It’s a Small World

It’s a bit funny how things can get so condensed in this big world. My cousin Jennifer is a competitive rower with College Crew. She became obsessed with it after she learned about our Grandfathers history and from that her mother and an author that lives down the road put together “The Boys in the Boat”, a story about our Grandfathers road to winning the Olympic gold medal in 1936 with his University of Washington crew. The book became a favorite internationally .

Now to my world. As you all know, I am in the fitness industry. I make competition suits. I have been blessed with two clients who are both amazing gals. One is Kate Lindholm. She competes in bikini. She rowed for the University of Washington in 1987 and 1988. 6’ 1” Her brother Brandon Austin rowed for UW in 1990 and 1991. This man is 6’6”!

Then comes Adrienne Hunter for a suit. She rowed for UW from 1999 through 2003, with 3 championships under her belt.

The whole thing is, and I am terrible at writing, my cousin is amazing as a masters. Went to UW but at the time never considered rowing. She is making up for it now. She lives just down the road from where the competition was being held. So I always have her stop by just to hang out for a bit. This year, I introduce her to the rowers, and one thing I have learned for sure is these athletes have a very serious love and respect for each other I have never seen before. And of course they have all read the book and have a story about how they relate to it. So to bring my cousin Jen to meet these gals plus a brother in my industry just seemed really special.

And I cannot pretend I didn’t bring her in to dwarf her next to Kate and Brandon. Fun stuff.