Scenes from a Pool Session

OK...trying this...Google Video won't give me the time of day, but these uploaded in Yahoo ok.

These were a few scenes from the Pool Session that Got Me Hooked. Yonkers Paddling & Rolling...er, ROWING club. Head instructors Jack Gilman (Greenland) and Andy Laiosa (ACA with a whitewater bent).

Boy, there was something about these sessions, in that funny little basement pool with the fish murals. I don't know, maybe it was just the novelty, but things just got sublimely silly...

Here's Jack demonstrating some unstoppable norsaq rolls. Well, he does stop, but just 'cause he was getting to the edge of the pool. Otherwise he would've rolled a mile!



How to scare your pool session lifeguard:

Actually we would usually let the lifeguard know before any breath-holding silliness. It's just the nice thing to do.

Andy decided that Jack and I needed to try out for the water version of Cirque du Soleil. So we started choreographing a routine...

Unfortunately we had a short attention span & never got past that.

Some of the funniest moments weren't captured for posterity - like one time Jack & I were doing an upside-down in-kayak swimming race. It got cut short because we happened to look at each other at the same time, instantly & simultaneously began laughing at how goofy we looked, & since when you start to laugh you are not holding your breath, we both had to hand-roll up. And then the entire class got into this thing where we'd try rolling with pretty much anything that wasn't actually bolted to the floor (a hockey stick, btw, really only works well in one direction).

And then there was Marcus and his German Roll...sorry, that one you just have to see, and I don't think anybody's videoed it yet. Maybe when he gets back from Australia - but it originated right here among the tropical-fish murals.

Boy, those were a couple of fun, fun winters.

Sarah Lawrence is great, but there's something about a smaller session - I don't know, maybe it's the proximity of old hands to the learners that gets everybody going. I started these classes as a good, but nervous, roller - it was at this pool, with Jack & Andy & a few other Yonkers & Pier 63 folks, that rolling became flat-out, giggle-to-guffaw-fit-inducing fun.

And that's the most wonderful feeling when that happens.