Every day during
crew season, I get up at 4 AM, to row under the
Triborough Bridge in the
East River.
On two
entirely seperate occasions, we have found dead bodies floating
face down in the water.
One was fresh.
The other (found by the SUNY Maritime Crew) was.. most definitely not.
The first time we found one was one of those particularly cold, windy
Friday mornings, where everybody's a litte tired, drunk, or both. We were coming up on one embankment on the
bridge, and I was running them through some
pause-the-body-over drills (ironically enough). Coming up on the starboard side was something that looked like a bag of
garbage. I told the
ports to lighten up so we would
avoid it. As we passed, I realized that the garbage was..wearing a shirt. And had hair.
oh shit...
"WEIGH ENOUGH!... bow pair, back it..."
"Um... is that what I think it is?"
"Are you sure it's dead?
"Why don't you poke it...
Suffice it to say, we poked it with an oar. Or..7-seat poked it with his oar. It was a
woman, she was
dead.
We finished
practice as usual.