Navigating the Impossible by Jason Caldwell

Author:Jason Caldwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Published: 2019-03-12T16:00:00+00:00

Tom

More than a few people whom I consider friends asked to join the team. These weren’t just thrill seekers, either. They were big, strong, successful rowers. But for one reason or another, I had to turn them away. All except one.

Tom Magarov has sharp, dark features—a product of his Eastern European heritage. He worked for the same leadership firm as I did, and together we had organized and executed events on almost every continent.

Tom and I have run on the Great Wall of China. We’ve swum with sharks in Thailand, ridden camels in Oman, and drunk ourselves silly in Bavarian beer gardens. We’ve talked, we’ve laughed, and we’ve shared stories. We were, and are, tremendous friends, but he wasn’t on my radar to crew an ocean row.

He’s tall—six foot four to be exact, the same height as me—but he’s skinny. Even though he eats well and exercises religiously, mass just seems to avoid him the way I avoid any music released after 1995. He had some rowing experience, but he wasn’t someone I planned on asking to join the team. Then I heard his why.

Tom grew up in Azerbaijan with his mother and younger brother back when it was still a Soviet Socialist Republic. His mother took good care of her two children, but he can still remember waiting in line for bread while watching the tanks roll by.

Eventually, his whole family moved to Denver so that Tom could wash cars and put himself through college. Years later, he had a well-paying job, his mother had become a successful nurse, and his brother had just graduated with a degree in finance and great career prospects.

Even before they moved, Tom had loved America. His dream was to move here and live the life he had grown up watching on television. Now that he was here, he had a new dream.

He wanted to say thank-you to the land that had embraced him so richly. He wanted to become a champion for his adopted home. He wanted to give it something it had never had before: a win in the Talisker Atlantic Challenge.

Of all of us, Tom was the weakest from both a rowing and purely physical perspective. But his why was just as strong as, if not stronger than, my own.

I’m a map nerd. I took a look at the coordinates for each of our hometowns and averaged the latitudes of each one. Once again, putting my college degree to good use. To my surprise, I arrived at a nice round number. Our team was complete. And then, we had our name. Latitude 35 was born. We could win; we would win. I was sure of it; I was convinced of it.

I was wrong.

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