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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Monday photo feature

You just never know what you might find when you go down to your local river.

Last Tuesday morning, when I took my whitewater boat to the Walnut Grove access on the Wolf River, I was getting ready to take the boat off the car when I looked down and saw the pictured bill on the ground at my feet.  I felt a rush of excitement at the thought of being a hundred dollars richer, but that feeling quickly faded away as soon as I took a closer look.

I wonder how a movie-prop hundred-dollar bill ended up on the ground down by the Wolf.  It's very crisp and clean and it was sitting on top of the sandy soil, so it couldn't have been there very long.  Here in Memphis we do have a rather vibrant community of filmmakers, so it's not farfetched to think that maybe a movie scene was being shot there a few hours before I arrived.  The parking area for the Walnut Grove access is underneath the Walnut Grove Road bridge, which sports its share of spray-painted graffiti.  With the right framing, lighting, and camera angle, it could easily be made to look like a gritty inner-city setting where a drug deal or similar shady cash transaction might take place.

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The darnedest thing, this human body

In most respects I've been feeling pretty good as spring gives way to summer.  One exception is the left knee discomfort I mentioned in my last post.  Another is a couple of flare-ups of my hemorrhoids, and that's got me somewhat concerned, seeing as how that's one problem I really do not want to have to deal with during a sixteen-day Grand Canyon expedition.

I suspect most people in our society first become aware of hemorrhoids the same way I did: by seeing those TV ads for Preparation H.  For the first half of my life I didn't really know what hemorrhoids were.  But in my late 30s I started having that rectal bleeding and ran to my doctor's office in a panic, only to be told it was a relatively non-serious thing.  Since then that area has flared up once in a while, but I never had any pain there.  I usually mention it to my doctor during my annual physical, and she always shrugs it off as part of the normal life cycle.  But sometime last year I had a much more irritating episode that prompted me to make my first-ever Preparation H purchase.  And then this year I've had a couple of episodes that, while less painful, involved a lot of discomfort not just at the relevant anal spot but deeper inside as well--in my stomach or my colon or my intestines or whatever.  That's where I am as of this writing, with a generally unsettled feeling throughout my digestive infrastructure.

I hope you can forgive me if I'm venturing into TMI territory here, but in the Grand Canyon one's bodily functions are a very serious matter.  All river-running parties are required to pack out their human waste, and that means bringing along portable toilets ("groovers") and setting them up at camp.  As long as you're nice and regular, you can just move your bowels during the hours that the groovers are available, and be on your merry way.  But at the moment I'm anything but regular.

To pre-empt those readers who are poised to hit me up with a lecture: I am indeed mindful of consuming enough fiber in my diet.  Various fruits, beans, green peas, lentils, almonds, broccoli, berries... I make a point of incorporating such things into my meals.  I get some roughage, too: I always eat some celery with lunch and some salad greens with supper.

Anyway... I hope this episode will run its course in the next several days.  According to the Wikipedia page on hemorrhoids, my symptoms are fairly typical, and they usually are gone in several days, and I'm somewhat comforted by that.  If I don't get some relief, maybe I'll have to get in to see my doctor and see if there's anything I can do to stave off such an ordeal in the remote wilderness.  Launch Day is now less than two months away.

Meanwhile, at least I haven't missed any training activities.  I actually had a really nice session in the surfski down on the riverfront yesterday.  After several weeks of very little surfing action, yesterday there was a big barge rig coming upriver generating some big lovely waves.  It took me several tries to get the boat up to speed, but then I got a really sweet ride that lasted a good 30 seconds.  I would guess that relative to the movement of the current I was moving at least 25 kilometers per hour; I didn't have my G.P.S. device turned on, and if I had it would have registered a much slower speed because I was moving against the Mississippi's flow.  Regardless, it was fun.  I got a couple of more decent rides in; sadly, the waves petered out pretty fast as the towboat pulled father into the distance upstream.

I paddled back out to the Mississippi this morning and found no upstream-moving barge traffic.  I headed upriver and eventually encountered a rig coming downstream.  Downstream-moving barges are much less reliable for making good surfing waves, and even when they do make them, those waves tend to contain more swirly water and they tend to wander from side to side: you'll get on a good wave, and it'll quickly disappear, and the train of good waves will have moved way off to the left or to the right.  That's how it was behind this rig I encountered today.  But I got a couple of semi-decent rides to highlight my hour-long steady paddle.

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Expedition prep

Planning for the Grand Canyon trip inches along each day.  There are so many details: renting the raft fleet that we need, figuring out what camping gear and clothing and shoes I should have along, ordering the food, collecting money from the other fifteen people in my party... it's a lot.

I'm happy to say that I feel pretty good about the group I've assembled.  I've tried to recruit people whose experience fills the holes in my own.  I've never done the Grand Canyon before, but I've got three people in the group who have.  While I've done several one-night overnight trips on the Mississippi River near Memphis, I've never done a true multi-day wilderness trip, but I've got at least seven people coming along who are veterans of such expeditions.  I've never rowed a big oar-rigged raft before, but seven people in my group have, and they know how to load the rafts with gear for transport through big whitewater.

And so, my job boils down to organization, communication, and delegation of duties.

I've been put in leadership positions at various times in my life.  I guess the earliest time was as a summer camp counselor: for a few summers I was in charge of cabins full of kids, and then I ran the canoeing program.  Then I taught school for a few years and did my best to run a classroom, sometimes successfully and sometimes not so much.

Since leaving teaching I've been working on my own, and most of the time I've had nobody but myself to be responsible for.  After quite a few years of not being looked to for the leadership of something, I wondered if I still had such qualities in me.  So far, it seems that I can still manage it, and I'm even sort of enjoying it despite the occasional overwhelmed feelings.  Certainly, the basics haven't changed: make sure people's roles are clearly defined, and then get out of the way while they do their jobs.  Of course, the unpleasant part of being a leader is when somebody doesn't do his job, and you have to confront that person.  I'm doing everything I can think of to prevent such a scenario, mostly by cultivating a relationship with each individual to the extent I can by phone and e-mail, and by weekly e-mail updates to the group in which I share my expectations in positive ways.

What I know I can control is my own physical readiness for the expedition, and the sharpness of my skills.

On Tuesday I went back to the Wolf River, likely for the last time this summer.  The wet spring we've had has brought the Wolf up to very nice levels for paddling, but unless we get some more of that significant rain--and that looks unlikely according to the current forecast--the river will drop out fast.  During dry periods the Wolf, which for most of its length in this county has been channelized to make way for road construction, gets so shallow that you can't take a stroke without hitting the bottom.

On Monday I'd ridden my bike over the Wolf on my way out to Shelby Farms, and I knew it still had a decent flow.  Nevertheless, when I got to the Walnut Grove boat ramp Tuesday morning, I could see that the water level had dropped a good five vertical feet.  Still, it had the feel of a lovely tree-shaded, sun-dappled babbling brook as I worked to get reacquainted with my whitewater boat on moving water.  I attained my way upstream, doing some ferries along the way, and coming back downstream I did some eddy turns and back-ferries and other swiftwater moves.  Once the Wolf drops out I'll take the whitewater boat down to the harbor and do some more serious sets of stroke drills, but so far I've allowed myself to stick to more relaxed stuff on the "whitewater lite" that the Wolf offers.

That discomfort in my left knee has had its ups and downs since I first mentioned it eleven days ago.  For a while I thought it had run its course, but in the last several days I've been feeling it again.  I rode my bike again yesterday, and for the first time it bothered me some during that activity.  It warmed up and felt better as the ride went on, but by late afternoon yesterday I was feeling a pretty good twinge in that area.  I'm thinking I should look for some "prehab" exercises that might stop it from developing into a full-blown injury.  Besides riding the bike I've been doing a lot of Hindu squats in recent weeks, and those things work my quadriceps muscles well.  Now I'm wondering if some exercises that work the opposing muscles (hamstrings) will help stabilize my knee.  I'm still holding off on running, and that's actually no big sacrifice, seeing as how I don't especially enjoy running.  But knowing there's something I can't do always gnaws at me.  Meanwhile, it's very important to me that I be able to hike without pain in the Grand Canyon.

When I got up this morning it was already 80 degrees Fahrenheit outside.  The Mid South is definitely included in the heat wave that's been in the national news all week.  I've been trying to do my outdoor exercise in the AM so that I can stay in during the hottest part of the day.  Today I was back in the surfski on the riverfront downtown, and after an hour of paddling I took a hose bath on the dock.  That's a big advantage of that training site over the Wolf, which has no such amenity.

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Monday photo feature

Whitewater paddling had a surge in popularity in the U.S. back in the early 1970s.  Reasons included the release of the film Deliverance in 1971; the Olympic debut of whitewater slalom in 1972, where Maryland native Jamie McEwan delighted U.S. audiences with an unexpected bronze medal in the men's single canoe class; and the wilderness paddling feats of Idahoan Walt Blackadar, who in 1971 made a daring solo first descent of Turnback Canyon of the Alsek River in British Columbia.

In 1973, ABC Television decided to get in on the act by featuring McEwan and Blackadar on a trip down the Colorado River in Grand Canyon for its "American Sportsman" program.  Pictured above is McEwan as he approaches a rapid.  You can watch the episode, along with footage of McEwan's bronze-medal-winning Olympic run, here.

Meanwhile, my own Grand Canyon launch date is just over two months away.

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Summer is here, and it hurts to look

One of the big stories from this past week is that I got in the whitewater boat for the first time since last fall.  In last weekend's post I mentioned that heavy rain had brought the Wolf River up to stout levels, and though it dropped a little bit in the first half of this past week, on Thursday morning we had one of the more intense thunderstorms I can ever remember, with at least an inch of rain falling in the space of an hour or 90 minutes.  Knowing that the Wolf would have plenty of water, I loaded up the whitewater boat and drove out to the Walnut Grove Road access.  The sun was out by the time I was in the boat, and I spent a nice hour messing around in the swift Class I water and getting used to something heavier and slower but more suitable for whitewater than my surfski.

Our planet reached its summer solstice on Friday, and so summer has now begun in the astronomical sense.  And after a nice long run of pleasant springlike temperatures, hot weather has arrived to go along with it.  Daytime temperatures are rising into the mid 90s Fahrenheit, with heat indices in the triple digits.

When paddling down on the riverfront, I'm fully exposed to the sun.  Whatever breeze there is on hot summer days usually comes from the south, bringing that warm humid air from the Gulf of Mexico.  When I'm paddling southward the breeze gives me a bit of relief, but when I head north, such as from the mouth of the harbor back to the dock, the heat can be most oppressive, and sometimes the stinging in my eyes is unbearable without a breeze to evaporate the sweat from my face.

That was definitely the case yesterday.  Once I was out of the harbor and paddling up the Mississippi, the stinging in my eyes got so bad that numerous times I had to stop paddling and use my hat to mop my face.  I couldn't seem to get rid of the discomfort, even once I was paddling back downstream into the wind.  Back in the harbor I did some remount practice to cool off and rinse the sweat off my entire head.  Once I was back on the dock I took my first hose bath of 2025, and I finally rid myself of the stinging.  I didn't stop sweating, though: by the time I'd walked up the ramp to the parking lot my shirt was soaking wet.

This morning I spent another hour in the boat on the Mississippi, and while it was just as hot out there, I didn't get any bad stinging in my eyes until end of the hour, during the last few hundred meters back to the dock.

Hot summers are certainly nothing new in the Mid South.  It's time to take a deep breath and immerse myself for the next couple of months.

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Monday photo feature

Five years ago the deadly Covid-19 virus had the world in its grip and had largely shut down everyday life here in this country.  Thankfully, paddling my boat was still a safe thing to do.  Adam Davis and I often got together on weekends for some paddling on the Mississippi River, where we didn't catch any viruses but caught lots of quality time in beautiful environs.

The Mississippi was at above-average levels for much of that year, giving us plenty of liquid real estate to explore.  The photo above was shot on April 11, when the river registered 33.5 feet on the Memphis gauge.  This is a shot of Adam paddling up through the flooded Greenbelt Park.  We continued upriver almost to the mouth of the Loosahatchie River, then came back downstream by way of the Loosahatchie Chute on the west side of the Loosahatchie Bar (lots of Loosahatchies in there, I know) before returning to the harbor.

I'm not sure it's correct to say that the nation and world have returned to "normal" since 2020, but at least the virus is not quite the threat that it was in the spring and summer of that year.  The one thing that has not changed at all is that I'm still getting in my boat and paddling it on the Memphis riverfront.

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Lots of activity as the summer solstice approaches

For those of you who liked my photo of a Muscovy duck and her ducklings several weeks ago, here's another bit of wildlife on my dock.

The music is performed by Memphis saxophonist/flutist/vocalist Hope Clayburn and her Soul Scrimmage band.  I'd say it's an ideal song for this video, except for the part about the snake being a "cobra" or a "mamba"... we don't have those on the Memphis riverfront.  This guy is just a non-poisonous water snake.

So, what's been going on lately?  Well, I'm getting in the boat about four times a week.  On my lucky days, I paddle to the mouth of the harbor and find a big upstream-moving barge rig generating some big waves out on the Mississippi that I can surf.  When I'm not so lucky, I just paddle steady, usually for an hour, and try to throw in some good surges.  I'm pleased to say that lately I've been feeling really good in the boat.

I want to start paddling my whitewater boat some soon, to get my body used to those movements again before I spend sixteen days paddling it in the Grand Canyon.  Last fall, while I was up at the Gauley River in West Virginia, the pedestal came unglued from inside the boat, and since then the boat had been sitting in my garage with a loose pedestal.  Yesterday I finally went and got a tube of marine-grade cement and glued the pedestal back in place.  I thought about paddling the whitewater boat this morning--we've had a lot of rain lately, and I could have gone out to the swollen Wolf River to practice some ferries and other swiftwater moves--but the glue was still too soft.  This particular brand of cement takes a full seven days to cure completely.  So I was back in the surfski on the Mississippi today.

Meanwhile, I'm also riding my bike some.  I'm trying to get on it at least twice a week.  Usually I follow the Greater Memphis Greenline (a local "rails-to-trails" trail) out to east Memphis, where I either do a loop around Patriot Lake in Shelby Farms or turn down the Wolf River Greenway and ride to Walnut Grove Road and back.

I've thought about incorporating some running, but for the last couple of weeks something has felt a little off in my left knee.  It feels like it could be some patella tendinitis under the kneecap.  So I'm holding off on the running and hoping that discomfort will run its course.

All told, I think my summer fitness program is off to a good start.  So far it's been the easy part of getting ready for the Grand Canyon.  More challenging is the organization of the trip and keeping the fifteen other people in my group on the same page.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Monday photo feature

We've had a lot of rain this weekend, and there's more on the way.  On Saturday I got thoroughly rained on as I paddled my boat on the Memphis riverfront.

I'd always thought that ducks love rain.  But on Saturday I found this Muscovy huddled with her ducklings underneath the kayak racks on the dock.  We had a few minutes where the rain stopped, and the ducks wandered over to the edge of the dock, as if they were considering going for a swim; but then the rain returned and they were right back under cover.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

"Adventure" fitness

Well, another month has drifted on by with no new posts put up here.  If there's anybody left who hasn't given up on me yet, I appreciate you checking in.

It's looking pretty likely that I won't do a single race this year.  There are reasons that I've rehashed here numerous times, but the biggest one is that I just don't feel like getting out and racing these days.  I'm still paddling plenty, but it's more for general exercise, adventure, and enjoyment of the outdoors than to satisfy competitive urges.  And I'm preparing for a pretty significant paddling adventure that embarks just three months from tomorrow: a trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.

And that's not the only big adventure that's on the calendar.  A couple of weeks ago the Mocke brothers announced the dates for their downwind camps on South Africa's Western Cape, and I decided to sign up for one next February.

So I don't lack for motivation to get in the boat.  For the Grand Canyon I'm looking to build general fitness and stamina to withstand sixteen days in a challenging desert canyon environment; after that I'll need to put together a more specific training plan to produce the high-intensity efforts that riding the ocean swells in South Africa demands.

The Grand Canyon preparation includes no small amount of organizational work: communicating with the other fifteen people in the party I've put together; filling out paperwork for the National Park Service; figuring out all the equipment and provisions both I personally and the group as a whole will need; transportation to and from Flagstaff, and accommodations there before and after the river trip; and so on.  As far as the fitness training goes, I'm trying to get in the boat four times a week and also do some strength work and some running and some bike riding on dry land.  So far I've just been paddling the surfski, but when the hot weather arrives I'll break out the whitewater boat that I plan to use in the canyon, and do lots of rolls and other drills.  Hopefully I can work out at least one trip to paddle some whitewater, too.

Again, thanks to those of you who are still checking in to this blog.  Since I'm not doing a lot of formal race training it feels like there's not so much to write about, but I'll try to keep something going here as summer sets in.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Monday photo feature

 

I've always loved old steel truss bridges, and we've got three of them crossing the Mississippi River here at Memphis.  This was my view of them yesterday, when the river was flowing at about 36.9 feet on the Memphis gauge.

There are plans to build a new bridge that will replace the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge as the route of Interstate 55.  Construction is supposed to begin next year.  It needs to be done: the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge predates the Interstate system and has never met the specs for an Interstate highway.  And I expect the new bridge will be an impressive feat of engineering.  But will it have the character of those steel-truss spans of the 19th and early 20th centuries?  It could, but I'll believe it when I see it.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Weekend paddling footage

If I thought long and hard, I could probably come up with something to write about the paddling I've been doing lately.  But it's really so much easier to let some video footage do the talking.

Here's a short video of what I did Saturday and yesterday.  As I've been reporting here, the Mississippi River is flowing at quite a high level right now: on Saturday it was a little over 37 feet on the Memphis gauge, and yesterday it was a little under 37 feet.

I went out Saturday hoping to shoot some footage of the old steel bridges downstream of downtown Memphis.  But with a strong south wind blowing and a lot of barge traffic out on the river, I ended up attempting some downwind paddling instead.  The conditions were decent but not ideal, and I was not in my most stable surfski and was having trouble relaxing and paddling hard for each run.  So I wasn't really styling it out there.  The video doesn't show the most dramatic moment of Saturday's paddle, when I returned to the bank along Tom Lee Park and found several city police officers waiting for me.  Apparently somebody in the park had thought I was in distress and dialed 911.  The cops didn't hassle me; they just wanted to be sure everything was all right.  I told them I was fine and thanked them for checking.  This is not the first time I've had rescue authorities called on me, and it always makes me wonder how somebody can think I look so hapless while doing something I've spent most of my life trying to be good at.  I think the truth lies in our city's cultural ethos: over ninety percent of Memphians seem to think that the Mississippi River is a dangerous place and cannot comprehend that there are a handful of us who might actually have some fun out there.

Oh well... I was back out there yesterday, and while it was breezy again, the river wasn't nearly as rough as it had been Saturday.  So I got to make my trip down to the old bridges.  We've got three of them spanning that part of the river.  The oldest one is the one in the middle, the Frisco Bridge, which opened in 1892.  It carries a single railroad track across the river.  The next-oldest one is the one on the upstream side, the Harahan Bridge (opened 1916).  It's also a railroad bridge, and it also has cantilevered platforms ("wagonways") on either side that once allowed automobiles to cross the river.  Today one of those wagonways has been repurposed as a bike-pedestrian path, the "Big River Crossing."  On the downstream side sits the newest bridge, the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge, opened in 1949.  It's solely for automobiles and currently carries Interstate 55 across the river.

Anyway... hopefully this background information will enhance your enjoyment of the video, as will the soundtrack.  I pretty much always have music in my head, and the songs here, performed by Cookie Monster, Chris Thile, the Chandler Travis Philharmonic, and Burl Ives, are as likely as any to be taking up residence in my brain.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Monday photo feature

 

If you kept up with my sporadic posts this past winter, then you know I had a couple of "dry-land" workout routines.  Yesterday morning I stopped to take a picture of the spot where I liked to do one of those routines.  What we're looking at here is the place where I did some running and some core exercises and some medicine ball drills.

I know exactly what you're thinking.  You're thinking, "Hey... that ain't no dry land!"  And you're right.  Yesterday morning, at which time the Mississippi River was flowing at about 36.2 feet on the Memphis gauge, my workout spot was under water.

At normal levels, the Mississippi is inside its banks on the far side of that row of trees.  On this side of the trees is what we call the Greenbelt Park, a nice grassy strip of land that's ideal for anybody who wants to walk, run, toss a frisbee, fly a kite, walk a dog, have a picnic, or anything else that one goes to a public park to do.  But when the river rises into the mid-30s, all dry-land activities get put on hold.  On Saturday I paddled my boat over this piece of water.

A couple of days ago I saw a social media post moaning that "The park has been devastated!!!!"  I shook my head and thought, "Come on now, knock it off with the drama already."  Nothing has been devastated.  In a week or two or three--depending on what kind of rain falls upstream--the floodwater will recede as it continues its journey to the Gulf of Mexico.  The park will be muddy for a while, and the grass will be brown, but in quick order the ground will dry out and the grass will green back up and the park will be as good as ever.  I've seen it happen dozens of times.  Then, once more, people can work out, or play, or relax, right within view of the majestic Mississippi River.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Water from the sky and from higher ground

Some interesting events have transpired since my last post.  The weather has been the biggest story, as an extremely wet storm system moved across the Southeast and lower Midwest starting around the second of April.  Before the rain arrived in the Memphis area we had some gale-force south wind, and I made sort of a timid effort to do some downwinding out on the Mississippi River in front of Tom Lee Park.  Timid, because the water is still pretty cold at this time of year, and I didn't have my most stable surfski with me.

The first round of heavy rain moved in late on April 2, and while tornadoes visited parts of Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, and rural west Tennessee, my city was spared that kind of disaster.  I stayed indoors and worked on non-athletic projects on April 3 while the rain pounded the roof.

April 4 was actually a pretty nice day, as the rain took a break.  I got down to the river and paddled for an hour that morning.  But by the next day the rain was back with a vengeance, and I was grateful to live in a neighborhood that sits on pretty high ground.  Flash flooding was rampant in lower-lying areas as the torrential rain went on and on.

In all, about twelve inches of rain fell on Memphis in a four-day period.  And that same system of rain moved ever so slowly over the watersheds of the Tennessee, Cumberland, Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri, and upper Mississippi Rivers.  There has been considerable flooding, especially in the state of Kentucky.  Now, a whole lot of water is visiting Memphis in another way: flowing down the lower Mississippi River.  The day I paddled in those strong winds, the river registered around 8.5 feet on the Memphis gauge.  Today, the reading is 36.4 feet.  I'm not sure I've ever seen the river rise nearly 30 feet in less than two weeks.  Normally, a two-foot rise in one day is considered a big deal; last Monday, the river rose 5.6 feet.

Yesterday, when the level was 35.3 feet, I availed myself of the watery abundance to paddle around the Loosahatchie Bar.  This is something I try to get out and do at least once a year, when the water level allows it: you need at least 18 or 19 feet of water on the gauge to enjoy a comfortable paddling depth around the top end of the Bar and down its west side.  Water depth was not a concern at all yesterday.  At one point I paddled over the inundated lower tier of the Greenbelt Park, where I was doing my running workouts just a few weeks ago.  For a paddler like me who starts and finishes at Harbortown Marina, the distance is usually about 12.5 miles.  With so much water yesterday, I was able to cut off some distance at the top end of the Bar and at the south end of Mud Island, and my G.P.S. device measured the distance at 19.45 kilometers, or about 12.1 miles.  My elapsed time yesterday was just over one hour, 56 minutes.  It takes a good solid effort to break two hours.

Paddling around the Bar never fails to leave me utterly exhausted for the rest of the day.  The weather was beautiful yesterday and I spent the afternoon just being lazy.

I returned to the river this morning with the intention of paddling easy for an hour.  There was a somewhat strong wind blowing from the south, and once I got out of the harbor I played around in the bumps out on the river.  Doing brief sprints out there seemed to help me feel better than I'd felt before paddling.

Right now I'm dealing with a little injury, though not one that will keep me out of the boat, fortunately.  Since Thursday I've had pain in the right side of my jaw.  It really hurts when I chew food.  Maybe it's a torn muscle, or a strained ligament... I really don't know.  All I know is that it feels like something of that nature.  I can often feel something popping in the right side of my jaw, as if the "hinge" that joins my upper and lower jaws is broken.  I'm hoping that it will heal itself in the next few days, but if it doesn't I guess I'll have to seek medical attention.  The thing is, I'm not sure if the dentist is the right doctor for this, or somebody else, like an orthopedist, maybe.

Whatever the case, I'll keep on paddling, even if I have to do it with my jaw wired shut.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Monday photo feature

Here's a picture I poached from the social media of my friend Nancy McDonald.  She and her husband Chris have been traveling the Southwest, and she took some pretty stunning photos during their time in Grand Canyon National Park.  Five months from now I'll be paddling my boat somewhere down in the bottom of that canyon.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Physical struggles

I did a bike ride Friday morning.  The rides I've been doing in recent weeks have been a little over an hour, and not terribly intense.  I've always thought of riding a bike as a fairly relaxing activity.  And yet... it seems like I've felt awful the day after a bike ride lately.  That was definitely the case yesterday: I woke up feeling tight and vaguely sore from head to toe.  I did some full-body stretching, and that was an utter ordeal.  I felt about as flexible as a kiln-dried 8/4 persimmon plank.  Then I went down to the river and paddled pretty easy for 60 minutes.  Once I got warmed up I felt reasonably okay in the boat, but had some soreness in my midsection.

I woke up feeling a good bit better this morning, though I was still tired and a bit sluggish.  One development of late is that my weight has been down in the last several months--closer to 150 pounds than 160.  Long-time readers might recall that I had a period of weight decline back in 2021-22, and that seemed to correspond with some low energy and listlessness.  My doctor's office tested things like thyroid and testosterone levels and found nothing conclusive.  Back around 2016-19, when I was racing especially well, my weight was up closer to 160 pounds.

I paddled for another 60 minutes this morning, and felt better than yesterday, but still lacked power and enthusiasm.  A strong south wind was blowing down on the riverfront and I mostly just played around in the chop out on the Mississippi before returning to the harbor where I worked on paddling relaxed in beam conditions.  Once I'd put in my time I went back to the dock and changed into dry clothes and drove home where some of my favorite non-athletic activities awaited.

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Feeling a bit rudderless, but paddling just the same

Well, a month has passed since my last post here.  I'd like to say that I've just been busy, but over the years I've almost always managed to get something posted even when I'm busy.

Since my last post it's sort of felt as though training activities have slowed to a crawl.  That's not entirely true, but some little pitfalls have dampened my mood about it all.  After some injury-free months during which I felt energetic and enthusiastic about the things I was doing, some aches and pains have now set in.  They started with a lot of soreness in my hips and pelvic area, and then I started feeling a lot of tightness in my left hamstring muscle that got really bad about two weeks ago.  I rode my bike for the first time in a long time, and then the next day I was driving my pickup truck, which, unlike my little sedan that I drive most of the time, has a manual transmission.  At one point I had just shifted gears and let up on the clutch with my left foot, and a wave of pain shot through my hamstring that was so bad that I thought I was going to have to pull over and get out and walk it off.  Fortunately the pain eased after a few seconds, and since then the muscle has just kept on feeling tight.

So, yes, my body hasn't been entirely cooperative lately.  And then there's the fact that I never really know anymore what I'm training for.  As I've been noting here for the last several years, the racing scene in my part of the country has almost completely disappeared.  The earliest event I might attend is over in Chattanooga, some five and a half hours away, on May 3; but I haven't yet decided just how badly I want to make that trip.  Like so many events nowadays, this one features two different races--a 6.7-miler and a 10.9-miler--and I've long considered that an utterly dumb idea.  Our sport is simply not big enough to be splitting its participants up into more than one category, and there always seems to be this unspoken expectation that the most accomplished racers are supposed to do the longer race, whatever the distances might be.  If I do find the gumption to drive over to Chattanooga and enter this event, I will do the 6.7-mile race, because decades of experience tell me that I am better suited to that kind of distance than one of ten miles or more.  But I think it's a safe bet that almost all the athletes who are at or above my competitive level will be racing 10.9 miles.  So I'll probably have little competition in the 6.7-mile race, and that's why I'm lukewarm about making the trip in the first place.

Meanwhile, my biggest event of the year, the one I'm most excited about, has nothing to do with competition.  My expedition through the Grand Canyon, scheduled to launch August 27, is slowly taking shape.  Having that on the calendar is good motivation to be fit, but I don't really need to be more than fit--it's not like I have to average 5 minutes per kilometer or anything like that.  I just need some solid stamina to negotiate the rapids and withstand the long days in the elements of the desert Southwest.

So... that's what's going through my head these days.  I'm doing very little racing, and honestly, I'm not feeling all that motivated to do a lot of racing.  My priorities have changed, I guess.  It's not that I'm not enjoying paddling as much as ever, but after being a gung-ho racer for decades, I'm now inclined to ease up a bit and enjoy the "adventure" side of the sport a bit more.  That includes my Grand Canyon trip, and I hope to get back to South Africa sooner or later, and I want to go paddle in Alaska one day... there's plenty to do.  And strength and fitness will still be required, especially for downwinding in South Africa and stuff like that.

We've crossed the vernal equinox and the weather is getting ever more friendly for paddling.  There's still a chilly day here and there, but the balance is tipping in favor of warmer ones.  That means I'm getting in the boat more and doing less dry-land stuff.  Since I might go to that race on May 3, I'm working in some formal workouts along with the usual mileage and work on stroke mechanics.  So while I may or may not bring home any race hardware this year, I'm moving a boat around with a paddle as always.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Monday photo feature

It's the "Battle On The Bayou" race at Ocean Springs, Mississippi, in March of 2021.  Here we have the front pack led by Mike Herbert of Rogers, Arkansas.  Currently in second place is a double surfski paddled by Jeb Berry of Gulfport, Mississippi, and Nick Kinderman of Ocean Springs.  Roy Roberts of Chattanooga, Tennessee, holds third place, and that's me hanging out in fourth.  It was one of the more heated battles I can remember in that race.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Jury duty was quick

When I got down to the riverfront Monday it was 31 degrees Fahrenheit, but sunny.  I paddled for 60 minutes in the northern half of the harbor, where I could find at least some protection from the north wind.  The breeze wasn't especially strong, but when the temperature is below freezing any wind at all is unwelcome.

One thing I didn't mention in my last post is that I had a very strenuous project in my woodworking shop that stretched through last weekend.  I had to weave a chair seat with over 400 feet of 5/16-inch cord, and pulling all that material through at the end of each pass was hard on my arms and shoulders and especially my hands.  I don't normally count such "non-athletic" activities as part of "training," but it's worth pointing out that I was feeling especially tired and beat-up by the time I was in the boat on Monday.

By the time I was driving home from the river Monday, it had warmed up to about 37 degrees on its way to a high in the low 40s.  And that was about the nicest weather we would have all week.  On Tuesday it was overcast and blustery with a high in the 30s.  And then the real Arctic blast descended.  There was a mixture of snow and freezing rain overnight Tuesday into Wednesday, and then we had several days where the temperature didn't rise above freezing and dropped down to about 10 degrees at night.

Certainly, it was looking like a good week to sit indoors and discharge some civic duty.  At 8 AM sharp on Tuesday I finally reported to U.S. District Court in the Odell Horton Federal Building downtown.  I was whisked, along with everybody else in the jury pool, into an assembly room from which subsets of us would presumably be called into the courtroom to undergo the jury selection process.  We sat in there for an hour, then another hour, then another... at 12:30 they were so kind as to let us have an hour to go out for lunch.  Upon our return we sat there for another hour, then another... and finally, at 3:45, the presiding judge appeared.  He announced that as the trial was about to begin, some issues arose--a flurry of last-minute motions, stuff like that--that were more complicated than anybody had expected.  As a result, he had decided to delay the trial, and was dismissing us all.  We were now free from jury service until 2027 at the earliest.  (In federal court you can be summoned every two years, as opposed to every ten years in state courts.  Since the Western District of Tennessee includes pretty much all of the state's counties this side of the Tennessee River, the probability that I'll be called again anytime soon is pretty low.)

It was a pretty anticlimactic conclusion to this round of jury service, after I'd worked hard to finish a couple of workshop projects and fit in as many workouts as possible before I was called in.  After all my talk about it here, I'm sorry I can't share anything more consequential from my experience in our judicial system.

But... life goes on, one way or another.  Since I was already counting on a forced training break, and since the weather was so miserable, I stayed in and rested for the rest of the week.  At the same time, I took the opportunity to work on a project in the shop that I'd been wanting to do for the last year and a half or so, but never could get to because life kept getting in the way.  It was nice to attend to a part of my life that too often gets neglected, and in the overall scheme of things, I think that's just as important as getting my workouts in.  Sure, I felt a little antsy about the down time, but as I've noted here before, any race I'm likely to do is still months away.  I could take another week off, and it still wouldn't be hard for me to pick up where I'd left off.

The weather finally started warming a bit yesterday, and I went downtown and got in the boat once more.  I paddled for just 40 minutes because I was expecting an important phone call in the late morning and I wanted to be back home in time for that so I could give it my full attention.

I returned to the river today and did a higher-intensity session--four pieces of varying distances at anaerobic threshold.  Basically I just picked out some courses defined by objects in the harbor: from the end of the Beale Street Landing dock to one of the boats in the Memphis Queen Line flotilla (I clocked right at 2 minutes); from the monorail bridge to the A.W. Willis Avenue bridge (6:11); from the northeast corner of my marina to the southernmost mooring pylon at the old LaFarge facility (3:16); and from the southernmost mooring pylon at the Bunge plant to the northernmost pylon at the LaFarge facility (2:00).

Both yesterday and today were very nice days to paddle even though it wasn't exactly warm, mainly because there was practically no wind to speak of.  Yesterday the temperature was just above freezing with clouds giving way to sunshine, and today it was about 40 degrees with plenty of sunshine.  I've said it many times: I'd rather paddle when it's 30 degrees and sunny and calm than when it's 40 degrees and overcast and windy.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Monday photo feature

The year is 2019, and I'm standing near the Ohio River in Cincinnati, Ohio.  We have just raced nine miles down the lovely river.  I managed to take the win, with Michael Meredith (center) finishing second and Erik Snider (right) third.

One thing I remember about that event is that the race started at 7 AM Eastern Time--that would have been 6 AM in the Central Time zone from which I'd just come.  I got up around 4 o'clock Eastern so I would have time for some coffee and breakfast.  The nice thing about starting so early was that the temperature was very nice for racing.  It was the first Saturday in August, and by the time we were posing for this photo at the awards ceremony it was becoming about as hot as one expects at that time of year.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Making my last free week count

Another week went by with no call to duty at the federal courthouse.  So I was free for paddling and related activities.

The early-week forecast called for chilly temperatures with lots of rain Tuesday and Wednesday.  I went down to the river and paddled Monday, when the Fahrenheit temperature was in the high 30s.  It wouldn't have been such a bad day to paddle if it hadn't been for the wind.  I paddled into a headwind to the north end of the harbor, and once I was up there I worked my way back south with a lot of small loops and east-west zigzagging, just to keep my headwind exposure to a minimum.

When I went to bed Monday night my throat was suddenly very sore, and I woke up several times during the night to find that it was still sore.  For me, a sore throat is often a sign that I have a cold coming on.  Tuesday was shaping up to be a chilly rainy day, so I opted to stay in and give my body a chance to fight it off.  I did a lot of work done in the shop, but I didn't do any formal athletic stuff.  By Wednesday the throat soreness seemed to be fading and no cold symptoms were taking hold, and I did my indoor gym routine while some more rain fell outside.

The rain had moved out by Thursday, so I was back outdoors doing some running with some core exercises mixed in the Greenbelt Park that overlooks the majestic Mississippi River.  It was cold and windy and I was glad to have that session behind me.  Friday's weather was even colder, so I stayed in and did another indoor gym session.

Also on Friday, I learned that I finally must report to the federal courthouse downtown.  Because Monday is a federal holiday, my duty will begin on Tuesday.

In the early hours of yesterday morning some powerful thunderstorms moved into the area.  Storms were expected to continue all day yesterday, but the Internet radar showed a mid-morning break, so I went downtown and paddled.  Though the temperature was supposed to rise to near 70 degrees yesterday, it was only 50 or so while I was in the boat.  But the wind was light and the rain held off for most of the session, so in all I'd hit a pretty ideal window.  The heavens opened for about the last five minutes, so I was good and soaked when I got back to the dock, but soon I was in dry clothes, and the rain stopped so I could walk up to the parking lot without being doused again.

By afternoon it was freakishly warm outside, and by early evening another round of heavy storms was moving through with cold air behind it.  By the time I got up this morning, the temperature had plummeted.  I returned to the Greenbelt Park for some more outdoor dry-land work under overcast skies.  The temperature was a steady 35 degrees while I was down there, and if the wind had been bad on Thursday, this morning it was just plain awful.  At least it made me waste no time: I moved briskly from one exercise to the next, knowing that the sooner I got it done, the sooner I would be back home where it was warm.

It's supposed to drop into the mid 20s overnight, but tomorrow the sun is supposed to come out again and the high temperature is supposed to be a little over 40.  I'm hoping maybe I can get in the boat one more time before I'm forced to rest in a jury box.  It looks like the rest of the coming week will be miserably cold, so it's as good a week as any to serve my civic duty indoors.

I will say that while I'm not in any kind of high-level racing shape, I've been rocking the general fitness work this winter.  I'm feeling good about that, and I hope it'll stand me in good stead for whatever comes my way in the warmer months.

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Monday photo feature

The second Mocke Paddling/Paddle Africa downwind camp of 2025 is underway on the Western Cape of South Africa.  Kenny Howell, an Alabama native now living in Montara, California, is participating along with a few other North Americans.  That's Kenny on the left, speaking with Jasper Mocke as the group prepares to put in at Miller's Point.  Jasper's brother Dawid is standing behind Kenny.

I've known Kenny for some six or seven years.  As the West Coast rep for Epic Kayaks, Kenny handled my surfski rental the two times I flew out to the Gorge Downwind Championships on the Columbia River in Oregon and Washington.  Already a very solid downwind paddler, Kenny will likely come home with some tools for upping his game.

Seeing the photos and video on social media of Kenny and friends enjoying the Miller's Run in the summer sunshine is a reminder that I'd sure like to get back there sooner or later.  I think my Grand Canyon trip is as much as I can chew on this year, but... maybe next year.

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Getting plenty of exercise while federal court makes me hurry up and wait

The first week of my jury duty has come and gone, and I have yet to set foot in the courthouse.  Each evening I called the telephone number, entered my juror number, and got a recorded message informing me that I was not required to report the next day.

And so it goes: for the month of February I am living quite literally one day at a time.  It's not really how I prefer to live, but in some ways it's kind of nice.  Each time I'm told I don't have to go to court, the next day feels like a day off.

And so far this month, my training activities have suffered no interruption.  This past week I paddled Monday, did my indoor exercise routine Tuesday, did my outdoor routine Wednesday, paddled Thursday, did my indoor routine again Friday, and did my outdoor routine again yesterday.

My activities continue to be geared toward general fitness more than maximum canoe & kayak racing performance.  As I've noted recently, I'm not likely to line up for a race any sooner than May.  And my biggest event of this year is a trip through the Grand Canyon in August and September, and that will require not so much peak racing form as just a solid level of fitness.

The temperature was well above freezing all last week, but there was a lot of variety: sunny skies, overcast skies, quite a bit of wind, some chilly days, some freakishly warm days.  Yesterday was mostly cloudy and breezy with a temperature over 70 degrees Fahrenheit.  This morning it's still cloudy and breezy, but now the temperature has plummeted some 30 degrees.

I called the federal court's telephone number again Friday evening and learned that I do not have to report in tomorrow.  This jury duty is hard work, let me tell you.  I'm taking a rest day today, and right now my plan for tomorrow is to paddle even though it's supposed to be cloudy again and colder than 50 degrees.  It looks like there'll be lots of rain Tuesday and Wednesday, so those will be good days to stay indoors whether I have to go to court or not.  I really wish the court would go ahead and call me in, as the forecast is looking not so pleasant for the whole week.

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Monday photo feature

In August of 2016 I spent some time in the Hudson Valley of New York.  Here I'm paddling the Hudson River where it runs between the towns of Newburgh and Beacon, and it must have been a breezy day judging by all the water droplets on the camera lens.  That would be the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge that carries Interstate 84 over the river.

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By the seat of my pants, I'm keeping things going

It was another week of tailoring my workouts to the weather's whims.

On Monday I went down to the Greenbelt Park and did my outdoor dry-land routine that includes some running and some core exercises.

Tuesday's weather was a bit warmer and the wind wasn't so bad, so I paddled.  As I'm doing a lot this winter, I kept the stroke rate low and tried to take solid, precise strokes with good pelvic rotation.

I had a number of chores to do Wednesday, so I stayed home and did my indoor routine that focuses on my core and my legs.

Thursday was a rainy day.  But it was also quite warm, rising well above 60 degrees Fahrenheit.  So I went back to the river.  My paddling session mostly coincided with a break in the rain, but I got drizzled on a few times.  I went a mile or so up the Mississippi and pushed the pace coming back down.  The wind was picking up from the south-southeast and I found myself fighting a stiff headwind to get back into the harbor.

Friday turned out to be quite a physically active day in unorthodox ways.  My car was overdue for an oil change, so I started the day by taking my car over to the far side of Overton Park, where there's a garage I've used for years.  They had a couple of other cars to do ahead of mine, so I took off on a hike around the neighborhood.  My main objective was to visit several "Little Free Libraries" that I know about to see if they had any reading material I was interested in.  Getting by them all required that I make a circuit around a big swath of the area surrounding the garage.  Once that mission was complete I swung back by the garage and learned that it would be close to another hour before my car was ready, so I headed in another direction, toward the rental property I own.  One of the tenants had told me that a tree branch had fallen during Thursday's storm, and I figured it was a good time to have a look at that.

The branch was up on the roof of the two-story building, and it looked like I would need a saw to cut it into manageable pieces, so I decided not to put up the ladder and go up there just yet.  Instead I walked back to the garage, and when I was just a block away from it I got a text from the mechanic telling me my car was ready.  Perfect timing.

All told, I think I walked at least four miles Friday morning.  I drove back home and launched into my "official" workout for the day, another round of my indoor routine.

Friday afternoon I returned to the rental property with the tools I needed.  It looked as though the branch had fallen pretty flat on the roof and done no serious damage.  (If it had penciled down vertically, it likely would have poked a hole in the roof.  That once happened to a house I owned a couple of decades ago.)  So I cut the thing up and threw the pieces down into the front yard, and then returned to terra firma myself to tidy the place up.  That wrapped up a day of working my entire body while getting all kinds of chores done.

Yesterday I returned to the Greenbelt Park and did my outdoor routine again.

Now I begin my month-long adventure with the federal judicial system, and apparently the way it works is that I call a number each evening to learn whether I must report to the courthouse the next business day.  I called Friday evening and was informed that I need not report tomorrow; tomorrow evening I'll call again to see if I have to go in Tuesday.  So the good news is that I won't have to go in to court every day of February, while the bad news is that I can't really plan anything else in advance.  For example, I have my semiannual dentist appointment a week from this Thursday, and I think I will have to re-schedule it because even though it's possible I won't have to go to court that day, I won't know for sure until after 5 PM the day before.

It looks like the weather will be lovely and warm and sunny for the next couple of days.  I'm having a day off today for the first time in a week, and I reckon tomorrow I'll go get back in the boat.  After that, who knows?  I'll be taking it quite literally a day at a time, and that's not how I'm used to doing things.  Rather than tailor my activities to the weather's whims, I'll be tailoring them to the federal court's whims.

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Monday photo feature

Here's a photo taken in 2017 on Barnett Reservoir just outside Jackson, Mississippi.  I'm sitting in my boat either just before starting a race or just after finishing.  It doesn't look like I'm breathing hard, so it's probably before the race.

That race down there is just one of a number that we used to have here in my part of the country, but don't anymore.  I miss it.

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