I've spent my last few days at home following my usual canyon conditioning program, with some paddling and some bike riding. I've been doing it in some pretty hot weather, too. It gets quite hot on the floor of the Grand Canyon, but I hope the lower humidity will make it seem like a relief after the sweltering heat we've had here in the Mid South this summer.
I rode my bike Monday morning. I did the ride I often do, out the Greater Memphis Greenline to Shelby Farms, around the lake, and back. It takes me around 95 minutes, usually.
On Tuesday I spent 40 minutes in the whitewater boat in the harbor. There's no better remedy for summer heat than some Eskimo rolls.
A front moved through the area Tuesday evening, bringing some strong gusty winds. They didn't last more than 15 or 20 minutes, but they blew some tree branches that were encroaching on the power lines that serve my house, and some lines got squeezed together and blew out the transformer. So I spent Tuesday night and yesterday morning with no electricity. I'm sure I've had worse nights of sleep, but I lay awake for extended periods feeling sweaty and uncomfortable, not to mention frustrated at how long it was taking the power company to show up and make repairs. I got maybe five hours of sleep, all told.
There were some 160 outages citywide, affecting several thousand customers. The utility company finally got to my property by mid-morning yesterday, and had the electricity back on by lunchtime. I felt a little groggy from the lackluster sleep, but I got out for an afternoon bike ride, happy that I had an air-conditioned home waiting for me when I was finished.
This morning I had my last paddling session before I hit the road. I got in the surfski and would have been happy just paddling to the mouth of the harbor and back. But when I reached the mouth I saw an upstream-moving barge rig well positioned for me to get to it quickly, so I went out for some surfing. The waves were good, but not great; definitely nothing like the awesome conditions of last Saturday. But I was able to do some interesting stuff for a short while. Then I returned to the harbor, paddled back to the dock, and took both the ski and the whitewater boat up to the truck to bring home. It could be a good month before I get back to the dock on the Memphis riverfront.
There's lots of packing to do, and I hope I can remember to include everything I'll need during sixteen days in the wilderness.
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