I still have some higher rungs to reach for

I did a gym session Friday, and that wasn't the only weight-bearing exercise I got that morning.  I had a steel ladder that I wanted to mount on the side of my building, and I recruited a friend to help me.  It was a heavy item, especially whenever we had to hoist the thing up over our heads, and I feared that just two of us might not be enough for the job.  But we took it slow, and discussed the best course of action for each step, and in the end we got the ladder up on the wall and bolted in place:

The temperature continues to be below normal here, with Fahrenheit highs in the 80s.  Right now the forecast says it'll be that way for at least a week.  I don't understand it, but I'm sure not complaining.

I went down to the riverfront yesterday with the same plan I'd been following for a couple of weeks: paddle the surfski to the mouth of the harbor and see if there were any wake-surfing opportunities out on the Mississippi, and if there weren't, come back to the dock and paddle the whitewater boat.  I was in the first leg of this process when I encountered two guys on personal watercraft (jet skis).  As they taxied side by side out of the harbor toward the main river, they created a nice big wave that I settled onto and surfed for the better part of a minute.  Once we were beyond the no-wake zone, they opened up their throttles and left me behind.  I don't think they even saw what I was doing behind them.

There was no barge traffic on the river, so I returned to the dock and got in the whitewater boat.  Once again I did all kinds of drills: forward paddling drills, backpaddling drills, spins on sweeps and draws, Eskimo rolls.  My skills really aren't as rusty as I was afraid they might be, and that's put me in an upbeat mood.  It sure feels good to get wet, too, even on a cooler-than-normal July day.

This morning I did a gym session and went back down to paddle.  Sitting in the surfski at the harbor's mouth, I found things quiet out on the river once again.  So I headed back toward the dock.  I haven't mentioned it lately, but my mission to rotate from the hips more effectively goes on.  Occasionally the motion feels as natural for me as can be, and occasionally it feels totally forced; most of the time it's somewhere between those two extremes.

I capped off the morning with some more whitewater drills followed by a hose bath.  Even here in the Mid South, summer can feel pretty good sometimes.

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