Monday photo feature

The deer population seems to be thriving in the wooded bottoms of the Wolf River over on the east side of Memphis.  I've been seeing lots of them while riding my bike through that area on the Greater Memphis Greenline and the Wolf River Greenway this year.  This past Friday I shot this photo of this guy snacking on leaves on the river-left bank of the Wolf.  I was looking down at him from up on the trestle by which the Greenline crosses the river.

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Persistent pain

I'm becoming increasingly concerned about the pain in my right biceps muscle.  I was hoping I'd just strained it a little and it would improve over time, but in the last couple of weeks it seems to have gotten worse, not better.  It's been bothering me in every aspect of my non-athletic life; several times a day I make some seemingly harmless movement that causes pain to shoot through the ailing area.  And while I don't think it's directly involved in my paddle strokes, it does bother me while I paddle, and it's making me scale back my time in the boat for now.

Meanwhile, there's still my shingles rash, which is fading away ever so slowly... eeeeeever sooooooo sloooooowly.  These viral maladies do funny things sometimes, and this one seems to want to hang around.  There's still some itching, but I don't think it's nearly as bad as it was a week ago.

We enjoyed some pleasant weather here for most of the last week, and I took advantage of that with a couple of bike rides plus some paddling on Monday, Thursday, and yesterday.  Because of the arm injury I'm keeping my paddling sessions around 40 minutes or so and just working on stroke mechanics in the harbor.

Today we're getting a little Arctic blast: we'll be lucky if the temperature reaches 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  It's supposed to drop into the 20s overnight and be only around 40 degrees tomorrow.  So I might just get some rest for a couple of days, aside from some light gym work.

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Monday photo feature

Kaylin Owens of Cosby, Tennessee, cruises down the Colorado River during our last full day in the Grand Canyon.  This would have been September 10, or Day 15 of our journey.

The last few days of the trip were probably the hottest, and we dealt with a pesky headwind as well.  I remember my body feeling stressed and drained, and all I wanted was to get out of there and back to civilization in all its air-conditioned glory.

But the chilly weather of this past weekend has made me look back on those days with rosier-tinted vision.  When I look at photos like this one now, it's easy to forget the discomforts of multiple days in the wilderness and imagine an idyllic world of whitewater frolic in a sun-drenched canyon paradise.  It's funny how that works.

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I'm not ready to let go of summer

Some chilly weather has arrived, and I've struggled to make the adjustment.  We had a pretty hot summer here in the Mid South, and then I experienced some hot days out there in the Grand Canyon.  After that I came home to find some unseasonably warm temperatures in late September and most of October.  So, this weather we're having now, even though it's not really that cold, has felt like a shock.  It was windy and rainy in the middle of this past week, and that didn't make things any easier.

The good news is that winter isn't here yet; for much of this coming week, the forecast is showing Fahrenheit highs in the high 60s and low 70s.  But this weekend it's awfully chilly for this time of year: today's high is expected to be in the low 50s.

So, I've been rather grateful to have some non-athletic obligations keeping me indoors for much of this weekend.  All I've managed for this past week is some paddling on Monday and Thursday and a bike ride Friday afternoon.  With better weather expected in the coming days, I'll see if I can't ramp up a new fitness routine and get myself on a solid path toward the South Africa trip in late January.

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