Crew increases cool by a factor of four

Our second race of the year was the UAA Championship in the Indianapolis. The location is significant because it is roughly 577 miles away from Rochester. Our status as a Club precludes the use of airplanes and bullet trains, meaning we arrive at races via a van ride. In North Wales, there is a village named Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Our trip last weekend wasn’t quite that long, but it was certainly long enough. 10 hours there, 14 back, all in a full day’s work. These lengthy treks may seem horrible but in general are actually somewhat beneficial. When we finally arrive at the race course, close confinement has made us ready to kill a man – or, more aptly, the other team. Either that or we’re really tired and need to go to bathroom. It can go either way. I think it has something to do with the entropy of a closed system always increasing. If you’re fortunate enough to not know what entropy is, imagine spinning Ozzy Ozbourne around ten times then asking him to recite the alphabet – backwards. Suffice it to say at the end of the trip we’re either biting the head off of a bat or mumbling incoherently before passing out, sometimes both. Accordingly, the state in which the team finds itself upon arrival at the race course can make for a good performance or a lousy one.Results from this past weekend would indicate a tendency towards the former. We participated in many races and were victorious in many of them. On to the times parade – it goes like this – Men’s Pair, 4th, -42 seconds, Women’s Novice 4, 1st, +14.3 seconds, Men’s Varsity 8, 1st, +4.6 seconds, Women’s Varsity 4, 2nd, -2.7 seconds, Men’s Lightweight 4, 3rd, -11.5 seconds, Women’s Novice 8, 1st, +20.1 seconds, Women’s Lightweight 4, 3rd, -21.3 second, Men’s Novice 4, 4th, +23.3 seconds, Women’s Varsity 8, 1st, +9.4 seconds, Men’s Varsity 4, 1st, +10.7 seconds.The other schools present at the championships were Case Western, Carnegie Mellon, Chicago, Emory and Washington University in St. Louis. You won’t find any of them in this week’s Sports Illustrated, but then again you won’t find us there either. If you took the time to digest the numbers soup above, you’ll have immediately recognized that we had a pretty successful weekend. These victories resulted in the Women’s team winning the overall points trophy and the Men’s team receiving praise for being humble in victory.Brune can be reached at pbrne@campustimes.org.