The weather was unseasonably mild in late May, but with Fahrenheit temperatures hitting the 90s for the last several days it's beginning to feel summer-like. Once the dog days arrive and we're flirting with triple-digit heat, life will be tough out on the river, but right now, with low-90s readings, I love it out there.
It's not uncommon for me to shy away from the mighty Mississippi and stay in the harbor. In the wintertime hypothermia is a concern, and there's no reason to push my luck. And then for much of the spring, the wind blows hard and the water is rougher out there than I want to deal with. You might be surprised to hear that, seeing as how I've paddled some Class V whitewater and stuff like that, but the boats I paddle here in the Memphis area are much tippier than a creek boat, and are typically not rollable. And if I'm dealing with an injury, like I have been the last few weeks, I want to stay in easier water where I'm not putting undue stress on it.
But when summer begins to settle in, the big river is a much more inviting place. With a higher temperature for both the air and the water, an unplanned swim is not nearly such an ordeal. And with the wind not blowing so hard, the river is smooth.
The weather was just right today, and after an easy session in the boat yesterday I looked forward to getting after it a bit more today. I did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, then went out on the river did all kinds of fun stuff in the moving water: I worked on keeping the boat gliding through the squirrelly eddies along the bank, and then did some quick ferries beneath the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, paddling a pretty brisk tempo to keep from washing downstream as I went from one set of bridge pilings to another. It was some of that "unstructured play" that I talked about last Monday, and it was a good way to paddle hard without it feeling like the sort of gut-busting workout that I did with Joe this past week.
No comments:
Post a Comment