grip and are thinner than sweat bands, so they don’t get in the way. I took that advice and have been feeling much more confident about rowing my single. I rowed it both yesterday and Tuesday, without any worries about keeping a good grip on the oars. Yay for simple solutions!