Rudder Control

Monday, May 17, 2004
What a calming day this has been.

I washed my clothes, meandered the alleys of Venice, prepped vacation images and HTML for posting (I hope), and sat along the Grand Canal waiting to see what happens.

As I sat on the river bank of the Grand Canal I was very aware of how cooling the spot was. The marble embankment was in shade and hadn’t yet been exposed to the day’s sun. The large white bricks were cold. Finally something to counteract my hot ass. I decided to try long pants today. When I was out late yesterday I got a slight chill from how cold it became after nightfall. I guess that wasn’t the reason to wear pants early in the day. The real thing that happened was I was accosted by a gay guy staffing an AIDS awareness/donation table. I was in shorts with my shirt arms rolled up as high as they would stay. He put his hands on my exposed lower bicep and elbow, then quickly pulled away. I thought that he was concerned about violating my space, but his words were, “you are not cold?”. You could take that either way I guess, but I at least took it to mean he was shocked by whatever he felt by touching me.

So I sat there on the embankment watching as boat after boat went by. The Grand Canal has so many vaporetto (public transit) boats running its length there were frequent jam-ups. The boat drivers seemed exceptionally skilled, but I have to remind myself that they weren’t slicing trough air at 75MPH so stopping is much easier. I also saw a number of cell phone talkers and in every case of a near accident, someone was on a cell phone. (Although I forget that yesterday an absent minded old man was allowing his boat to drift backwards into other stationary boats that had to row out of his way and barely escape collision.)

Venice is boy town, and boats and boys seem to go together well. So many of the boats were 2-manned, typically one reclined-partially tanning, and at his feet the other driving. The boys just go places with each other all throughout Venezia and all over the surrounding lagoon. Even when working this one laying in the sun, the other driving was very common. One time today I noticed the two occupants weren’t participating in tradition and they looked like they weren’t pleased to be in the same boat with each other at all.

There were a variety of ways to drive as well, but even here there were playful images at work. Some rudder controls were meter long chrome tubes, just the right diameter to fit into ones hand. This rudder control extends forward from the back of the boat where you’d expect a motor boat engine to be. Everybody had their own style of working the rudder control, but almost all of them stood rather than sat. One of the best pilots I saw was steering his huge barge by thrusting the rudder control overboard to achieve a reverse effect, the rudder out of his hands and out of reach for long periods of time. That was something you’d have to see for yourself. Some people drove with a vertical lazy bar attachment so that they could handle the control from other positions - sitting. Others used one or the other butt cheek to drive with, and at least one happy pilot was riding the rudder control, the smooth chrome tip disappearing into the crevas of his butt cheeks. But the guy I really liked the most was working the rudder control with his hand - twisting and sliding and twisting some more. I wish I could have read his mind.