Monday photo feature

I'm not sure where this photo originated--a friend of a friend posted it on Face Book this past week.  But it's an interesting look at how the Memphis riverfront has changed over the last few decades.  (The Hernando DeSoto Bridge opened in 1973; I think the photo was taken a few years before construction began.)

In this photo we're looking north (upstream).  That's the main Mississippi River on the left, with the Wolf River flowing in on the right.  The Wolf would later be redirected to enter the Mississippi farther to the north.  The former Wolf riverbed we see in this photo was transformed into our present-day slackwater harbor.

Those sandbars in the Mississippi are now long-gone as a result of the Corps of Engineers' dredging and channelization efforts.  I'm pretty sure the river was quite low when this picture was taken, but today even at low levels the main channel is plenty deep for barge traffic.

This is about the best photo I could find on Google Images of what the same landscape looks like today:

In this photo, the river is at a medium-low level.

Paddling the rising river

The Mississippi River usually drops to very low levels (below zero on the Memphis gauge) in the fall, but for most of this past fall it was 15 feet or higher.  Now it's rising to some mild flood levels: the current forecast says it'll crest at 32.5 feet toward the end of the week.  Almost nobody in the city of Memphis will be affected because the city sits on a high bluff.  The low-lying bottomlands will start to get flooded, and some water may lap into the southern end of the Greenbelt Park, but most Memphians won't notice a thing.  Personally I enjoy the high-water periods because of the increased acreage of liquid real estate that I can paddle on.

A thick fog hung over the river when I arrived down there yesterday morning.  It would eventually give way to sunny skies--a welcome sight after a week that was mostly dreary and rainy.  The afternoon high yesterday would be close to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, but in the morning when I paddled it was in the low 40s and quite nippy.  I paddled for 60 minutes, warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor before heading out onto the river and maintaining a good solid pace.

When I arrived at the river to paddle this morning the temperature was 50 degrees and rising, so I left the pogies on the dock.  I paddled for 100 minutes, going out of the harbor and up the Mississippi along the Tennessee bank to the mouth of the Wolf River, and then up the Wolf for ten or twelve minutes before turning around and heading back.  The river level was 29.4 feet, and it looked like the water was just a half-foot shy of starting to spill onto the Greenbelt Park in a few places.

2019 Race Schedule (first draft)

Here's an early look at some of the places I might be going to race this year:


March
30  Battle On The Bayou.  Old Fort Bayou, Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  An 8.5-mile flatwater race.  Register


April
6  Oyster City Challenge.  Apalachicola River, Apalachicola, Florida.  8 miles down a coastal river.  Register

13  Perche Creek Gutbuster.  Perche Creek, Columbia, Missouri.  10 miles on a Class I river.

27  Lake Cumberland Regatta.  Lake Cumberland near Columbia, Kentucky.  A 12- to 15-mile flatwater race.

27-28  Carolina Cup.  Intracoastal Waterway and Atlantic Ocean, Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina.  Flatwater and open-water racing.  Register


May
11  Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race.  Mississippi River, Vicksburg, Mississippi.  A 22-mile race down the largest river in North America.  Register

18  Almost Heaven Paddle Battle.  Summersville Reservoir near Summersville, West Virginia.  A 12-mile flatwater race.  Register


June
8  Taylorsville Lake Paddle Battle.  Taylorsville Reservoir, Taylorsville, Kentucky.  A 10-mile flatwater race.

15  Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race.  Mississippi River, Memphis, Tennessee.  The 37th edition of this classic.  A 5000-meter dash down the largest river in North America.


July
6  The Lovely Laurel River Lake Paddle Blast.  Laurel River Lake, Corbin, Kentucky.  A 10-mile flatwater race.

18-20  Gorge Downwind Championships.  Columbia River, Hood River, Oregon.


August
3  Ohio River Paddlefest.  Ohio River, Cincinnati, Ohio.  A 9-mile race on this Midwest artery.


September
7?  Lower Atchafalaya Sprint Races.  A series of 3-mile races on flat, gently-flowing water.  A racer may participate in both solo and team-boat classes.


October
5  Big South Fork River Dash.  Big South Fork of the Cumberland River near Whitley City, Kentucky.  A 12-mile mostly-flatwater race.

*          *          *

Finding races to do is easier than it used to be now that we have Internet search engines and social media and stuff like that.  Even so, it still takes some persistence to put together a full schedule.  Some race organizers do a better job than others of announcing their dates and publicizing their events.  You can expect this race schedule to evolve as the year goes along.

The usual disclaimer: this is by no means a comprehensive list of all the canoe and kayak races in 2019.  These are simply the events I know of at this time that I am at least somewhat likely to attend. With a couple of notable exceptions, I have selected the events here because they are within a reasonable drive of my home in Memphis, Tennessee.  I also look for races of the two-hours-or-less variety, since I'm not an ultra-endurance athlete.

In any case, I hope this post is a useful resource for readers as they put together their own race schedules.

Making the most of my time in the boat

After Christmas is when I usually try to move back into a more "serious" training routine.  Exactly what "serious" means depends on the person.  If I were an 18-year-old Olympic hopeful, I'd probably be doing ten or more in-the-boat workouts each week, along with strength work and stuff like that.  But I'm not an 18-year-old Olympic hopeful, and these days I think of "serious" as four times in the boat, plus two or three strength routines, each week.  Most of the time my paddling days are Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, because I'm just a regimented guy that way.

Once in a while I get anxious, thinking maybe I'm not doing enough, especially when I hear somebody talking about how much more he's doing.  But most of the time I feel pretty good about it.  I think I'm doing about as much as my 51-year-old body can withstand, and as much as I can fit into a busy schedule that's full of the typical adult responsibilities.

If you need an example of a more accomplished racer than I whose time in the boat is limited, check out this profile of Erik Borgnes of Stevens Point, Wisconsin--he paddles just three times a week for much of the year.  I think Erik is maybe a year or two older than I am.

Actually, I think even younger athletes could accomplish a lot with just a few paddling sessions a week. Keep in mind that it's not the workouts themselves that make you stronger and fitter and faster. It's during the recovery from those workouts that your body rebuilds and fortifies itself to perform at a higher level.  The more workouts you do each week, the greater the likelihood that you will "overtrain"--that is, not allow yourself adequate recovery.

Whatever the case, for me, for most of my "serious" training year, four times in the boat a week it is.  I try to get the best recovery I can when I'm out of the boat so my body can internalize the work I've done.  And when I'm in the boat, I try to be all there, mentally as well as physically.  In recent posts I've mentioned a specific "thing" (usually a stroke component) I worked on each time I paddled; the reason for that is to keep myself mentally engaged in the task at hand as opposed to letting my mind wander who knows where and lapsing into sloppy paddling.  Actually, in most paddling sessions I work on a lot of "things," not just one, but the point is the same: because my paddling time is limited, each time I'm in the boat I'm on sacred ground (or sacred water, I guess I should say), and I want to get as much out of it as I possibly can.

On Tuesday it was overcast but the temperature was mild (mid 50s Fahrenheit).  I paddled for 60 minutes, warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor before heading out onto the main river.  I didn't really have a "thing" in this session other than just taking good strokes and maintaining a strong pace.

Yesterday seemed a lot more like a classic winter day for this part of the country: overcast and 42 degrees with a biting north wind blowing.  But as usual, once I was in the boat paddling it wasn't too bad.  I warmed up and did another three 8-strokers, and then paddled up the Mississippi about a third of the way up the Greenbelt Park before returning to the harbor and the dock.  My "thing" for the day was getting all my muscles firing in unison--that is, as soon as the blade was planted, I tried to take each stroke with one good focused movement of my body, with every muscle engaged in the business of propelling the boat forward.  This gets harder as the water gets more turbulent, because in rough water the average person will have to devote some muscle power to staying upright.  The Mississippi wasn't very rough yesterday but it's always swirly and provides good routine balance practice.

I did the strength routine Monday, Wednesday, and today.  After a good four weeks I think it's time to put away the Smart Bell and start up something new next week.

Monday photo feature

One of my very first slalom races was one of the old "Citizen Race" events they used to have on the Nantahala River in western North Carolina.  I think this photo is from 1992, at which time I was in my mid-20s, a very advanced age to be entering such a sport.  But every time I look at this photo I see myself as a little kid.  Photo by Michael Stout.

Sometimes, winter is not as bad as you think

Before yesterday we'd had a decent run of mild weather, with Fahrenheit temperatures rising into the 50s and even the 60s.  I'd gone several weeks without wearing pogies.  But yesterday morning the pogies were back on.  When I got down to the river the mercury was straining to touch 40 degrees and there was a bitter north breeze blowing.  It felt more like winter again.  But there was a literal "bright" side: the sky was mostly sunny.  Once I was in the boat paddling I got comfortable, and it turned out to be not a bad day to paddle at all.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor; I think the sprints felt a little bit more fluid than they had been.  Then I paddled out onto the Mississippi and spent the rest of the 60 minutes focusing on involving my legs and feet in each stroke.

This morning it was overcast and things seemed sort of a gloomy as I headed downtown to paddle.  Then again, it was a few degrees warmer than yesterday, and there was practically no wind.  The harbor was as smooth as glass.  I warmed up and did another three 8-strokers, and again the sprints felt not great but not terrible either.  I paddled out onto the Mississippi, which was also mostly smooth with a minimal amount of motorized traffic.  Conditions were really pretty ideal.  I paddled a good strong pace up and down the river before returning to the harbor and the dock to complete an 80-minute session.

"Neither rain nor sleet nor snow..."

I spent Wednesday driving home and was in the mood to paddle Thursday morning even though there was a bit of inclement weather about.  A check of the Internet radar showed a big mass of rain closing in on the city of Memphis, and with a couple of errands to run on my way downtown, I knew it would be falling on me by the time I was in the boat.  Fortunately the temperature was mild--around 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

I paddled for 60 minutes in a hard drizzle.  A stiff south wind drove the raindrops right into my face as I paddled from the marina to the mouth of the harbor.  But I didn't let it bother me.  When I was a kid at summer camp, anytime a camper complained about having to do something in the rain, the standard glib reply was "Skin is waterproof."

I paddled a brisk pace until the last ten minutes or so, when I eased up and coasted back to the dock.  The rainfall got quite a bit heavier as I was driving home, so at least in that respect my timing was good.

I followed through on the plan I mentioned in my last post, and did the strength routine while visiting family on Monday and Wednesday.  I did it again back here at home today.

Seizing the mild-weather paddling opportunities

This week we had two lovely warmish sunny days, and I paddled on both of them.  On Tuesday Joe and I did a loop of the harbor, and today I paddled for 80 minutes out on the Mississippi.  In between those two days the weather was wet and/or cold and blustery.

I started today's paddle by warming up and doing another rusty-feeling set of three 8-stroke sprints.  Then I paddled out onto the Mississippi, where an upstream-bound barge rig was creating some good-sized swells.  I went out and tried to surf without much success.  Part of the reason is that I tend to be conservative with such activities in the wintertime, but even if my attitude had been a hundred percent "Sydney or the Bush," I still might not have gotten any decent rides because the waves' troughs were a little too broad.  But at least I got in a few decent sprints.  Soon the waves started petering out, so my bit of surf practice didn't last more than maybe five minutes.  We take what we can get here in the Mid South.

I ferried over to the Arkansas side and paddled upriver toward the Loosahatchie Chute before coming back down and returning to the harbor.  During this period the "thing" I decided to work on was pulling hard through each stroke while keeping the stroke rate pretty low.  It was almost like a "hesitation" drill as I had to make myself go slow during each recovery between strokes.  It made for some good balance practice out on the river.

I'll be out of the boat for most of next week due to holiday travel.  I did the strength routine Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this week, and since my Smart Bell is nice and portable I'll be sticking to that aspect of training next week.

Monday photo feature

We've all seen those heartbreaking photos of birds, turtles, and other critters caught up in plastic six-pack rings that have found their way into our world's waterways.  Yesterday while paddling out on the Mississippi I saw this one in a stand of willows over near the Arkansas side.  So I paddled into the willows and grabbed it.  I took it home, used a pair of scissors to cut apart all the rings, and put it in the trash where it belongs.  Goodie goodie for me!!!!

Muscle memory

This morning was reasonably nice by wintertime standards.  The sky was partly sunny, and with the gentlest of breezes blowing from the south, the water in the harbor was dead calm.  At 50 degrees Fahrenheit it was right on the cusp of being cold enough for pogies, and I opted to go without.  Pogies are a wonderful invention (thanks to whitewater racing pioneers Bill Nutt and Bonnie Losick for the roles they played in their conception and development), but any day I don't have to wear them is a good day in my book.

I started by warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor.  The sprints are still feeling rusty, as my body just doesn't seem to have much turnover right now.  Then I paddled out onto the Mississippi, ferried over to the Arkansas side, and paddled up above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge before coming back downriver and returning to the harbor.

The thing I decided to focus on today was getting my blades fully immersed at the beginning of each stroke.  For some reason I've long had a tendency not to get my right blade all the way in the water; you can see me doing that at times in this video, most of whose footage was shot around 2011-12.  I think I've done a better job of it in more recent years, but I probably ought to charge up the Go Pro camera and shoot some new footage soon so I can see how I'm doing.

Of course, stroke mechanics is something I'm always working on, to one degree or another, every time I paddle.  But today was one of those days when I moved one particular component onto the front burner in my mind, if that makes any sense.  And so I paddled along and tried to plant the blade with precision each time--"speared the fish," as it were--without thrusting my body forward and causing the boat to bob.

I got back to the dock 70 minutes after I'd started.  I can check off another day of practice as a new season looms off in the future.

Milder weather and a variety of activity

The miserable weekend weather finally began to give way to some sunshine Monday, and Tuesday was a gorgeous day with clear skies and an afternoon high around 52 degrees Fahrenheit.  It was a brisk 41 degrees when I arrived at the river to paddle Tuesday morning but it had warmed up to a comfortable 48 degrees by the time I was finished.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor.  It was the first time I had sprinted in any way in a couple of months, and while the energy was there, the form was rusty.  I paddled up the Mississippi to the south end of the Greenbelt Park and then returned to the harbor, where I spent the last 25 minutes of my one-hour session doing a bunch of stroke drills: hesitation drills, one-sided drills, and the "one-two-three-four-FIVE!!!!" drill that Morgan House showed me when I took his clinic last year.  It had been a long time since I'd isolated the various components of my stroke for study, and I'm always struck by how tiring it is to focus that hard on something while I'm paddling.

I'd done a round of my new strength routine on Monday, and I did another round on Wednesday.  I woke up yesterday feeling stiff and sore in my arms and shoulders.  I don't know what might have caused it other than the strength work, but I thought it was odd that the soreness took that long to appear.  Usually it starts up within a day of my doing something new.

Joe hadn't been available for our usual Tuesday paddle, so he joined me yesterday for a loop of the harbor.  The relaxed, "conversational" pace we paddled was helpful as my body worked out the soreness.

I did another round of the strength routine today to close out a decent "business" week here in the early offseason.

Monday photo feature

I'm at a loss for words just after finishing a race on the Pascagoula River on the Mississippi Gulf Coast last year.

A new strength routine

Now that I'm finally feeling better it's time to start thinking about some offseason conditioning again.

I've been doing a "Smart Bell" workout for some 20 years now.  I learned it from a friend named Emerson Wickwire who coached wrestling at the school where I taught back in the late 1990s.  A friend of his, a really good wrestler named Paul Widerman, invented the Smart Bell so he could do a whole variety of dynamic strength exercises.

At long last, I've made a video of the routine I do with the Smart Bell.  I'll be the first to admit it's not the best quality production--I made it all by myself with a camera on a tripod in my house--but hopefully everybody can see what's going on.




(Just in case anybody's curious: I had the radio on while I was making this.  What you're hearing is the "Down In The Alley" program, hosted by Eddie Hankins each Friday morning on WEVL FM 89.9.  It makes about as good a soundtrack as anything I could have come up with.)

Where does one get a Smart Bell these days?  I'm not sure.  They're listed on this Amazon page as "currently unavailable."  As you can see there, their look has changed from the first-generation Smart Bell I'm using in the video.  If you want one then I encourage you to poke around the Internet and see what you can find.  There might be some on Ebay.

Improved health and unimproved weather

Well, I had my CT scan Thursday, and the little bit of information I've been able to extract from my doctor's office indicates it wasn't entirely conclusive.  I have an appointment there next Tuesday, so I should know more no later than then.

In the meantime, I've been feeling significantly better.  Monday was the last full day I dealt with that abdominal discomfort.  I wasn't feeling totally better Tuesday morning, but I went ahead and paddled with Joe in the harbor anyway.  By Tuesday evening I knew I was feeling better, and I've felt more or less back to normal ever since.  And believe me, I'm pleased about that.  But I'm still a little puzzled about this mysterious two-week malady.  I really don't get sick that often, and when I do it almost never lasts more than several days.

I'm now trying to get myself back in motion.  The weather has not been helpful.  I don't think it's been warmer than 45 degrees Fahrenheit in the last week or so.  This weekend has been particularly lousy, as the same storm system that has brought snow and ice to much of the Southeast has given us relentless rain for close to 24 hours.  The temperature has not escaped the mid 30s.

Mind you, winters here in the Mid South are nowhere near as harsh as in places like the upper Great Plains or New England or the Great Lakes region, but in a way I wish that if it must be cold at all, it would just go all the way: I have a friend who lives in New Hampshire who posted on Face Book that he cross-country skied ten miles yesterday, and that's the kind of offseason cross-training I could really sink my teeth into.  Instead, the water stays liquid here just about all winter, and I feel obligated to go out and paddle with a stiff upper lip.  I pleaded the "recovering from illness" excuse to stay in this weekend, but soon enough I need to get back in gear.

Of course, winters are funny here, and just because we've had some nasty blasts early, there's no guarantee it'll stay that way until spring.  Last January I paddled a couple of times when the temperature was in the teens, but after that frigid period the rest of the winter turned out to be quite mild.  The best I can do with this winter training thing is what I always do: take it a day at a time.  With any luck it'll add up to a decent amount of work by the time Earth swings around to its vernal equinox.

Body woes

It's been quite a while since I've posted anything on this canoe and kayak training blog.  The main reason for that is that lately very little canoe and kayak training has taken place around here.

Back on the evening of Tuesday, November 20, I started feeling some discomfort in my abdominal area.  The feeling was still there the next morning, and when I tried to do a round of the strength routine I found I had very little energy.  I concluded that I must have some kind of mild stomach bug and my body was fighting it off.

For the next several days I felt not horrible, exactly, but very low in energy.  I didn't do much more than lie around the house during this time.  Then I started to feel better, and thought I was on the mend--pretty typical when you've got a virus, right?  But the moment I began to resume some normal-life activities, the discomfort returned.  I decided it was time to go see the doctor.  I went in last Tuesday morning and they referred me for an ultrasound procedure and also took blood for some lab tests.

By Thursday the tests had come back negative, and my doctor told me the next step was to have a CT scan to see if there was some kind of mass in my insides.

A mass?  As in, a tumor?  Seriously?

I have to get pre-certification from my insurance company before I can have a CT scan, so I'm having to wait until Thursday to get it done.  (Note: if I had just gone to the emergency room they could have done the scan with no pre-certification requirement.  And there I thought I was doing the right thing by going to my primary-care doctor instead of the emergency room.)  I sincerely hope that my thoughts of tumors and cancer are just me blowing things out of proportion.  But in the meantime I'm still not feeling well and I don't know what else to think.  By tomorrow evening it'll be two weeks that this has been going on.

It's hard even to describe how this feels.  Much of the time it's a perpetual feeling of having to use the bathroom (sometimes Number One, sometimes Number Two) even though my digestion and bodily functions have been working just fine throughout this period.

Saturday was a beautiful day and I decided to try paddling--if nothing else, the cabin fever was driving me mad.  I paddled for an hour and felt just fine in the boat.  I didn't do anything bold; I stayed in the harbor because a south wind was making things rough out on the Mississippi, and even though I was feeling good enough to paddle at a healthy clip, I didn't throw in any all-out sprints.  Once I was back on the dock I was happy to have gotten out and done something with my body at last.

By Saturday evening, as if on cue, I was back to that mild lousy feeling.  It continued all through yesterday and I'm still not feeling so hot this morning.

It's still early in the offseason, so if I have to go through a forced layoff, I guess this is about as good a time as any.  But not knowing how much longer this is going to go on is frustrating.  Right now there's nothing I can do but see what the CT scan reveals this Thursday.

My resolve gets an early test

Winter has decided to come early to the Mid South.  When I got down to the river to paddle on Tuesday it was 36 degrees Fahrenheit, overcast, and windy.  As I mentioned in my new stretching video, it was definitely a day to do my stretching before leaving home.  I broke out the heavy winter gear for the first time: wetsuit pants, pogies, fleece shirt, long-sleeve shell.  Once I was actually in the boat paddling I didn't feel too bad: going against the north wind wasn't fun but it wasn't anything I haven't endured many times before.  I stayed in the harbor and paddled on the quick side of medium for 60 minutes.  The worst moments were standing on the dock before and after paddling.

Every year around this time I ask myself if I have it in me to put myself through another round of winter training.  It would appear that the answer is... yeah.  At least once more, I guess I do.

Winters here in the Mid South are never really that bad.  In a typical winter we might have two or three blasts of Arctic air, plunging temperatures down into the 20s or teens for several days at a time, but we have a lot of stretches in the 40s and 50s as well.  Portions of the harbor might occasionally freeze over, sometimes bad enough to make me skip a day of paddling, but that's just once every three or four years, maybe.  Some snow and ice isn't uncommon, but it doesn't happen every year.

But I'm pretty sure this is the earliest round of winter weather in my lifetime, especially one that includes snow.  Yes, yesterday afternoon enough frozen precipitation moved into the area to force the cancellation of evening activities and close some rural school systems today.  Weird.

I'm in the mood to hunker down for a long cold winter, but actually this is quite temporary: the current weather forecast says it'll be sunny and in the 60s this weekend, and the highs will be above 50 for the next nine days.  It wouldn't surprise me that much if the rest of this winter isn't as cold as it is now.

I did the strength routine Monday and yesterday and plan to do it again tomorrow.

Update: Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame

The Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame has announced its latest induction class.  The group of nine includes two football players, two football coaches, one football administrator, two basketball players, one tennis player, and one bull rider.  Eight of the inductees are male, and one female.

I'm sad to say that our canoe and kayak racing friend Mike Herbert did not make the cut.  Neither did any of the other people I voted for on my ballot.

Nevertheless, I thank everybody who took the trouble to buy an ASHOF membership and vote on Mike's behalf.  Just getting Mike's name on the ballot took close to a decade of effort, and I hope there will be opportunities to try again in the future.

Monday photo feature

It's been a long time since I've been on a good old-fashioned paddling tour.  But that's what I've just done in this photograph.  Back in 2009 I joined a group of folks to run a 22-mile section of the Mississippi River from Ashport to Randolph.  Here I'm helping Heather Havens and Alicia Huettel carry their big old kevlar canoe up the hill to the parking area at Randolph, located on the Tennessee side some 40 miles upstream of downtown Memphis.

Stretching my body and my tech skills

Joe and I did our customary paddle on Tuesday, and I did rounds of the strength routine on Monday, Wednesday, and today.  Right now the strength work isn't ending there: those oak planks I'm dealing with in the workshop are still pretty heavy even though I've got them milled down close to their final dimensions.

The weather was gorgeous when Joe and I paddled Tuesday: sunny and calm with a temperature in the mid 60s Fahrenheit.  That now seems a lifetime ago.  We've had periods of rain the last couple of days, and for the next week we're looking at highs in the 40s and 30s.  Meanwhile, the Mississippi River continues to be unseasonably high as a result of heavy rain in the Tennessee, Cumberland, and Ohio watersheds.  It's supposed to crest around 25 feet on the Memphis gauge in the middle of next week.

I try my best to make my training activities as understandable as possible, whether you've been reading this blog for years or you're looking at it for the first time.  For instance, I've been building up a reservoir of pages I can refer the reader back to, like the one about the harbor, or my 8-stroke sprints, or my bridge-to-bridge sprint, or strength routines like the one I linked to above.

I can't really blame you if you haven't noticed, but lately I've been trying to make My Training Blog by Elmore a sure-enough multimedia experience.  In the last several months I've been developing a modicum of video-production skill.  I do mean a modicum: I don't expect anybody to be impressed by what I can do.  But as a guy who's still stuck in the 20th century when it comes to technological know-how, I'm impressed with myself, and that's good enough for me.

Here's my latest creation: a video about my pre-exercise stretch routine.  Just like this blog in general, I offer it not as the last word on the subject, but simply as an example of what one guy does.  I hope at least a few people might gain some useful ideas and even a bit of inspiration from it.

Monday photo feature

Joe pulled out his iPhone and snapped this picture as he and I paddled a loop of the harbor a couple of Tuesdays ago.  These Tuesday sessions are all the paddling I've been doing lately, and the rest of my life has expanded to fill the extra time.