I rolled back into Memphis yesterday afternoon after driving some 2700 miles over six days. There were moments when I wondered if I would ever make it: I was within 40 miles of home when I hit a horrible traffic jam on Interstate 40 just east of Crowley's Ridge in Arkansas. I ended up getting home at least an hour later than I should have.
But I made it, by golly. And I'm so glad to be back. The Columbia River Gorge was beautiful, and I saw all kinds of fascinating things on the drive out there and the drive back. But I've been missing everything about home. My family and friends here. My cats. My familiar training ground on the Memphis riverfront. My kitchen and control over my diet. My familiar comfy bed.
I'm pretty certain about one thing: if I participate in the Gorge Downwind Championships again (and I would definitely like to), I believe I will fly out there. Driving across the country is a valuable experience that's worth doing once a decade or so, but it's exhausting and takes me away from home for a long time. And while it's a hassle making sure I have a rental boat lined up and a rental car and stuff like that, I'm pretty sure that once I've crunched the numbers on what I spent on this trip, I'll conclude that flying and renting a boat and a car will be a better deal financially, especially if I share the car rental with other paddlers.
On Thursday morning I left Burlington and crossed into Kansas on Interstate 70. A while after that I re-entered my own Central Time zone. I continued on through towns like WaKeeney, Hays, and Russell, and then headed north from I-70 to Wilson State Park. Having pored over my maps, I had determined that Wilson Reservoir might be a nice place to paddle. This impoundment was created by the construction of an earthen dam on the Saline River.
The name of the river suggests that the water is salty. It did not seem so, but apparently the salinity is high enough to make the Saline River unsuitable for irrigation. Whatever the case, I thought Wilson Reservoir was quite lovely. People think of the Great Plains as being flat as a pancake, but there is actually plenty of relief out there, and Wilson Reservoir takes advantage of the terrain of the Smoky Hills region. It's easy to delineate the tributary streams that form the "fingers" of the reservoir. I put in on one such finger, formed by Hell Creek, a tributary that comes in from the southeast.
With several competitions still on the schedule this year I was feeling eager to get back into some sort of training mode. After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I did several 10-minute pieces in which I pushed the pace. For much of the time I tried to pull fast through the stroke but keep the stroke rate low by taking my time between strokes.
It was already 3 PM by the time I finished paddling, but sheer determination got me east and south all the way to Sallisaw, Oklahoma. That left me with a pretty easy drive for yesterday, at least until I hit that traffic jam.
I've been spending today doing all the usual chores that follow a long trip: unpacking and putting things away, tidying up the house after 17 days of unmonitored kittycat hijinks, re-stocking the pantry, and so on. But I did make time to go down to the riverfront for a 50-minute paddle. I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then tried to surf behind a barge rig that was coming down the Mississippi. It's usually the upstream-bound rigs that generate the best waves; the ones going downstream typically don't run their engines as hard because they've got the current working in their favor. But this one must have been behind schedule, because it was trailing some huge waves behind it. They looked good for surfing, but because they were moving so fast they were hard to catch. I had to paddle at maximum power, and just like out in the Columbia Gorge that was hard to do when I was off-balance on the crest of a wave. I did get a couple of decent rides.
I'm still processing a lot of the stuff that happened on my trip. I'll try to write some more later.
No comments:
Post a Comment