The Beginning

For the first time since college I find myself with a free summer. An adventure is required. 

During summers in high school, as soon as I was 16 and later while attending college, I went on long road trips. Alone. With my bike. In high school I went from Austin, TX to Pittsburgh, PA. In college I traveled from Austin, TX to Seattle, WA. I always took a different route so that I could see other family and friends, get a different view and see more of the country. My family, being avid road trippers all my life; were okay with me going off without a cell phone or anyone to accompany me.

Sometimes I took a while to get to my final destination so that I could see the sites and visit people, and sometimes I just wanted to get there as fast as I can. Once, I drove from Seattle to Austin in a total of 40 hours - stopping on the side of the road in Cheyenne, WY to sleep for 6 hours in the backseat. 

Trips to Seattle were always rowing oriented. I began rowing there in 9th grade at Annie Wright School in Tacoma. I developed my passion for sculling there during my summers in college with Frank Cunningham and Bill Tytus at the Lake Washington Rowing Club. My trips to the heart of rowing in Seattle were a bit frustrating. I would pass bodies of water and wish I had a boat instead of a bike on my car. I really wanted to be able to "row" across the country from one lake, river or pond to the next. 

Enter adulthood and work life. As a rower, you never get away from the sport--it always draws you back. At the site of still water, all rowers are reminded of their best rowing moments - perfect water, the bubbles on the hull of a shell as you soar with your friends and/or foes across a finish line.  You can't escape those treasured memories. They always pull you back to create new ones. This is what drew me to the sport full time; and the fact I was about to get laid off. In my adult job in 2008 as an on-the-job trainer, I didn't have a new hire class on the books for a year, the economy was tanking and it was likely that I was to be laid off. I decided to preemptively strike and leave on my own before that happened. 

At this point, my sister and mother moved back to Pittsburgh, PA where my father was born and raised and I was the lone Nix in Texas still. Since my dad died in 2007 and Austin was full of some great but also terribly sad memories for me, I made the decision to take the northern plunge too. There was a part-time job offer with a club in the area to start an inner city school-year program. I jumped at the opportunity and was looking forward to diving into the community bow first! Gradually after arriving, I was able to add to this community programing, making it a proper full-time position. Growing and developing programs is so much fun! Teaching people to row and scull…. not just row, but really develop a passion for the sport and respect what it has to offer is the best job in the world. Some shining moments that I will always cherish include:

• Getting an adult to race a single for the first time at the age of 65
• Taking a team of adaptive/adult athletes to race at Head of the Charles for the first time
• Seeing a high school athlete change her behavior at school and home because of what she was learned from rowing
• Helping an athlete with a disability find a way to be active and work out when she had NEVER found a way to be active that was safe or effective
• Putting an athlete with quadriplegia in a boat for the first time (for me and him!)
• Seeing an athlete with Autism Spectrum Disorder transition from the adaptive program to the able-bodied team
• Seeing that light bulb or spark in people's brains, not just when they understand what they're doing, but when you see their love for the sport turn up a notch
• This list could go on forever by the way…

Enter June 2014.  The club decided to change directions that did not include my being Director of Outreach anymore. This news came as a bit of a shock, but it won't stop my passion or mission for the sport of rowing. Now I have an opportunity to see more and perhaps even do more. 

When people tell me I'm an expert in the field of rowing outreach or adaptive rowing, I say, "We are all experts in retrospect." If you pursue something with your entire mind, body and spirit - you can't help but look back and see that you've become something of an expert. 

When I started full time coaching, my experience consisted of having a kinesiology degree, rowing and sculling a lot for different coaches and rowing for a Division 1 college team. I had really never worked with city youth or people with disabilities.  I was also without formal training to work with these communities. I was very interested in working with these groups and so set myself on a mission to not only lead these programs, but to learn as much as possible to do it well. Over the last five years, I have pursued a lot of information, talked with and learned from many leaders in the community. I asked a lot of questions of athletes, volunteers, engineers, medical professionals and played with various equipment and program designs to see what works and what doesn't. The programming I developed worked well and has been pretty successful. There is so much more I still want and need to know about working in rowing with these communities though. I want to experience what other clubs have created and learn from them; possibly achieving a higher standard of expertise.

My plan now is to travel the country - road trip style. This time, I'm taking my boat and my dog. I'm going to fulfill my college dream of "rowing across the country." Instead of stopping at just random ponds, I want to stop at key cities to see their rowing clubs and continue my pursuit of "more input" as Short Circuit's Number 5 robot would say by:  

1) Observing team practices, learn from the coaches and observe their coaching methods in running practices

2) Talking with staff/coaches about their clubs; especially outreach/adaptive teams. Learn their techniques to ensure accessibility of the sport as well as paths to competition for all athletes.

3) Putting my single in the water and/or going out with a team to check out the local waterway. 

I am an over-planner. I find that by over-planning I can then be spontaneous. If you have 5 paths outlined in detail, then at any time you can choose which one you want to go down, right? So I have planned and am still planning. The trip to Phoenix is mapped out pretty well in structure, although I still need to edit some. 

I hope to never stay in a hotel. Lucky for me, rowing and swing dancing have given me friends all over the country who are willing to host me. Also, the rowing community is a tight group of amazing people, with many friends of friends or members of clubs who are willing to host Bundle and me. Finally, I am my dad's daughter. Everyone said that if you knew my dad you didn't have 6 degrees of separation to everyone, but rather just 2 degrees. He sure had a lot of contacts in his rolodex and I am continuing some of those relationships to this day.  I’m investing in some of them during this trip. 

I leave on June 28th to head to Columbus. Stay tuned. This will be interesting. We'll see how much of the country I get done before adulthood calls me back to reality. 

Pictures will be posted HERE
See plans for Part 1 of my journey HERE
Connect with me on LinkedIn HERE