Paddle where you live

My nephew Joel, 14, is in town visiting, and late yesterday afternoon he joined me in the tandem boat.  We paddled to the mouth of the harbor and out onto the river, ferried over to the Arkansas side, paddled up to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and returned to the harbor and back to the dock.  It was definitely a workout for me.  It was Joel's first time on the actual river; our previous sessions were limited to the harbor.  Joel was an unbelievably cute little boy and I miss that, but I also enjoy being able to do more grown-up things with him now that he's bigger (he's bigger than I am now, in fact).

I have another thought about my visit to St. Louis.  While paddling at Chain of Rocks Sunday morning, I talked with Michael Dee and Rory King about what it's like to be a whitewater paddler living in a whitewater-poor part of the country.  Michael remarked that when he travels to the mountains to paddle challenging whitewater, people are surprised to see a guy from Missouri who actually knows what he's doing.  I told him I had had similar experiences.

I think it is very important to paddle whatever water is available in the place you live.  Here in Memphis a favorite pasttime for many of our local whitewater boaters is to complain about the lack of any whitewater in this area.  I, too, wouldn't mind having more whitewater close by, but it seems to me that many paddlers fail to recognize the value of paddling on the water we do have here.  Your can improve your skills dramatically simply by spending a little time in your boat each day before or after work, on a lake or the Wolf River or the Mississippi River.  You can develop strong, efficient strokes paddling on flatwater or slow-moving water, free of the distraction of waves and holes and drops.  And then, when you do make the trip to the Plateau or the Appalachians or the Rockies, the skills you've mastered will enable you to style the rapids.

The people racing slalom in the Olympics next week know this.  Elite racers probably spend seventy percent or more of their training time on water that's Class II or easier.  Training on Class III-IV water every day would tear up their bodies, and the precise technique they develop on the easier water carries over to the bigger stuff.  When I was racing slalom in the 1990s, I did a lot of drills on flatwater and had a little moving-water gate course set up on the Wolf, and while I'm sure I didn't get as good as I would have someplace where there were more racers, more whitewater, and some coaching, I did at least get to where I could enter events like the nationals and the national team selection trials and perform competently.