181/365 On the River

If you want to motivate a young group of first timers, ages 10 and under, to row hard for seven miles down a somewhat slow moving river, this is what you do: pop in 13 hours of acclaimed best-seller The Boys in the Boat, the moving story of the 9 man rowing team that won gold in the 1936 Olympics and you'll be good to go. The day was full of "upping the stroke count," calling for 10 big ones, naming the positions of each rower and which character we would have been from the story, as well as all the good old river jumping, lunch on the shore, exploring dead timber, and hauling one another back into the raft.