Relishing the season

After a stretch of rather balmy weather, winter has returned to the Mid South.

It was still balmy when I paddled on Tuesday--in the mid 50s Fahrenheit--but a dense fog blanketed the river.  I stayed close to the bank, out of the main channel that the barge rigs use.  Even so, I got a little surprise as I was coming back downstream toward the mouth of the harbor.  The city of Memphis sits on the outside of a large bend in the river, and most of the time the downstream-moving barge traffic uses the outside half of the bend (the Tennessee side) while the rigs traveling upstream use the inside of the bend (the Arkansas side).

So there I was paddling downriver near the Tennessee bank on Tuesday, figuring that any big commercial vessels would be approaching from my rear, when suddenly out of the fog comes this huge upstream-bound raft of barges right in front of me.

Mind you, it was not a close call--I was well out of the main channel and in no danger of being run over.  But it was startling nevertheless, and a reminder of why it's a good idea to be cautious when the visibility is so limited.  Meanwhile, the towboat pilot seemed to think I wasn't being cautious enough--my guess is he was miffed that I was there at all--and he gave me a loud ten-second blast on his horn.

Colder temperatures began to move in Tuesday night and yesterday, and when I got to the river this morning the temperature display in my car registered 34 degrees Fahrenheit.  I felt the chill as I readied my boat, but once I was on the water I warmed right up.  I was dressed in wetsuit pants, a couple of layers of fleece, a wool cap, and pogies, and soon enough I was toasty.

After a 15-minute warmup with three 8-stroke sprints, I did three ten-minute pieces with five minutes recovery in between.  I'd intended to do each piece between 6.5 and 7.0 miles per hour on my G.P.S. device, but I went off and left the thing at home, plugged into its charger on my kitchen counter.  So I had to trust my gut during the workout.  Actually, I would bet that I was pretty close to the target pace while paddling by feel.

By the end of the 60-minute session I was still warm, but it was a wet warm.  An hour's worth of my own sweating and dripping water from my paddle had wet me down pretty good, and once out of the boat I became cold and clammy in no time.  The worst part of paddling on cold winter days is not the paddling itself but the time on the dock afterward trying to get my boat put away so I can go someplace warm.