I was walking along the waterfront in Venice and came upon this guy on an ancient Concept 2 model A ergometer, cranking away in the May sunshine as the world went by in front of him. He was rowing outside of a Venetian rowing club — a big cavernous boathouse filled with rough water wherries and quads. Not racing stuff, but boats for a few people to have some fun pulling down the Grand Canal. I watched as a quad tried to make a go of it during the Venetian equivalent of rush hour — vaporettos, water ambulances, water taxies, freight lighters and garbage barges all chaotically skittering from bank to bank — but they weren’t getting much run out of the shell and seemed to be perpetually backing it down to avoid lunching their bow on something bigger.
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