We're getting a little bit of a break from the sweltering heat this weekend. The Fahrenheit highs have been in the high 80s and low 90s, as opposed to the mid to high 90s.
I rode my bike Friday morning, doing my usual 90-ish minute loop. Once again the ice cubes in my water bottle had melted by the time I got out to Shelby Farms, but this time the water was still fairly cool when I stopped to drink it.
When I went down to the river yesterday morning the temperature was in the low 80s--not cool, exactly, but much less oppressive than what I'd paddled in on Thursday. I paddled out of the harbor hoping to do some more surfing out on the river, but alas, there was no barge traffic in sight. So I ended up just doing a steady 60 minutes with a few surges.
This morning I did the same gym routine I started on Wednesday, and then headed for the river. I had the whitewater boat on top of the car, and my original plan was to paddle it in the harbor for a bit. But a look at the weather forecast revealed that today was going to be mostly sunny and calm, while on Tuesday thunderstorms are likely (probably remnants of that Tropical Storm/Hurricane Beryl). That means that on Tuesday I might want to stick close to the marina in case bad weather comes along, and paddling the whitewater boat will assure that I do that. So I shifted today's paddling plan to Tuesday.
As for today, I decided to paddle the surfski to the mouth of the harbor, and see if any barge traffic was around. If there was, I would go out in search of surfing FUN! If there wasn't, then I would return to the dock and paddle the whitewater boat for a bit.
When I reached the harbor's mouth I found that two barge rigs had already moved upstream past downtown Memphis, and a third was coming up from beneath the Harahan and Frisco and Memphis-Arkansas Bridges. Surfing it would be. I fell in behind that third rig and found big waves that were moving fast and tough to catch. The downwind rule of "little ones lead to big ones" often works with barge wakes, too, and I managed to get several decent rides this way, though nothing as good as I'd had last Thursday.
Besides being big, the waves were a bit rough and confused, and several times I failed to get on a wave because I was a little too off balance to get in that one crucial stroke. But most of the time I felt in solid control, and I think my V10 Sport surfski is much better for me in these conditions than my less-stable skis.
As I played around out there, I started to hear sirens from Riverside Drive where it passes by Tom Lee Park. First I heard one, and then I heard one or two more, and when I had a chance I looked in that direction and saw an ambulance and a pumper truck driving along beyond the park. Wondering what all the fuss could be about, I scanned the South Bluffs residential area in search of smoke, but didn't see any. Maybe somebody in the park was having a heart attack.
Once in a while--maybe once every five or six years--somebody on the bank sees me paddling out on the river and thinks that I am in trouble, and calls in the EMS authorities. It crossed my mind that maybe somebody had done that today, but I quickly dismissed that idea. If somebody were worried about me, wouldn't they send out the police harbor patrol boat, or maybe a Coast Guard crew? An ambulance squad standing on the bank could do absolutely nothing for a guy out in the middle of the river.
But as I concluded my surf session and started working my way back over to the Tennessee shore, it appeared that the rescue team was there because of me. I could see several people who looked like they were wearing uniforms standing up in Tom Lee Park looking and pointing in my direction. I continued paddling toward them, trying to appear nonchalant, as though I weren't doing anything I hadn't done hundreds of times in the past (that was the case, after all).
When I was close enough to the bank, one of the men yelled, "You good?" I looked up and said, "Pardon?" "Are you okay?" he yelled back. I nodded and gave him thumbs up. He waved back and spoke into his walkie talkie, and that seemed to be the end of it.
To be clear, I am genuinely grateful to these rescue personnel for responding to this call, and I am sorry it turned out to be a false alarm for them. The thing that gets under my skin whenever this happens is the absurdity of somebody thinking I was in deep distress. I mean, paddling is something I have spent almost my entire life trying to be good at; how could somebody think I look so hapless out there that dialing 911 is the appropriate course of action? If I am ever truly in distress, waving my arms over my head and screaming help! help! help! is what I will be doing. I was doing no such thing today.
Sure, a majority of Memphians are utterly unfamiliar with my sport, and they think the Mississippi River is such a dangerous, nasty, horrible place that nobody in his right mind would go out there at all, let alone into the waves behind a big barge rig. But still... does it really not look like I at least sort of know what I'm doing?
Oh well. I paddled back up into the harbor and continued toward the dock. I half expected some EMS or law enforcement official to call me over to the bank for a scolding, but none did. In general I'd say that the post-vacation phase of my summer is off to a good start, and I came home feeling pretty good about that.
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