Paddling, pedaling, and managing these uneasy feelings

I rode my bike both Monday morning and yesterday morning.  One thing about bike riding is that it creates its own wind chill.  It's why I don't like to ride in the wintertime, but in very hot periods like we're having right now, it makes riding not so bad at all.  Staying out of direct sunlight helps too, and the Greater Memphis Greenline, where I do most of my riding, is shaded along almost all of its length.  It's a "rails to trails" project, and thick stands of trees were allowed to grow over the decades that it was a railroad.

I normally paddle on Tuesday, but this week I took Tuesday off from paddling.  The main reason was that my mother needed me to drive her to and from an appointment with her eye doctor, but I was also just tired and feeling that I needed a break.  It actually was kind of nice just to sit in the doctor's office waiting room and read a book and not think about training or any other worries for a while.

I made it back to the riverfront this morning and paddled the surfski for an hour.  I checked the Mississippi and found it deserted, so I stayed in the harbor and did a few up-tempo pieces.

The news has not been good over on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  I've been seeing and hearing the word "historic" used to describe the Dragon Bravo fire, which has grown to over 105,000 acres as of this writing.  The fire has dropped to as low as 4% contained, because as the fire has spread the contained portion represents a smaller portion of the overall acreage.  (By this afternoon, that figure had improved to 9% contained.)  The weather has continued to be a firefighter's nightmare: apparently the humidity has been at record lows in the last couple of weeks.  Monsoon rains are supposed to be common at this time of year, but lately such events have been nonexistent.  Just today I read that "fuel moisture content is below that of kiln-dried lumber."  I'm a woodworker and I know very well what that means.

The fire is spreading primarily northward.  One reason for hope is that in some places it's likely to run out of fuel, either because of burn scars from recent years or because of barren, non-wooded land.  It seems fairly unlikely that the fire will get any closer to Lee's Ferry, the starting point of my trip.  Still, I'm worried about smoke.  Even if firefighters were to get the thing fully contained right now, it would take a while for the fire to burn out and smoke production to subside.

Meanwhile, as usual, there's absolutely nothing I can do.  I'm just continuing along with my preparation as if the trip is going to go off without a hitch in just under four weeks.

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Monday photo feature

A Mr. John Dillon posted this photo to the Grand Canyon Private Boaters group page on Face Book.  It was taken last Wednesday, July 23, on the Colorado River some 65 miles downstream from Lee's Ferry.

What would I do if I didn't have something to worry about in the weeks leading up to a major wilderness trip?  Right now the Dragon Bravo fire is giving me plenty.  Burning up on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, the fire has availed itself of extremely dry, windy conditions to swell to over 50,000 acres by this morning.  Firefighters were reporting that the fire was 26% contained for much of the last week, but this morning it's been knocked back to just 13% contained.  Sigh.  I sure hope the weather becomes more cooperative in the coming days.

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Paddling a lot and getting tired

We've had perhaps a little bit of a break in the weather this weekend.  It's still plenty hot, but the intensity of the heat hasn't been quite as terrible as it was during the last week.  The forecast contains some hope for more relief by the end of this coming week.

Yesterday I paddled the surfski from the dock to the mouth of the harbor, and found no barge traffic out on the Mississippi.  So I returned to the dock and got in the whitewater boat.  I did forward stroke drills, backstroke drills, spin drills, Eskimo rolls... all kinds of stuff.  Then I put my boats away and washed up under the hose.  In the summertime, the moment when I've finished paddling and taken a cool hose bath is often the best I feel all day.

This morning I paddled the ski back to the harbor's mouth, and found an upstream-moving barge rig positioned so that I would have to gain on it a little to have any hope of surfing its best waves.  I paddled up along the Tennessee bank until I reached the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and then ferried over to the far half of the river that the towboat was navigating.  By the time I got over there I had missed out on the best waves, and I was tired from all the hard paddling I'd done just to get to that point.  Actually, I think I might have been feeling tired even before I got in the boat.  Some days that's just how it is.

In other news, out on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon the Dragon Bravo fire seems to be raging.  It sounds like the weather this past week could not have been worse for fighting a fire.  The fire's acreage has quadrupled over the last week.  My launch date is four weeks from Wednesday... two weeks ago I was hoping six weeks would be enough time for the fire to get under control; a week ago I was hoping five weeks would be enough; and now I'm hoping four weeks will be enough.

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No shortage of challenges as summer gets nasty

I was feeling some improvement in my back as this new week got underway.  By today the discomfort still wasn't gone--there's still some general soreness in the area--but at least it's not bothering me while I'm trying to sleep like it was last weekend.  So that's a reason to feel upbeat.

Another reason is that firefighters seem to be making some progress on the Dragon Bravo and White Sage fires north of the Grand Canyon: as of this writing the former fire is 26% contained, the latter 75% contained.  I've noticed, however, that the reported acreage of the Dragon Bravo fire is now more than double what it was a day or two ago.  Not being any kind of an expert on wildfires, I don't really know what the significance of that is.

Here in Memphis and the Mid South, meanwhile, the heat has risen to another level.  I understand much of the Midwest and Southeast are under one of those "heat domes."  For several mornings in a row now, it's been 80 degrees Fahrenheit or warmer when I got out of bed at six o'clock, so it's just not cooling down very much overnight.

Back before there was such a thing as air conditioning, rich people Memphis simply left town for the summer.  They repaired to vacation homes in places like Hardy, Arkansas, which sits on the clear, cool, spring-fed Spring River.  It was no different from wealthy New Yorkers who spent summers in the Hamptons or well-to-do Atlantans who went up the mountain to Highlands, North Carolina.

People who couldn't afford to do that simply gutted it out in the hot city, and I would wager that very little "work" got done during those periods.  I can imagine the whole population sitting on porches, fanning themselves and counting the minutes until darkness when they could nod off to sleep and repeat the process the next day.

Outdoor exercise is definitely something I try to get done before lunchtime each day.  Even with the 21st-century central air conditioning system in my home, I'm finding it hard to get much done once the afternoon heat has settled in.  My woodworking shop is not air-conditioned, but it's underneath my cooled living space, and it's sandwiched between the two adjacent buildings, so it's well insulated and usually not so bad in the summertime.  However, right now the oppressive heat outside is bringing the afternoon temperature in my shop up close to the limit of what I can tolerate for any substantial woodworking activity.

But my big wilderness adventure is coming right up, so I continue working to steel my body appropriately.  I did bike rides Monday and yesterday.  I don't know if bike riding is the absolute best conditioning activity for the Grand Canyon; certainly, running or even hiking (walking) would be more specific prep for what I'm likely to be doing out there.  But as I noted a while back, my knees, especially the left one, are feeling a little funny these days.  I'm still doing some exercises to bring my hamstrings into equilibrium with the opposing quad muscles.

As for paddling, I'm still splitting time between the surfski and the whitewater boat.  The whitewater boat is better for this oppressive heat, as my stroke drill sessions are shorter than my surfski sessions and I can do Eskimo rolls to stay cool.  But let's face it: in the harbor and on the Mississippi River, the surfski is a lot more fun to paddle, especially when there are some barge wakes to surf out on the Mississippi.

I can't see the Mississippi from my dock at the marina, and so the only way to find out whether any good surfing opportunities exist out there is to paddle the 2000 meters or so down to the harbor's mouth and take a look.  And covering 2000 meters is definitely a job for the ski, not the whitewater boat.  On Tuesday I went down there and satisfied myself with some drills in the whitewater boat near the marina; but after I had finished, while exiting the marina's neighborhood in my car, I saw a couple of barge rigs generating some absolutely beautiful waves.  Their location was such that they probably would have been nicely accessible to me during the time I would have been paddling the ski out from the harbor's mouth.  Curses, I grumbled.

So this morning I decided to paddle the surfski down to the mouth of the harbor to see what the barge traffic was like.  If there were good surfing opportunities, I would avail myself, and if there weren't, I would return to the dock and hop in the whitewater boat.

Down to the harbor's mouth I went, and as luck would have it... the Mississippi was deserted.  So back to the dock it was.  My thought was to do a half hour in the ski and a half hour in the whitewater boat, and because my trip down to the mouth had been a slow warmup, I had to do the trip back at a much stronger tempo to keep the ski time at a half hour.  It made me good and hot and ready to do some rolls in the other boat.

I'll probably follow a similar plan for future sessions on the water.  It's a little bit of a hassle because I have to carry gear for two different boats--two paddles and a sprayskirt, along with my PFD.  But if I do end up paddling both boats, it's a good well-rounded workout with a variety of muscle groups engaged.  And if I get to do some surfing, it's physically intense and fun at the same time.

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Monday photo feature

The year is 2019, and I'm sprinting for all I'm worth in the closing meters of the Gorge Downwind Championships on the Columbia River at Hood River, Oregon.  Photo by Sandy Yonley.

The 2025 edition of this race took place this past week.  It's been three years now since my last trip out there; maybe I should go back next year or the next.  We'll see.  Certainly, seeing the videos of the awesome downwind conditions that people were posting on social media last week got my envious juices flowing.  Then again, the place I'm going to five weeks from now is pretty awesome in its own right.

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Fiery heat out West, humid heat here at home

Here we are about five weeks out from my departure for Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.  The excitement is growing, but it's tempered by the wildfire situation out there.  About a week ago strong winds fanned the Dragon Bravo fire, which had started by lightning on the North Rim, beyond the control of firefighting crews.  It destroyed the historic lodge on the North Rim, along with park personnel housing and dozens of other structures.  The North Rim village where the lodge stood is now closed for the rest of the year, and trails from the North Rim to the canyon floor are closed until further notice.  According to an app I'm using to check the conditions out there, the fire covers some 12,000 acres and is currently 2% contained.

Farther north there's a much bigger fire burning: the White Sage fire covers over 58,000 acres.  Over the last few days I've watched this fire go from 0% contained to 31% contained.  Apparently some monsoon rains have helped the firefighters' efforts.  However, today's forecast shows much drier weather moving in.

People I've spoken to with our outfitter in Flagstaff seem optimistic that everything will be fine by our launch day on August 27.  But there's no guarantee of that... those folks aren't wildfire experts or meteorologists.  One of my biggest concerns is the smoke: spending sixteen days in a smoky haze is definitely not the Grand Canyon experience I've been hoping for, and of course the last thing I want to do is lead a group of people into conditions that could be harmful to their health.

All I can do is sit here and hope that five weeks will be enough time for the events out there to run their course.  And maybe they will.  Maybe it'll turn out I'm worrying over nothing.  But I'm powerless to do anything, and that's frustrating.

Here at home I'm just doing the usual, getting in my conditioning sessions and trying to take care of my health.  During the past week I rode my bike a couple of times and paddled my whitewater boat in the harbor a couple of times.  This weekend I paddled the surfski out on a quiet, flat Mississippi River.  The only barge traffic I saw was a northbound rig this morning, and it was too far upriver for me to catch up for some wake surfing.

I think the weather this weekend has been the worst of the summer so far.  While the air temperature hasn't been higher than maybe 95 degrees Fahrenheit, the humidity has been off the charts, making it very unpleasant outside.  On top of that, I started feeling some intense lower back soreness on Friday, and it's feeling only marginally better today.  It's a condition I've had many times before, and I have no doubt it'll be better in another couple of days.  But that and the weather have me feeling pretty beaten down right now.

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Monday photo feature

Davey Hearn of Bethesda, Maryland, has some flatwater fun in his whitewater slalom canoe (C1).  The photo is a screen grab from a stroke drills video put out by the U.S. slalom federation back in the 1990s.  A few years ago I made a digital copy from my old VHS cassette, and you can now watch it here.  The video includes drills for both kayak (K1) and C1.  As you can see, the picture quality isn't the greatest: the boat Davey is paddling is actually bright yellow, believe it or not.

The drills in this video are what I'm doing when I paddle my whitewater boat in the harbor these days.  Lacking any real whitewater here in the Mid South, I think these drills are the best way to get my body used to all the many movements I'll have to pull off when I do get on some whitewater, as I will in the Grand Canyon later this summer.

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Another week of Canyon conditioning

My digestive organs have been feeling a bit better the last two or three days.  I sure hope that will continue.  Like I said, I've had a couple of hemorrhoidal episodes so far this calendar year.

And I'm pleased to report that the situation with my knee might have improved, too.  For the last couple of weeks, I've been doing some rubber band exercises to strengthen my hamstring muscles.  As I noted a while back, I've been working the quad muscles hard with lots of Hindu squats and bike riding, but I hadn't been doing much for the hamstrings, leading me to infer that the knee discomfort might have been the result of some muscle imbalance.

Anyway... things could certainly be worse on the injury front.  I mean, if I have to take crutches with me to get through the Grand Canyon, I'll do that, but I'd sure rather go in there with my whole body feeling solid and healthy.

And that's my entire goal for this summer's training routine: to arrive at the Canyon hale and hardy, fit to handle any challenge that wilderness environment can throw at me.  Physically and mentally tough, just like in days of old.

I did two bike rides this past week, on Monday and Wednesday.  On Tuesday I did a stroke drill session in the whitewater boat, staying close to the marina in the harbor.  It was not a good day to be out on the river in the surfski, as a heavy thunderstorm moved through while I paddled.  I paddled in a slip under the marina's roof during the worst of the lightning.

I paddled the surfski Thursday, yesterday, and today.  There was very little barge traffic making waves for my surfing pleasure out on the Mississippi, so it was mostly steady paddling.  It's been good and hot each day, ideal for practicing some remounts in the harbor on my way back to the dock.

My plan is to be driving out West six weeks from now.  Launch Day for the Grand Canyon is six weeks from this Wednesday.  Until then I'll just keep on doing my thing.

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Monday photo feature

I've never been to Camp Stewart, and I can't say that I know much about the place.  But a guy I went to college with in the late 1980s was a counselor there for a couple of summers, and he gave me a staff shirt that I still have today.  And so when I heard of the catastrophic flooding that occurred this past weekend in towns like Hunt, Texas, that sit along the Guadalupe River, I felt at least a casual familiarity with the area.

At this time I have no idea how the Camp Stewart property, campers, or staff fared in the flood.  Most of the news coverage has focused on the tragedy experienced by nearby Camp Mystic for girls: the latest I've heard is that they lost 27 campers and counselors.  At the very least, I expect Camp Stewart's 2025 season has been upended entirely.

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Summer bares its teeth in various ways

The Gulf moisture has returned, and it surely feels as though another classic Mid South summer is upon us.  So far the conditions aren't the most insufferable I've ever experienced, but it wouldn't take but a small upward tweak to produce something much more oppressive.  I guess we have an advantage around here in that we're used to dealing with high heat and humidity; most homes and businesses here are equipped with air conditioning, for instance.  What was so bad about that heat wave that hit much of the nation a couple of weeks ago is that its affected area included the upper Midwest, where many people don't have AC.  The weather here in Memphis today would be tough indeed if I couldn't retreat into my air-conditioned home.

Meanwhile, parts of the country are dealing with another kind of meteorological ordeal: too much rain.  I made a very cursory visit to the Texas hill country back in the late 1980s, but otherwise have no experience with the area.  Nevertheless, I feel a bit of a connection to the region that has been devastated by flooding this weekend: when I was doing a lot of whitewater slalom racing in the 1990s, I knew a group of Texans who spent a lot of time training on the Guadalupe River, the drainage that has seen a lot of the worst flooding; and as summer camp alumnus myself, I feel empathy for those hill country camps that have lost campers and staff.  Camp for me was nothing if not a safe haven, and the idea of a natural disaster laying waste to the property in the middle of the night while camp is in session is hard for me to comprehend.

As of this writing I haven't heard the latest news, but another part of the country, on the coast of the Carolinas, is also dealing with heavy rainfall from Tropical Storm Chantal.

All I can say is that things aren't so bad here where I live, and for me life goes on as normal.  Yesterday I paddled the surfski and found some decent surfing out on the Mississippi.  When I reached the mouth of the harbor a small barge rig was moving upriver, and I ferried out to catch a few brief rides on the modest waves it was producing.  At the same time there was a much larger rig coming downstream, and when it reached my location I fell in behind it.  The waves were full of squirrelly water--typical of southbound rigs--and they were also wandering left and right at odd angles as the towboat pilot made the giant slalom move defined by the Hernando DeSoto Bridge upstream of us and the Harahan and Frisco and Memphis-Arkansas Bridges down below.  But they gave me some pretty exciting rides.  Each time I caught one angling toward the left bank, say, I looked for one angling back the other way that I could link onto.

This morning I opted to paddle the whitewater boat and do some drills within sight of the marina.  The sun was hot and bright, and I did a lot of my work in the shade beneath the A.W. Willis Avenue bridge.  I did all kinds of forward stroke drills, backpaddling drills, spin drills, blade-control drills, and Eskimo rolls.

Both paddling sessions this weekend made me good and wet, and that's something I welcome at this time of year.  I finished them both with a hose bath on the dock, and I'll take that over some chi-chi spa every time.

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High anxiety

The digestive situation has been up and down since my last post.  I continue to have that unsettled feeling down in my tummy.  The good news is that it hasn't stopped me at all from doing the physical activities I'm wanting to do these days.  I've been paddling my boat and doing some bike riding, and haven't skipped anything because of stomach distress.  While I really hope to see some resolution of this problem before I launch into the Grand Canyon, I'm hopeful that even if I don't, it won't be something that makes me absolutely miserable on the trip.

I think stress is likely to blame for these woes.  With less than eight weeks to go before I Launch Day, I've had a lot of anxiety about whether I'll truly be ready.  I do in fact think I will be, but being responsible for having everything ready for fifteen other people as well as myself is weighing on me.  It's not entirely rational: I think I've put together a strong group with a number of people whose experience makes up for my inexperience in certain areas.  Just last week I was writing here about good I was feeling about things... as I said then, the best thing I can do is trust my companions to do their thing, and give them support when they need it.  But sitting here at home without any of them around, I'm having hard time relaxing in the belief that everything will go smoothly, and letting it go.  

Again, the physical conditioning seems to be the least of my worries.  I did some good bike riding on Monday and yesterday.  Tuesday I paddled the whitewater boat in the harbor, doing lots of the stroke drills that I used to do in my slalom racing days.  When I paddle the surfski I usually paddle for 60 to 90 minutes, but when doing stroke drills in the whitewater boat, I've found that 40 minutes or so is plenty.  I think a big reason for that is the high degree of concentration I put into those drills: it's more mentally taxing than just forward paddling and taking in the scenery like I do in the ski.  In any case, I had an enjoyable time down there on Tuesday: those sessions remind me of the hours I spent 40 years ago playing around on the lake at camp, in whatever boats I had access to there.  That was a huge part of my early paddling education.  It was sunny and hot on Tuesday, but my routine included some Eskimo rolls, and that helped me stay cool.  And of course I took a hose bath on the dock afterward.

I was in the surfski this morning, and when I reached the mouth of the harbor I found not one but two big barge rigs coming up the Mississippi from below the old bridges.  I found lots of big workable waves, especially once I was behind the second rig.  I didn't really get any of those sweet extended rides that every surfski paddler dreams of, but I got a lot of brief ones, many of which I was able to carry onto other waves--similar to "linking runs" in a downwind situation.  The most satisfying thing was how well my body responded to the near-constant sprinting I was doing.  While there were moments when I was too gassed to keep paddling, each time I recovered quickly and resumed my attack.  That's always been a sign that I'm in pretty good shape, and I've been feeling good about that the rest of the day.  The session I had this morning may have been just what I needed.

It continues to be hot today, but making it more bearable is that the breeze is from the north, meaning the humidity is down.  I expect in another couple of days we'll be back to the usual south wind that carries moist air up from the Gulf of Mexico.

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