Call it Serendipity.

Someone dropped out the day before the row started. I happened to be there, and was offered to take his place. The rest of the evening I rushed to get my gear together, borrow a sleeping bag, get some old Tshirts, sweaters, a hat, rowing gloves, food for the road. I had joined the Dolphin Club only five weeks before. Of the infamous Sacramento row, I had only seen some pictures tacked up on the kitchen wall, that showed sunburned rowers in funny outfits and someone told me that the experience would redefine pain for me. Good enough I thought.

The participants met at the club at 0430 the next morning. It was still dark, the Bay lay quiet and black and the lights of Ghirardelli reflected on the water. Twelve dishevelled rowers got their gear together, packed the boats and assembled for the traditional picture on the dock. I was to be one of only two women on the trip. On the dock I met Deb, the other one, and she whispered to me: ÒHave they told you about peeing in the jug?Ó Actually no one had mentioned this delicate detail to me and it was too late to spend much time pondering its implications.

At 5 am three boats, the Cronin, the Farrell and the Hughes, glided out onto the calm, dark waters of the Bay. The sleeping city slowly retreated into the distance as we passed Alcatraz and rowed toward Tiburon. I was first on the oars with Gabe, our boat captain. Steve and Padraic sat aft and stern. After 30 minutes we switched and rowed on past Angel Island, Tiburon and toward the Richmond - San Rafael Bridge. Dawn came, but the sky remained cloudy and grey and there was a cool breeze . The boats slowly made their way through Carquinez straights toward San Pablo Bay. I began wondering, what I would talk about with these virtual strangers who were my companions for the next 3 days.

At noontime we reached our first destination, Benitia Marina, where we docked, used a real bathroom and had a quick lunch.Then we continued rowing. The sky gradually cleared and the water began to look aqua. We rowed past islands covered in tall grasses, and all I could see was the grass, the water and the sky. Sometimes fish lept out of the water and fell back with a splash. My companions talked about past boattrips and fishing. I listened to their voices while the water of the bay lazily drifted by. Padraic knew the names of many birds we saw, blue and white herons, swallows, pipers. He told the story of the dyslexic, insomniac philosopher, who is up all night wondering if DOG really exists.

We rowed 14 hours that day. 30 minutes rowing, 30 minutes resting in the bow. After a few hours my wrists began to ache and I had blisters on both hands inspite of the gloves I wore. Rowing became Zen. I focused on how my hands gripped the oar, how the oars entered the water, how my backmuscles felt pulling through, how my thighs pushed. I listened to the sound of the water gurgling past the hull and the clack clack of the oarlocks. Breathing and being completely in the moment. ÓBe one with your butt Òas Gabe put it.

At 7 pm, exhausted, we reached that dayÕs destination, Brannon Island,where we found a beautiful campsite overlooking the river. We dragged our gear from the boats and broke out the food and the beer. I took a shower, 5 minutes for a quarter. Jimmy started to barbeque sausages and other goodies, and John was passing around some wonderful poundcake, but I was too exhausted to really get excited about food. One by one, we began rolling up in sleeping bags on the grass. When I drifted off to sleep I could see the stars overhead and hear the wind in the trees.

The next morning dawned sunny and warm. Everyone was up and ready to go by 8 am, motivated by the planned breakfast in Rio Vista, just a few miles row from our camping spot. I wrapped both my hands in tape as a protection against further blisters and we lauched the boats once more. Rio Vista was a sleepy little town on the banks of the river. At Stripers cafe, a down home greasy spoon, we sat down for breakfast.

After bacon and eggs and lots of thin, brown coffee , we headed for the bait and tackle store, where Steve bought a rubberworm and 60 lb testline, to try to get some of those fish that were jumping around in the river. Back at the dock some of us jumped in the river for a swim, clothes and all, we said goodbye to the assembled locals who had come to check out our boats, and we were off again. It was around 11 by now, the sky blue as watercolor and the sun warm on my skin and it was good to be out on the river. Slowly we got into the rhytm of rowing again, changing teams every half hour. When I wasnÕt rowing I sat in the bow, watching the water flow by. Steve was in the stern jigging his handline, fish on his mind.

We entered the Sacramento river and someone spotted, in a thicket of trees, a fig tree, full of fruit, dark and ripe. We steared right into the bushes and Gabe and Steve climbed up there to get a whole bag full of figs. We rowed on and there by a dock a man and his little daughter were pulling a basket full of crayfish from the water. I had never seen crayfish, and we pulled up to get a better look and chat with them. The little girl had blond curly hair and a sweet face and she brought me a crayfish and said: ÒNow you know what Crawdaddys look like.Ó When we took off again, the man called after us: ÓIf you get buzzed by an airplane in about an hour, thatÕs us.Ó We waved good bye and I thought this was starting to become an interesting day.

Soon we were distracted again, because Steve let out a yell and began pulling in his line and to our amazement, there was a huge striped bass hooked on it. We were all very excited and Steve killed the fish by hitting it over the head with an empty Anchor Steam bottle. I took a picture of Steve and the fish and the guys talked about Lunker Junction, which apparently was some mythical fishing spot they all knew from a previous trip.

Meanwhile our boat had fallen way behind the other two boats. Partly because it was a larger and heavier boat than the Cronin and the Farrel, partly because we strategically slowed down to troll under the shady trees by the riverbank for more fish and partly because the river had by now become some big playground with so many diversions, that being ahead of the others didnÕt seem that important any more.

At lunchtime we finally met up with the other boats and Steve had to show everyone his great catch. We went swimming, chatted with the others and took off again in good spirits. It wasnÕt long, when we heard a noise in the air and there was a blue ultralight airplane swooping down on us and we recognized our crayfishing friends.They flew so low that I could clearly see the man and his daughter in the open cockpit waving, then they made a steep turn, went way up in the air and dove down again to buzz us one more time, and we all waved and shouted.

We met up with the other boats again further up the river, where there just happened to be a first class rope swing suspended from a very high branch of a tree. John Kortem was the first one to try it out. He climbed onto the exposed root of the tree on the riverbank, grabbed the rope high up and leapt into the air.The rope made a graceful and long swing, John let go with a yell and splashed into the water.Then Steve and Gabe and I had a turn,. The whole trip began feeling like summercamp for adults.

We were now looking forward to the famed Crayfish dinner and Margeritas at DelilahÕs Cortland Docks Marina, and did some serious rowing and consulting the chart. At 3 pm the three boats docked at DelilahÕs and twelve hungry, thirsty rowers descended on the shady porch overlooking the dock and ordered pitchers of Margerithas. We toasted to a great trip. Delilah herself brought plates full of bright red, boiled crawfish, with little dishes full of melted butter and sliced lemons and baskets full of french fries.She taught us how to break these critters apart and eat some parts and suck out others. Jimmy claimed, the brown gooy stuff in the head was the liver and good to eat, but some of us were suspicious of a thing whose liver was in its head and preferred the tails, which were like small lobstertails.The conversation was enlivened by alcohol and Jon Bilinsky made us get back on the river before we could become too loud and obnoxious.

We still had 15 miles to row that day. The day changed to a warm summer evening and we all were tired and started looking at the chart more often to see how much further we had to go.The two other boats had pulled way ahead of ours once more and had apparently spread word of our catch every chance they got, because fishermen,who were camped out by the banks of the river, often called to us: ÒA boat came by here about 30 minutes ago and they say you caught a fishÒ. Then Steve pulled out The Fish from the cooler, where it rested among the remaining Anchor Steam bottles, and proudly hoisted it in the air to the astounded audience. So we became part of the river lore, known and revered before we even arrived.

We became tired and silly. We giggled endlessly about word creations that simply added the suffix -age to anything we pointed out, as in floatage, boatage, birdage etc. We must have tried it with any noun that came up in conversation. We rowed through the dusk and watched the moon rise in the darkening sky. The fishermen and women on the shores lit lanterns. We shortened our rowing shifts to 20 minutes, and pulling the oars became more and more difficult. The last mile or so I rowed with Steve and we did one final, incredible sprint into Freeport Marina. We took our sleeping bags out and laid them on the grass. I had dinner by flashlight with my boat mates. We discovered that Padraic had stashed away vast amounts of great food, smoked turkey and a good loaf of bread, Avocado and Asiago cheese. We made huge sandwiches and there was more beer. It had been an incredible day and now the trip was almost over. Before I could get sad, I fell asleep.

Jon Bilinsky brought us all coffee in the morning, we set off on an easy 9 mile row and arrived in Sacramento at last. It was very hot and we spent a long time unpacking our gear at Miller Park Beach, where dozens of jetskiers zoomed about making a lot of noise and they struck me as totally uncool. Bob David set up everyone for the official picture. We packed the boats on top of Pauls and Jons trucks and then headed for the park. There Noreen, Jons wife, had prepared a delicious BBQ picknick, consisting of Italian sausages, sourdough bread, fresh peas and fresh corn, green salad and salmon. Then we finally ate Steves fish, grilled to perfection . We finally had time to all sit together and talk about our incredible experience and compare blisters. There was more beer, more champagne, some speeches, another swim and we finally piled into the cars to drive back to San Francisco. All agreed, it had been a wonderful Sacramento Row.