I had a reasonably stress-free drive to Saint Louis on Thursday, but the drive to Memphis from Saint Louis on Friday was worse than it should have been because the Hernando DeSoto Bridge over the Mississippi River at Memphis remains closed for emergency repairs. I elected to cross the river via the Caruthersville Bridge 102 river miles upstream, and that added over an hour to the trip. The going was slow from Dyersburg down to Memphis on U.S. 51, which passes through four towns with lots of traffic lights.
But at long last, I made it. I was utterly exhausted after one of the tougher trips home I can remember. The Mid South and the Pacific Northwest certainly haven't gotten any closer to each other since I last made the trip by car in 2018.
Maks and I have been discussing by e-mail what's next for me this year. The truth is that my season sort of peters out a bit now that the big Columbia Gorge event is behind me. Two weeks from now there's a pretty good event up at Cincinnati that I attended two years ago, but at the moment I don't even want to think about driving for eight hours to get there. After that there's not an event I'm aware of until October.
Maks is saying that a few weeks of very relaxed paddling is probably what I need right now, to be followed by some stuff that lays the groundwork for next year. That sounds good to me. I can handle some technical stuff for the next little while, along with sessions that are unstructured enough that I'm free to go surf towboat wakes if I see any.
This morning I did a very short, easy paddle in the harbor. The boat I train in here at home is a bit less stable than the one I took on my trip, and it took me a while to get used to that again.
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