I’m Greg Parker.

Thanks for visiting my website.

I hope you enjoy it.

Welcome to www.rowthedream.com, a website dedicated to the enjoyment of recreational rowing. Few activities offer the total enjoyment package of rowing: beautiful scenery, physical workout, camaraderie of fellow rowers, the challenge of athleticism, and the quiet, inner peace and serenity awarded by a blissful glide across a glassy, misty lake at the crack of dawn.

Personally, I was introduced to rowing by my children, who rowed through their high school years, concluded by my daughter’s Canadian Secondary School Rowing Association championship and a similar victory at Philadelphia’s Stotesbury Cup.

So, at the mature age of 53, in 2001, I enrolled in a Learn To Row program at Hamilton, Ontario’s Leander Boat Club. Monday-Friday, two consecutive weeks from 6-9 p.m. Then I did it all over again. Eight of us were then chosen to crew a Novice mixed eight and train toward Pittsburgh’s Head of the Ohio race where we won a silver medal. I was definitely hooked on this sport. Put away the golf clubs, I’m a rower now.

By November, 2001, while vacationing in Florida, I had the opportunity to row in a recreational single shell, an Alden 18. At the Club level and in LTR, generally you are a sweep rower, meaning you have only one oar, crewing either the starboard or port side. In a single, or double, you have two oars, and the venture is known as sculling. The switch from sweep to sculling is not too difficult, once you have adapted to the fact you are completely responsible for your own balance and stroke motion.

In 2003, back in Tampa, I was rowing an Alden Star, another recreational single which looks, for all intents and purposes, like a racing shell, while allowing the stability and security a rec-rower needs.

Returning from Tampa, I contacted Ed and Ryan Jarvis, the father-son team owning and managing the Alden Rowing Shell company, and they asked me to be their Ontario representative to promote the joy of rowing Alden rowing shells through sales in Ontario and Western Canada.

With some not-too-intensive training, I decided to enter the Head of the Ohio regatta in the recreational singles division in 2004 and 2005. Head races are rowed in the fall each year, and require rowers to row about four miles upstream to the starting line, race back three miles against the clock, and another mile back to the docks. Each Gold medal I won only capped off a thoroughly enjoyable outing with fellow rowers, the fittest, happiest and friendliest athletes you will meet anywhere.

Rowers are probably the world’s best athletes. Rowing looks graceful, elegant and sometimes effortless when it is done well. Don’t be fooled. Rowers haven’t been called the world’s most physically fit athletes for nothing. The sport demands endurance, strength, balance, mental discipline, and an ability to continue on when your body is demanding that you stop.

And for those of you who think rowing is all about strong arms and back, you’re quite wrong. Rowing on the sliding seat of these rowing shells is said to be 65% leg work, 25% arms and 10% back.

But really, you’ve got to get out to your nearest rowing club for an orientation tour and at least one time out in a shell to appreciate why an old guy like me can get hooked so quickly on the sport.

Greg Parker