Let's hear it for Admore!

I've visited the town of Fish Hoek, Cape Town, South Africa, twice.  A big reason that I want to get back there sooner or later is the daily dose of goodwill and hospitality I can expect from Mr. Admore Dzinzi.  The Zimbabwe native is the caretaker at the Fish Hoek Beach Sports Club, and it's clear the club members are fond of him as well.  Local You Tube celebrities Zach & Jerry put together this video in tribute to Admore and his commitment to the general awesomeness of the club, the town, and the sport of ocean paddling.

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The Loosahatchie Bar

I've paddled around the Loosahatchie Bar twice in the last two weeks, and it's occurred to me that it's been a while since I've shared a map of this route.  I'm kind of a hopeless case when it comes to generating maps from my G.P.S. device, but fortunately my friend Adam Davis has the procedure down.  Here's a map he produced after we paddled around the Bar several years ago:

The Loosahatchie Bar is the big island in the middle of the Mississippi River.  The river's main channel that the barge rigs use is to the east (right) of the Bar.  The narrower channel on the west side of the Bar is known as the Loosahatchie Chute, which happens to be maybe my favorite wilderness spot in the greater Memphis area.

This image shows the start/finish location at the downtown Memphis cobblestone landing, where Adam parked his car that day.  The distance units are in miles, and as you can see, we covered about ten and a half miles starting and finishing there.  I, of course, keep my boat at Harbortown Marina (circled in yellow), which is about a mile north of the cobblestone landing, so when I go around the Bar I cover about twelve and a half miles (that's about 20.1 kilometers).

On this day we ferried across the Mississippi's main channel where the 4-mile mark appears.  Sometimes I make the ferry higher up than that, and other times I make it sooner than that.  This past Saturday I ferried across about where the 3-mile mark appears in this image.  That's because there was a big river tour boat moored along the bank there, and rather than fight the current to get around it, I decided to just go ahead and ferry from there.

Anyway... I hope this image is helpful to those who have wondered what I am talking about when I mention paddling around the Loosahatchie Bar.

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Monday photo feature

A big reason I prefer to do my athletic stuff outdoors is the chance to see wildlife.  On the Memphis riverfront I see many species of waterfowl and wading birds, fish, beavers, turtles, and snakes.

Meanwhile, things I do in the middle of town--running and bike riding, primarily--might not offer as many wildlife-viewing opportunities, but there are a few.  When I ride my bike out to Shelby Farms like I did this past Thursday, I often see some wildlife in the park and in the adjacent Wolf River bottoms.  Most of the time it's deer, but on Thursday I came up on the creature pictured above near one of the smaller Shelby Farms lakes.  I could tell right away it wasn't poisonous; I'm not much of a snake expert, but I'm thinking maybe it was a king snake.  I dismounted my bike to watch it for a few minutes, snap its picture, and make sure it got across the path without being run over by other riders.  When I rode back through this location some twenty minutes later, it was nowhere in sight.

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Some paddling and some pedaling on days balmy and brisk

Warm weather continued for much of this past week, with the temperature exceeding 80 degrees Fahrenheit a couple of times.  I had a nice 60-minute paddle Tuesday morning in calmer conditions than what Adam and I had paddled in on Sunday.  The mornings are still cool enough that I'm not just dying to take a hose bath on the dock after I paddle, but those days will arrive soon enough.

I got a good bike ride in Thursday afternoon.  I took the Greater Memphis Greenline out to Shelby Farms, did a loop around Patriot Lake, and came back.  Riding neither super-easy nor super-hard, I did that in about 95 minutes.

Thursday was one of those days when I didn't even start up my car; the bike ride was my only venture away from home.  And on Friday I went all day again without cranking the engine.  I spent most of the day on a woodworking project for a client.  Meanwhile, Friday differed from Thursday in that it was much cooler.  A front had come through overnight, and I don't think we ever made it to 60 degrees on Friday.

It was time to paddle again yesterday morning, and I really didn't want to do it.  Part of the reason was that my homebodyish ways of the previous couple of days were starting to gel, and part of the reason was this "blackberry winter" we're having.  Six weeks ago I welcomed a day with a high temperature in the 50s, but after those 80-degree days we just had it feels awfully chilly.  The temperature was around 50 degrees when I got up yesterday, and a brisk wind was blowing.  I think the only reason I managed to get myself to the river is that I'm such a creature of habit: when it's Saturday morning, I paddle.  That's just how I'm wired.

I fought through a thick mire of ennui to get my boat off the rack and get myself dressed for paddling, knowing that once I was in the boat, I would find the energy.  And sure enough, I did.  I spent the two-kilometer paddle from the dock to the mouth of the harbor shaking off the sluggishness, and then I was ready to do a good long session.  I had a couple of options: with the Mississippi flowing at 21.7 feet on the Memphis gauge, I still had enough water to paddle around the Loosahatchie Bar.  Or I could stay on the Tennessee side of the river, paddle up to the mouth of the Wolf River, and then paddle up the Wolf to the Danny Thomas Boulevard bridge and back.  Helping me make the decision was a big river-touring boat (the Mississippi Symphony) moored along the bank up near the Wolf: while I could have just fought the Mississippi's current to get around it and access the Wolf, I decided that I might as well stay out in the channel and ferry across, thereby committing myself to a trip around the Bar.

The wind was blowing from the northeast, and I'd had some shelter from it while paddling up the Tennessee bank.  But over on the west side of the Mississippi's main channel I had to fight some stiff headwinds to get up to the top of the Loosahatchie Bar.  Once I was paddling down the Loosahatchie Chute the wind was coming from about my eight o'clock, so it was a mostly helpful tailwind  but not without some nuisance effects.  As I emerged from the Chute and rejoined the main channel I found myself with more of a beam wind.  Northerly winds don't cause the same kind of rough water on the Mississippi that southerly winds do, but I still had lots of pesky chop slapping against my boat on the port side.

I've mentioned in the past that I like to break two hours (elapsed time between leaving the dock and returning to the dock) when I go around the Bar.  By the time I was passing beneath the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, I knew I was going to have to push it to have a chance.  I made it from the bridge to the harbor entrance about as quickly as I could have asked, but then I had a headwind for the two kilometers back to the dock.  Having paddled this stretch thousands of times over the years, I knew just how imposing my task was as I passed one landmark after another.  With about 500 meters to go, I could tell I was going to fall just short.  I completed the journey in about two hours, one minute.

I left the river feeling good about it just the same.  I was dead-dog tired the rest of the day.  There were all kinds of events happening around town, including some live music I might have liked to hear, but in the end I stayed close to home.  I slept soundly last night.

This morning it was slightly cooler and just as windy, but at least the sun was out.  Today I would stay in the harbor and paddle mostly easy for 60 minutes.  As I set out I was quite stiff in my pelvic area after two hours of hip rotation in bumpy conditions yesterday.  I paddled to the harbor's north end first, trying to let my body move without forcing it as much as I could.  Eventually things loosened up for me, especially once I was paddling back south with the wind at my back.  Back on the dock I was tired again but congratulating myself on a solid few days of work.

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Monday photo feature

Here, I tried to make my telephone's camera do what it couldn't.  At this moment the sun has the moon sitting right in front of it, but the corona is too bright for the camera to get an accurate image.  But the image exists in my memory, and that's all that matters.

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that Bald Knob, Arkansas, is not the most interesting town I've ever visited.  But it is home to the Bulldog Restaurant and its killer milkshakes.  You better believe I got me one of those to sip on while the moon slid between me and the sun.

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All hail the mighty Mississippi River!

The weather here has been alternating among warm sunny days, warm rainy days, and cool, breezy days.  Little by little, the warmer days are starting to win out, and that was the case this weekend.  It’s been mostly sunny with temperatures flirting with 80 degrees Fahrenheit.  I typically stick close to the harbor during the winter months, but in warmer weather I venture farther out onto the Mississippi River.

I had a good 60-minute paddle yesterday, going down below the Frisco and Harahan and Memphis-Arkansas bridges before paddling back up the Arkansas side and ferrying back over to the harbor.  All that rain we had earlier in the week also fell in the Tennessee and Cumberland and Ohio River watersheds, and now the Mississippi is on a big rise.  The Memphis gauge reading was 21.5 feet when I paddled yesterday.

By this morning the level had inched up to about 21.9 feet.  Warm temperatures continued, and today they were accompanied by quite a fierce southwest wind.  I'd arranged to meet Adam Davis in the harbor, and with an adequate water level at last, we wanted to do a trip around the Loosahatchie Bar.  It was clear that conditions would be rough out on the river, however, and as we headed from the harbor's mouth up the Mississippi, we left open the possibility of logging our miles up on the protected Wolf River instead.

The going was bumpy with lots of side chop as we paddled upriver along the Tennessee bank.  Nevertheless, I was feeling good about how I was moving my boat, and having a friend with me helped me relax and paddle more confidently.  The water is not as cold as it was a month ago, and that helped too.  When we reached the mouth of the Wolf, we decided to go through with our lap around the Bar.  We continued up the Tennessee bank, and then a bit of a lapse in communication resulted in us getting separated: I started my ferry across the main channel and expected Adam to follow my lead, but he stayed close to the bank and continued upriver.  I made my ferry a slow one, hoping Adam would start his soon.

Once I was in the middle of the river I found myself navigating some small downwind action.  With my attention now fully occupied, I lost track of where Adam was and decided to work my way across a bit faster, and then wait along the opposite bank for Adam to get across and rejoin me.  Once over there I paddled slowly from eddy to eddy, scanning the river for Adam's white boat.  For the longest time I didn't see him, and I rued my mistake of letting us get separated without making sure we knew each other's plan.  Finally I looked way upstream and saw him ferrying across.  Now I had to push the pace to get up where he was so he wouldn't wonder what had happened to me.  Eventually I rounded the northern end of the Bar and found him hanging out at the top of the Loosahatchie Chute.  It turned out that he'd paddled much farther up the Tennessee bank than I'd expected before making his ferry.

We proceeded down the Loosahatchie Chute into a headwind.  In the early going the water there was as rough as I'd seen it (I don't often go over there on super-windy days).  As the Chute widened toward the lower end of the Bar, the water smoothed out.  But once we were back on the main channel angling toward the entrance to the harbor, our boats were pitching and bobbing all over the place as the screaming wind churned the river into a washing machine.  I spent the final approach to the harbor trying to keep my boat moving over all the slop.  Once we were back on protected water, Adam and I agreed that our outing had been stressful, but fun nevertheless.  My paddling year wouldn't feel complete without at least one trip around the Bar, and I was glad to get that in today.

I had a tailwind and smooth water for the last couple of kilometers back to the dock, and I relaxed and tried to close out my time in the boat with good stroke form.  I realized how grateful I am to have something like the Mississippi River to paddle on.  For a mid-continent dweller who wants to be good at ocean-style surfski paddling, I could do much worse for a place to train.  It's not a downwind paradise like the Miller's Run, but it throws all kinds of different conditions at me, and as a result I'm not too intimidated when I do travel to a place like that.

What's more, the Mississippi is to flatwater for paddlers as cross country is to track for distance runners.  There's a wide belief among runners and their coaches that cross country, with its hills and softer turf, builds core strength in a way that running on a track cannot, and so even many postgraduate runners hoping to compete on the track in the Olympics incorporate some cross country racing into their training years.  I think something similar is true of training out on the Mississippi.  Even on a much calmer day than today, a trip around the Loosahatchie Bar includes a lot of upstream paddling and a long, hard ferry.

So let's hear it for the Mississippi River.  I give it a lot of credit for me being as good at this sport as I am with the modest degree of talent I've got.

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Some time off to behold the cosmos

There's no question I'm in a training lull these days.  I'm not doing nothing--I'm still getting in the boat several days a week and trying to get in some bike riding, too.  But there have been other things going on that need my attention, and I'm hoping that if I can beat back some of that nuisance stuff, I can get into a more substantial athletic routine with plenty of time to be fit for the next competition.

Last week I paddled on Tuesday and Saturday, and so far this week I've paddled Sunday and Tuesday.  The sessions were mostly steady paddling with lots of thought given to moving my torso as a unit with my hips.  Some days I've felt sluggish and slow, and other days I've felt sharper.  I felt quite good this past Tuesday, and I threw in a couple of lengthy surges just to remind my body what it feels like to push the pace.

Of course, we had that solar eclipse on Monday this week.  Here in Memphis the moon was supposed to obstruct 97.7% of the sun, but having been disappointed with a similar percentage here during the 2017 eclipse, I decided to drive a couple of hours west into the path of totality.  I knew that I should count on investing the whole day, more or less, given all the warnings about traffic snarls caused by me and everybody else who had the same idea.  I got an early start, crossed the Mississippi River on the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and picked up U.S. 64.  My destination was the town of Bald Knob, Arkansas.  The drive over there was just plain pleasant.  The cloudy skies gave way to sunshine, and I enjoyed watching the picturesque Arkansas Delta go by as I drove along at an unhurried pace.

Bald Knob sits where the Delta meets the Ozark Foothills.  I've driven through it many times en route to races on the White River at towns like Batesville and Calico Rock.  It's a pretty unremarkable place; the main reason it even exists, probably, is the junction of several U.S. highways, a railroad line, and several state highways.  There's not really a town square there or a clearly-defined downtown district.  The city hall is located in a ramshackle little building right on the main highway through town, which it shares with the police department.

But the moon would be casting its shadow there just as well as on nicer towns, so it suited me just fine.  I arrived there around 10 AM, and since the total eclipse would be occurring just before 2 PM, I had plenty of time to explore a little.  I parked behind a gas station and took my bike off the car, and spent the next 80 minutes or so checking out the backroads nearby.  I was hoping to find a road that would take me all the way to the White River, but every road I tried turned to gravel, and I lacked confidence in the "slick" tires on my bike.  So I just zigzagged around on the country roads, and then rode back into Bald Knob and checked out what little there was to see there.  Once the ride was finished I had lunch at a picnic table in the only apparent park in the town, and then it was about showtime for the eclipse.

For some 80 minutes, the eclipse didn't seem much different from any other eclipse I've seen.  The daylight got gradually dimmer, but it didn't really get dark, even when the moon obstructed all but the tiniest sliver of the sun.  But then the moment of totality arrived, and I knew then that my trip was worth it.  The landscape went dark except for what I heard one person describe as "a 360-degree sunset."  Up in the sky there was a black circle with a fiery ring around it.  The moment lasted maybe a couple of minutes where I was.  Then a sliver of sun reappeared, and we were back to the kind of eclipse I'd seen a few times in the past.

My main concern now was to get home ahead of the worst traffic.  I figured most Memphians had probably traveled to places like Greer's Ferry Reservoir and the Spring River, and since I was at least half an hour closer to Memphis than those places, I believed that if I left right away I'd beat most of them back.  Turned out I was right: except for a brief stretch of heavy traffic on Interstate 55 at Marion, I had smooth sailing all the way home.  A while later I saw reports on social media of an awful traffic jam in West Memphis.  One friend of mine who had been up in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas, said it took him two hours to travel the last 25 miles back to Memphis.  So I was feeling like I'd pulled off the perfect crime.

Besides Monday's ride, I've also ridden my bike last Thursday and today.  The weather the last couple of weeks has been quite rainy or very windy, sometimes both.  We got a whole lot of rain over the last several days; it was raining Tuesday morning and I briefly considered skipping paddling, but since it was reasonably warm outside I decided to go ahead with it.  A steady light rain fell the whole time I was in the boat, but it didn't really bother me.  Wind is more of an annoyance in my opinion.  Last Thursday I rode my bike on the Greenline out to the Wolf River and back, and the whole second half of the ride was into a headwind.  Even though the ride wasn't but 70 minutes or so, I felt beat to the socks when it was over.  And then it got very windy again today, once the rain finally moved out this morning.  The last mile of today's ride was done into a fierce headwind.

In summary... there's been plenty going on, even if it hasn't been pure training.  I believe that as long as I keep moving, and keep accomplishing at least one decent thing each day, I'll have no problem getting serious again when the time is right.

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Monday photo feature

This image appeared in my social media feed recently.  It's a meme, and I know you're not supposed to think too deeply about such things, but this one got my pedantic juices flowing.  I offer the following observations:

--Whoever created this image must not be a whitewater paddler.  Two of the four states in the "where you never go" category--West Virginia and Idaho--have some of the best whitewater in the world.

--I couldn't disagree more that the Mountain West states and Alaska have a monopoly on "nature."  I honestly think every state in the Union can make some kind of claim to being a nature destination, but for the sake of arguing I would at least add the Carolinas, New Mexico, Maine, and the Pacific Northwest states to that list.

--I must be poor, because I've visited those four deep-orange states many, many times.  Of course, that's largely because the city I live in is nestled right in the middle of that region.

--I'm not rich, but I've been to Hawaii.  Granted, when I visited that state, I availed myself of the Poor Man's Special by staying with my cousin, a colonel in the U.S. army who was living with his family on-base at Pearl Harbor Hickam at the time.  I visited only the island of Oahu.  Airplane is the most viable means of transportation to the other islands, and that would have involved greater outlays of wealth.

--I have lived in two of the cities in the state of Tennessee, and they are both city enough for me.  I don't need to go to those yellow states just to see a city, though I did in fact live in New York City for a couple of years.  Speaking of those yellow states... there's nothing to distinguish California, Maryland, Illinois, and New York State but their cities?  Really?

--I've spent much time in the state of North Carolina, and considering all it's got going for it, I'm puzzled that the creator of this meme could think of nothing better to do with it than lump it together with Florida and Arizona as a place for tanning and elderly people.

--I will admit that there is some truth to the characterization of the Great Plains states.  Pretty much every time I've visited this region I've been en route to or from the Rockies or the West Coast.  But several of those times I went out of my way to spend some quality time there, and I didn't regret it.  Meanwhile, I have no idea why New Mexico is lumped into the category of "where you go on the way to somewhere better."

I'm proud to say that I have visited every one of the 50 states.  I have also paddled a boat at least once in 47 of the 50 states, and hope to do so in the remaining three before long.  Those three are Arizona, which, if it's the Lord's will, I'll pick up when I paddle through the Grand Canyon in August and September of next year; Minnesota, an entirely accessible place that I just need to make time to visit with my boat; and Alaska, which might require the same kind of planning that I'm currently putting into the Grand Canyon trip.

In short, I think every place has dignity and value.  I don't care if it's majestic mountains, picturesque seashore, or desolate prairie.  I know this meme is supposed to be just for laughs, but it rubs me the wrong way somehow.  Categorizing the states based on snide generalizations does injustice to the experiences one can have in each of them.

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