Monday photo feature

In my last post I mentioned a guy named Matt Taylor, who with Lecky Haller competed in the 2000 Olympic Games slalom race in men's double canoe.  The first time I ever saw Matt was in the spring of 1993, at which time I was living in the New York City area.  I wasn't really racing slalom myself yet, but one weekend I went up to watch the annual Rattlesnake Classic on the Housatonic River at Falls Village, Connecticut, and Matt was competing in both double canoe and, in this photo, single canoe.  Note the ugly patch on the stern deck of his boat!

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Patching one boat and paddling another

I was very tempted to skip the bike ride on Friday.  There was some rain falling outside in the morning with more expected later in the day, and my head was deeply immersed in the current project in my woodworking shop.  In the end I compromised a little, riding for just an hour rather than the usual 90-minute loop.  The Internet radar was showing a dry window a little after 8 AM, so I went out and got it done.

It rained off and on the rest of the day, and I was happy to stay in the shop.  My main concern was the woodwork project, but I did find time to patch the crack in the stern of my V10 Sport:

The brown stripe is a strip of Kevlar.  There's a layer of fiberglass on top of it, but fiberglass is transparent once it's saturated in resin.  It’s an unsightly thing, isn’t it?  I've patched my share of boats over the years, but one skill I've never picked up is using gelcoat to match the color of the rest of the boat.

I want my boat to look nice as much as anybody else, I guess, but then again, making a boat look nice doesn't make it faster.  Back in 2000, when I was still racing slalom, one of the teams expected to compete for the U.S. Olympic team spot in men's double canoe was Lecky Haller and Matt Taylor, and at the Olympic trials they had to race in a boat that had been badly damaged by the airline during a training trip to Australia, the Olympic host country that year.  The boat had a big ugly patch like the one pictured above, except it was across the hull amidships, where it was probably more of a detriment to their boat's performance than the one above is to my boat’s.  But Lecky and Matt won the trials anyway, edging out the talented team of David Hepp and Scott McCleskey by the narrowest of margins.  I remind myself of this story every time I'm feeling upset over a broken boat.

I was back in the V10L yesterday, paddling for 70 minutes on a river that was a bit choppy with a south breeze blowing.  I really am surprised how good I’ve felt the first couple of times back in that boat; I thought for sure it would be a tougher adjustment after paddling something more stable.  After all, it's the same boat I could barely handle at all in the Atlantic Ocean during the Blackburn Challenge last summer.  While yesterday’s conditions were nothing like that day in the Atlantic, they commanded some attention, but I felt good and relaxed.  I paddled a loop out on the river, and on my way back to the harbor I surfed a few little bumps that a downstream-moving barge rig was generating.

When I got to the river this morning the wind was light and conditions were placid.  I paddled to the mouth of the harbor and found a barge rig moving upstream, so I ferried out to try some more surfing.  I got several decent rides--maybe even a couple of very good ones.  But the waves' sweet spots were small, and they were wandering pretty far right and left, so no ride lasted long.  I spent maybe five minutes playing around before I decided it was time to move on.  I paddled up the Arkansas bank and looped around back to the harbor and back to the dock to complete 60 minutes in the boat.

This past week has been warm but quite pleasant, especially in the mornings and evenings.  But today we're knocking on the door of just plain hot.  It was 86 degrees Fahrenheit when I finished paddling this morning, and I think it was pushing 90 by the afternoon.  The forecast is showing at least one 90-plus day in the coming week.

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A breakthrough with one boat, trouble with another, and some more muddy surfing

Well, something has finally gone right in my rudder-line replacement project on the V10L.  On Monday I managed to get the new line strung on the starboard side.  I got a rigid wire to feed through the somewhat-damaged tubing, I used epoxy to join the frayed end of the new line to the end of the wire, and I pulled the new line into place without any failure of the joint.

Some work still remained, but it was all stuff in which I was confident of success.  I added some support pieces to shore up what remains of the tubing, and I installed the hatch to cover the 4-inch hole I had to cut in the back deck.  Finally, I adjusted the new lines to calibrate the rudder's response to the pedals the way I like.  After all the grief and anguish this project has put me through for the last several weeks, the V10L doesn't look half bad:

In this photo you can't even see where I cut that hole in the back deck because the hatch I installed there is white just like the boat.  And even close-up it doesn't look bad, because, well... I did a nice neat job of installing it:

The more I think about it, the more I sort of wish the hatch were some wild off-the-wall color--hot pink, day-glo orange, something like that.  You know, just to raise the fun factor a little.  Oh well, what's important is that I can use this boat again.

Turns out it's a very good thing that boat is back in service, because on Tuesday morning I went down to the river and discovered that the V10 Sport that's been stored there had sustained some damage.  In the early hours of Monday morning a thunderstorm moved through here with some strong winds, and apparently the boat got blown off its rack.  When I got to the dock Tuesday somebody had kindly replaced the boat on the rack and re-tied one of the tiedowns, which I guess had slipped off the rack's crossbar (or, maybe, I had forgotten to tie it--I've been known to do that once in a while).  Anyway, it was clear that the stern had come down hard on the marina deck because there was a crack across the hull just aft of the rudder:

Boy... this has been one tough spring for my three surfskis.  And it all started because I thought it was a good idea to change out the rudder lines.  Oy.

At least the damage wasn't so bad that I couldn't paddle the boat.  I paddled to the mouth of the harbor and saw some barge traffic out on the river.  There was a rig coming downstream right then that was producing some unusually nice waves for a down-bound vessel.  I paddled out and hopped on several; the rides were brief but fun.  The waves were moving at weird angles because the pilot was swinging his stern around to line up the barges to pass beneath the Harahan and Frisco and Memphis-Arkansas Bridges.

Because the rig was zooming on down it wasn't long before the good stuff had left me behind, but an upstream-moving rig was emerging from under the Harahan Bridge, so I moved over to do some surfing behind it.  I hopped off the "down" elevator and boarded the "up" one, as it were.

This up-bound vessel was generating the best surfing conditions I've seen behind a barge rig since this day four years ago.  I had to sprint hard for each run, but once I got on one the ride lasted a long time.  The waves were the perfect shape.  They were wandering right and left some, as barge wakes often do, but they weren't wandering that far.  When I felt the wave I was surfing on start to peter out, I often was able to link onto another one a short distance to the right or left.  At times I was flying... at least as much as one can fly while moving against the current of the Mississippi River.  That was the sensation as the beautiful brown water rushed past me.

This rig, too, was hurrying on its way.  Those pilots must have taken Memorial Day off and were making up for lost time.  But I got to do some of the best surfing I'd seen in a long time and headed back toward the harbor with a smile.  Will it be just once every four years that I find barge wakes this good?  Maybe so, but I'll take whatever I can get.

As I paddled up the harbor back to the dock the boat seemed heavy, and I suspected that some water must be getting in through that crack in the stern.  On the dock I drained out maybe a half-gallon.  So just as I had finished one boat-repair job, I found myself with another.

This morning I took the newly-repaired V10L down to the river.  After several weeks of paddling the much-more-stable V10 Sport, I was ready for some awkwardness in this boat, but it didn't take long for me to get used to it.  The main difference was that I felt like I was sitting a little higher in this boat, but that might be because it has a lower freeboard than the V10 Sport does.

The sun was out, and the air was dry and pleasant with a cool east-northeast breeze blowing.  I just paddled a steady 60 minutes.  As I paddled back toward the harbor there was another barge rig coming upstream in the same location as the one I'd surfed behind on Tuesday, and I briefly considered taking a detour to surf some more.  But I was feeling tired, and I had a lot of work to do back at the shop, so I continued on to the harbor and back to the dock.  There will be more barge rigs when I paddle in the future.

I brought the V10 Sport back home with me, and it's now safe and sound in the garage, waiting for me to do some repair on it.

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Monday photo feature

Adam Davis took a selfie as he and I were heading out to paddle around the Loosahatchie Bar a few weeks ago.  I'm paddling my old beat-up mud-stained V12 surfski, the same one that has now, maybe, been forced into retirement by worn-out rudder line tubes that I've replaced a couple of times and don't really feel like replacing again.

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

Vacation approaches, but there's fun to be had here at home, too

In several weeks I'll be heading out on a little summer vacation.  This one won't be quite as ambitious as recent summer vacations: I'll be gone for just a couple of weeks, and I won't be going as far away as I did in recent summers (New England in '23, and the Pacific Northwest in four of the five summers before that).  But with any luck, I'll have some interesting experiences.  My general destination is the Great Lakes.  I'll start out in Michigan, then head up into Ontario and along the north shore of Lake Superior, round the western end of Superior in Minnesota and Wisconsin, then return south.  The trip will of course include plenty of paddling, including a race on June 22 at Suttons Bay, Michigan.

So, that's something to look forward to.  But until then I've got a lot to deal with in my non-athletic life, including projects in the workshop and a new tenant moving into my rental property.  And there's also the rudder line situation that's caused me so much grief: I would really like to have that V10L surfski back in working order so I can take it on the trip.

Meanwhile, I carry on with the athletic stuff.  On Friday I did my usual 90ish-minute bike ride out to Shelby Farms and back.  It was a good day for riding: while there were thunderstorms moving around the Mid South, here in Memphis the conditions were dry with a pleasant breeze.  Memorial Day weekend is of course the unofficial start of summer, and it's feeling pretty summery, with Fahrenheit temperatures in the mid to high 80s.

The rain was still missing us yesterday morning, and we had sunny skies and a lovely south breeze.  I paddled for 80 minutes, going down below the Harahan and Frisco and Memphis-Arkansas bridges, up along the Arkansas bank, and up above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge before returning to the harbor.  The south breeze kept me cool as long as I paddled into it, but it was quite warm whenever I was paddling north with the wind at my back, a reminder that more oppressively hot days lie ahead this summer.  I also realized I was feeling pretty tired about 50 minutes in.  There was no barge traffic or bumpy conditions of any kind, so the session started to feel like a grind in the late going.

I spent yesterday afternoon making another attempt to string a new rudder line on the starboard side of my V10L surfski.  And again, I failed.  I fear the damage to the tubing might be worse than I'd thought.  At this time I have cut only a small (4-inch diameter) hole in the back deck and I'm hoping to achieve my repairs without making it any bigger, but it's forcing me to work blind most of the time and I still can't tell exactly what the situation is deep in the boat's bowels.

It's all very frustrating, but I think that's all the more reason to keep up a robust athletic routine so I can say I did at least one good thing each day.  This morning's paddling session turned out to be an especially good thing.  When I left the house in the middle of town there was a breeze blowing, but it seemed mild and I didn't give it any thought.  But as I drove over the harbor on the A.W. Willis Bridge, things looked quite lively out on the Mississippi.  Down on the dock it was clear we had some strong wind: one of the houseboat owners has a big blue flag for his preferred presidential candidate on display, and it was flapping as majestically as could be.

I paddled against the wind to the harbor's mouth and found some legitimate downwind conditions out on the river--again, not Miller's Run or Columbia Gorge caliber, but definitely workable.  I left the harbor and headed downriver a ways, thinking I would ride the conditions back north.  Once I was in the middle of the river I found myself in one of those "washing machines," with waves moving seemingly every which way, and I admit I was feeling timid and tense.  I flailed around out there for maybe ten minutes, and then paddled back toward the harbor's mouth because a barge rig was coming down the river and I wanted to give it plenty of room to move by.  Once it was clear I decided to paddle upriver a bit, along the southern reach of Mud Island.  I ferried out into the main channel and found myself looking at some of the nicest downwind conditions I've ever seen on the Mississippi.  Here the runs were more organized, and I was able to relax and apply what I've learned about downwind paddling in the last few years.  I've annotated this map to show what was going on this morning:

I spent a nice long while reading the conditions, sprinting to catch runs, and linking one run to another.  It was just what the doctor ordered to blow off the steam I'd built up fussing with rudder lines and other nuisances of life.  All told I was in the boat 80 minutes this morning, and it set the tone for me to get some good stuff done back here at home this afternoon.

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

It's never dull, meteorologically speaking

There was talk of this area hitting 90 degrees Fahrenheit for the first time this year on Tuesday.  I'm not sure if we actually did, but it was close enough.

At least it was a good day to paddle and get wet.  I paddled out of the harbor and onto the Mississippi, where a south wind was producing some small bumps that I played around on.  I have to say that using my more stable boat out there has made such activity a lot more fun.

Some heavy rain moved through here yesterday, and when I looked at the Internet radar this morning I saw more headed this way across the state of Arkansas.  I went down to the river about an hour earlier than usual, hoping I could beat the worst of it.  Getting rained on isn't such a terrible thing, but I didn't want to be out on the water if there was lightning nearby.  I paddled down to the harbor's mouth, where I had an unobstructed view of the western horizon.  I could see dark clouds and what looked like showers across the river.  While I wasn't seeing any lightning, I could hear some occasional thunder.  Then I saw a bright bolt of lightning down around Presidents Island, and decided to head back toward the dock.  As I paddled northward there were some occasional lightning flashes, but the sound of thunder was taking some ten seconds to reach my ears, so I wasn't too worried.  When I reached the A.W. Willis Bridge, a couple of hundred meters south of my marina, I started paddling some back-and-forth laps beneath it and worked on my stroke mechanics.  By this time the rain was starting to come down hard.  Once my time in the boat reached 50 minutes, I returned to the dock and took out.  I changed into dry clothes under the marina's roof and hoped the rain would soon stop so I could put my boat away on its rack without getting soaked.  But the rain just kept falling and falling and falling.  When it finally slacked up a tiny bit, I quickly put the boat away and made a run up the ramp to the parking lot.  The rain kept falling as I drove home and didn't stop for good until after I'd finished lunch.  Then, oddly enough, it turned into a lovely sunny day in the afternoon; more thunderstorms are in the forecast for the next several days, however.

I'm starting to make some more serious plans for some travel next month, and I'll share them here soon.  I hope to include some racing in this trip.

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

Monday photo feature

Here's an update on my adventures in rudder line replacement.

We're looking at my V10L surfski, the one I prefer for racing on not-so-rough water.  As I mentioned in a previous post, the tube on the starboard side is broken inside the boat beneath the stern deck.  Making my best guess at the location of the break, I cut a circular hole.  It turns out my guess was pretty good, but if I had it to do over, I'd cut the hole a couple of inches farther forward.  (I will eventually "patch" the hole by installing the hatch I'm holding in the picture.)

It seemed as though the rest of the job would be simple enough from here, until I realized that the rearmost segment of tube has come detached from the hole (indicated by the red arrow) where the line comes out to meet the rudder post bracket.  So I have to find a way to reattach the tube to the hole and seal it so water won't get in the boat that way.  Sigh.

Fortunately my V10 Sport surfski is in good working order at the moment, so I do have a boat to paddle while I wade through this tedious, frustrating task.  Its lines are due for replacement too, but I'm not going to begin to work on those until I've got the V10L back in service.  Right now I don't even want to think about what kind of malignancies are hiding deep inside the V10 Sport.

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

More work on both pavement and muddy water

There's been some rain wandering into and out of the greater Memphis area.  The nice thing is it's kept the Fahrenheit temperature in the 70s for most of the week.  But the forecast is showing warmer days ahead.  We might hit 90 degrees for the first time this year in the middle of the week.

I had a good bike ride Friday afternoon.  I did my usual route out the Greater Memphis Greenline, around the lake in Shelby Farms, and back home via the Greenline.  Yes, I do this circuit a lot, and the reason is it's the only route easily accessible from my house that's almost entirely protected from motor vehicle traffic.  To get to any other protected bike trails around here, I would have to ride a long way on city streets or put my bike on the car and drive someplace.

The best thing about Friday is that it was one of those days when I didn’t so much as crank the engine of my car.  Besides riding my bike, I stuck around home and did some shop work.  I like days like that, when life feels nicely uncomplicated.

Some pretty heavy rain was moving in right as I was getting out of bed yesterday morning.  It came down for several hours and was moving out by the time I was heading down to the river.  The temperature was a pleasant 68 degrees.  I paddled for 80 minutes at a variety of paces.  There wasn’t much barge traffic around, and it was probably just as well for me to get a break from chasing wakes.

The cloud cover cleared out overnight, and it was a lovely sunny 75 degrees when I went downtown this morning.  Once again the river was free of barge traffic, so I spent my 60 minutes in the boat working on good rotation.  When I re-entered the harbor I did a good long surge to the Hernando DeSoto Bridge.

Both yesterday and today there was significantly less wood floating down the river.  The level is dropping slowly now after cresting during the week, and that should give all the debris a chance to move out.

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An onslaught of wood

I had a chance to do some more barge wake surfing Tuesday morning, as there were three rigs heading upstream on the Memphis riverfront.  I found the waves tough to get on, however.

For the last couple of weeks there has been an impressive amount of wood floating down the Mississippi--tree trunks, branches, and tons of smaller stuff.  While there's not really anything new about such conditions, I this is the longest sustained period of woody debris in the river that I can recall.  Right now paddling upstream or surfing behind an upstream-moving vessel means occasionally having to weave through a gauntlet of logs.  The worst thing is that some of the wood is so waterlogged that it's floating several inches below the surface where I can't see it.  At one point on Tuesday my boat hit a submerged log, stopped dead, and flipped.  I did a quick remount while the pilot of the towboat I was surfing behind was probably marveling at what a goober I was.  And then a little bit later I was paddling up along the Tennessee side and the big surf rudder on my V10 Sport hit a branch that was sticking out from the bank underwater.  The rudder now has a good-sized ding I need to repair.  And quite a few times my paddle hit logs lurking a foot or so beneath the surface.  These are strange days indeed out on that big river.

This morning there was a lot of driftwood and trash floating in the harbor, and at one point I had to stop and dislodge some junk from my rudder.  Once I was out on the river I saw a good bit of driftwood, but maybe not quite as much as on Tuesday.  The river is cresting right now around 26.5 feet on the Memphis gauge, so I expect in the coming days the debris will start to thin out.

I paddled for 60 minutes today.  An upstream-moving barge rig was just above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge as I left the harbor, and I tried to surf its residual waves.  By this time the waves' amplitude was low and their wavelength was long, so I really had to sprint hard to get even a few seconds of surf.  I worked on that for 20 minutes or so before returning to the harbor.

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

Monday photo feature

A couple of weeks ago I discussed the results of the U.S. Olympic team selections in whitewater slalom.  I'd be remiss if I didn't share the flatwater sprint results as well.

Three flatwater athletes will race for the U.S. in Paris.  Nevin Harrison (pictured above) qualified a spot for a U.S. athlete in 200-meter women's single canoe at last year's world championships, and subsequently won the right to fill that spot.  Harrison is the defending Olympic gold medalist in that event, and has also won two world championships.

This past month, Jonas Ecker and Aaron Small won the 500-meter men's double kayak event at the Pan American championships and thereby qualified for the same event in Paris.

Harrison, Ecker, and Small all hail from the greater Seattle-Tacoma area.

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

Some great paddling and some so-so riding

I took the weekend off from fighting the rudder-line wars.  So two of my three surfskis remain out of commission, maybe permanently for one of them.

I took a bike ride Friday morning, following my usual route out east on the Greater Memphis Greenline, around the lake in Shelby Farms, and back home via the Greenline.  I felt sort of tired and didn't push the pace.  But it was a beautiful day: the whole week had been muggy and rainy, but those storms early Thursday brought in some cooler, drier air, and Friday was sunny with a high around 75 degrees Fahrenheit.

It was sunny again yesterday, and warmer, but still not so humid.  I had a rather delightful time out on the river.  As I paddled out of the harbor there was a barge rig coming upriver, and I went to inspect the surfing possibilities behind it.  The waves were moving fast, and they were a bit confused because the towboat was turning to line itself up with the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and so surfing wasn't easy.  But I did get a handful of decent rides, and even linked a couple of runs (hard to do with barge wakes).  As the waves started to peter out I paddled down below the Harahan Bridge and then up along the Arkansas bank, most of the way to the HDB.  As I started my ferry back over toward the harbor's entrance I found some good residual waves from that same rig I'd been surfing behind earlier--it was now well north of the HDB, but for some reason waves seem to linger longer around that bridge.  I got to do some more nice surfing.  After that I returned to the harbor and did a couple of strong surges back to the dock.  So all my energy systems got some work during my 80 minutes in the boat.

I couldn't paddle this morning because the handbell group I play with had its last gig of the season.  And then I went to lunch with my mom--it is Mothers' Day, after all.  So my whole Sunday routine was out the window, and by mid afternoon I was feeling utterly lethargic.  It was a reminder of why I prefer to do my athletic stuff in the morning.  Finally, around 4 o'clock, I got myself out on a bike ride, and I rode for a good half-hour before my body finally started to embrace the idea.  After a 70-minute ride, I was still feeling a bit sluggish, but glad to have gotten some blood flowing.

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

Arrrrgh.

One of my projects this week has been installing new rudder lines on my three surfskis.  I think the general wisdom is that any surfski paddled regularly should have its lines changed once a year, so the boat I keep down on the riverfront was definitely due for new ones.  Meanwhile, my other two mostly just sit in storage in my garage, but when I took one of them down to Ocean Springs in March I noticed that one of its lines was getting pretty worn right at the rudder post.  So I decided to just change them out on all my boats and head into the summer with some peace of mind on this particular boat-maintenance issue.

The problem is that changing the rudder lines on a surfski is a monumental hassle.  No other task I can think of makes me want to scream impolite words at the top of my lungs like stringing rudder lines does.

The first challenge is to get the new line to feed through the tube inside the boat.  The best-case scenario is to have the old line still in place, because then you can just attach the end of the new line to the end of the old and pull it through.  But... you can't just tie them together, because the knot is too bulky to fit through the tube.  In the past I've used a little piece of electrical tape to join the ends, but you have to make a very neat, very thin tape joint so it will fit through the tube.  And then you have to pull it through very gently, lest the tape joint fail deep inside the boat.

This time around, my strategy has been to fray the end of each line, like so:

and then soak each end in G-flex epoxy resin, twist the two ends together, and let it cure overnight, with the intention of pulling it through the next day:

Each time, the epoxied joint has been too bulky to fit through the tube; so I have to whittle it down with a sharp knife or work on it with a piece of sandpaper.  One of the joints failed during this trimming process, and I had to glue the ends all over again.

(If you are not so fortunate as to have the old lines in place for pulling through the new lines, I know of a couple of things you can try.  One is to feed a stiff wire through the tube, and then use that to pull the new line through.  The challenge with this method attaching the line to the wire in a way that will fit through the tube.  Meanwhile, there are videos on You Tube that show the use of a vacuum cleaner to suck the line through the tube.  I've tried this a couple of times, and I seem to remember having success at least once but having more trouble other times.)

As of this writing I've been working on two of my three skis, and I've successfully installed two of the four new lines.  The other two have raised the frustration level of this project to a new height.  On Tuesday morning, while pulling on the old line to move the new line into place on one of the boats in my garage, the joint hit a snag inside the boat and broke.  Upon further inspection, I realized that the tube was broken inside the boat.  This was bad, because a surfski is a closed shell with no way to get inside short of taking a saw to it.

That is in fact what I ended up doing to my oldest ski when I found its tubes were broken a few years ago.  I hated to do it, but at least by that time the boat was getting old and beat-up and I was using it just for training anyway.  This photo shows what I did:

First I cut a circular hole in the deck aft of the seat bucket.  Peering through this hole, I found that the tubes were broken in many places and would have to be replaced entirely.  To do so, I would have to access the boat's insides closer to the footboard, and I ended up using a circular saw to make slits on either side of the seat.  After much painstaking work I got the new tubes in position and secured them in place, and then, by way of repairing the surgical damage I had done, I installed a hatch on the back deck (I ordered it from West Marine or some such supplier) and used Kevlar and fiberglass seam tape to patch the slits on either side of the seat.  The boat is now rather ugly and at least 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) heavier than it was when it was new, but like I said, it was already sort of beat-up anyway and relegated to training duty.  It has paddled just fine, and that's ultimately all that matters.

The broken tube I discovered Tuesday morning causes me more anguish, because even though I've had this boat eight years, it still feels new to me because I've mostly kept it in the garage and gotten it out only for races.  I was so infuriated by it all that I had to walk away from it and go down to the river to paddle (the whole point of all this work, after all).

I took the other boat from my garage--the one I hadn't messed up yet--down to the river with me because I wanted to bring my training boat back home so I could replace its rudder lines.  The boat I was taking down there happened to be the most stable one I own (V10 Sport), and that was a good thing because there was a strong south wind blowing and there were some pretty legitimate downwind conditions out on the Mississippi.  They weren't epic like the Miller's Run or the Columbia Gorge, but they were more than adequate for practice in reading conditions and linking runs.  And they were ideal for the mood I was in: infuriated with the awful turn my rudder-line-replacement project had taken, I needed to do lots and lots of hard sprints until I was too exhausted to feel angry anymore.  And that's what I did.

I brought the other boat home from the river and spent some time working on it yesterday.  I got one new line strung, but had that glue bond fail on the other one like I mentioned above.

This morning I returned to the river.  Some heavy thunderstorms had moved through overnight, part of the same system that spawned deadly tornados farther east in Tennessee.  By the time I got down to the dock the sun had come out and there was a mild breeze blowing from the northwest.  There would be no downwinding today, but I paddled the V10 Sport out onto the river hoping maybe there would be some barge wakes to ride.  But the river was free of traffic, so I just paddled for 60 minutes, working hard on hip rotation.  With a more stable boat under me I felt comfortable rotating hard out on the river, so much so that my whole pelvic area was quite tired by the time I was finished.

This afternoon I went down to the shop to work on my training boat's other rudder line.  I was expecting this task to be the smoothest yet; after all, should anything go wrong I have access to this boat's innards through that hatch I installed a few years ago.  I shaved down the glue joint so that it would fit through the tube, and began pulling.  The line hit a snag, so I opened the hatch to investigate... and discovered that the tube had broken up into many fragments.  This is a tube that was new just a few years ago.  The only thing I can figure is that when a boat lives outdoors year-round, the tube material can't withstand the constant fluctuation in temperature, with the freezing and thawing and all that.

I'll have to install a new tube, and that'll probably mean taking the circular saw to the edge of the seat bucket again to get the tube properly situated there.

Or...

Maybe it's time to retire this old boat.  Fifteen years is a long life for just about any canoe or kayak, and I've certainly invested a good bit of money and many hours of labor to keep this one going for this long.  It's seen me through hundreds of days of training and exploring, and it feels like an old friend, but perhaps the time has come to take it behind the barn and put it out of its misery.  Sigh.

That would leave me with the V10 Sport that's currently down at the dock (the state of whose insides I have yet to explore), and that other boat in the garage (a V10L) that also has a broken tube.  In that boat I'm pretty sure there's just one break near the stern, and I'm hopeful that I can cut a smaller hole, run the rudder line across the break, and repair the hole with a smaller hatch.

Anyway... what a week I've had, all because of what at first glance looks like some simple routine maintenance.  And yes, I do have sort of an issue with the manufacturer of these boats regarding the durability, accessibility, and repairability of their interior parts, but I'll save that rant for some future post.

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Monday photo feature

John P. Batson of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, competes in the "Nooga Loop" canoe and kayak race on Saturday.  This is a 10.9-mile (17.5-kilometer) race on the Tennessee River at Chattanooga, Tennessee.  Photo by Rick White.

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Warmer weather makes wetter better

Both the weather and the water are getting warm enough that I'm starting to feel comfortable surfing wakes out on the Mississippi.  I got to do a little of that both Tuesday and Thursday.  On Tuesday I was on the river north of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge when I saw the Coast Guard's buoy tender the Kankakee coming upriver, and I found some nice waves in its wake.  The vessel was moving fast and I really had to sprint hard to catch something, but each time I did I felt that rush of satisfaction that's part of what makes surfing/downwind paddling so addictive.

As I was paddling out of the harbor on Thursday there was a barge rig heading upstream in perfect position for me to get out to it, and I was eager for more surfing goodness.  I achieved a couple of nice rides, but unfortunately there was another barge rig coming upriver behind this one, and it started blaring its horn at me, so I moved over toward the Arkansas bank to ease the pilot's troubled mind.  Once I was down below this towboat I checked out its wake, but the waves weren't nearly as good.  Oh well.

I had a bike ride planned for Friday, and my biggest challenge was the weather: when I checked the Internet radar Friday morning, it showed a huge mass of rain moving across Arkansas right toward Memphis, and I didn't think there was any way I could do my ride in the morning without getting drenched.  I figured I would have to wait and hope the rain would move out by the afternoon, but as I continued to watch the radar it looked like the system was moving slowly enough that I could squeeze the morning ride in.  I rode the Greenline out to Shelby Farms and back, thinking there was a good chance that the last 20 minutes or so of my 95-minute ride would be done in the rain.  But the rain held off, and once I was back inside I checked the radar again and the rain had only just arrived in Forrest City, about 50 miles west of Memphis.  So it was moving more slowly than I’d thought.  And when the afternoon arrived with still no rain, I checked the radar again and saw that the part of the system that appeared headed for Memphis had fallen apart.  Spring weather is unpredictable.

Yesterday I headed out on a slightly longer paddle--80 minutes--and I was expecting it to be a calm distance paddle.  But as I left the harbor I saw three upstream-moving barge rigs down below the Harahan and Frisco and Memphis-Arkansas Bridges, so I knew that before I was done I'd have an opportunity to surf some more.  I ferried over to the Arkansas side and paddled up into the lower reaches of the Loosahatchie Chute before heading back downriver.  By this time the barge "convoy" was passing beneath the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and once I was below the last rig I paddled in to explore the surfing possibilities.  The waves were moving fast, and they were sort of wandering from side to side rather than moving in an organized wave train, so I really had to sprint to catch them, and once I did catch one, the ride didn't last long.  But it was good practice for the next time I'm in a true downwind situation.  I had to focus on staying balanced on the crest of a wave, and keep my eyes open for another run to catch when the one I was on petered out.

This morning I paddled for 60 minutes on a river that was all clear of barge traffic, and that was okay with me.  Surfing is hard work, and I was ready for a calm session.  All this week I'd worked on that thing that's been the theme of the whole winter and spring for me: improving my rotation from the hips.  Again, now that swimming is no longer such a frigid prospect I'm feeling a lot more relaxed out on the turbulent waters of the Mississippi, and rotating more freely.  It's still a mixed bag, though: some days I feel like I'm still making myself do it rather than doing it naturally.  Today I actually felt better rotating out on the river than I did in the harbor.

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Monday photo feature

This screen-grab from NBC Sports footage shows Casey Eichfeld of Drums, Pennsylvania, moments after crossing the finish line in his final run of the U.S. Olympic trials at Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on Saturday.

How long has Casey been participating in the sport of whitewater slalom?  I was still racing slalom myself when he first started showing up at races, so that's a pretty long time.  If I remember correctly (it's possible I don't), the first time I ever saw him was at an age group nationals event at South Bend, Indiana, in the summer of 1999.  He was hard not to notice: at 9 years old, he was three or four years younger than the next-youngest kid there.  Then in November of that year I attended a Thanksgiving training camp on the Tuckasegee River at Bryson City, North Carolina, and Casey was there too.  This would have been just after his 10th birthday.  He was a tiny little kid, not exactly a threat to us "grown men," but he was already showing some solid technique in the gates.

Over the next several years I did less and less slalom racing myself, but I spotted Casey here and there, training and racing wherever he could even though he was too young to be eligible for the junior national team.  Little by little the kid grew up, and in 2008--less than a decade after I'd first seen him--he made his first Olympic team, racing in men's double canoe (C2) at Beijing with partner Rick Powell.  Four years after that Casey was in the Olympics again, racing in single canoe (C1) at London.

He was staying busy in the non-Olympic years, too, training all over the world, making national teams, and racing in World Cup series and, of course, the world championships.  His finest moment might have come in the 2015 worlds at La Seu d'Urgell, Spain: in his final run, Casey seemed to be laying down a winning performance before a gate-touch penalty near the end of the course knocked him back to fourth place.

Unbowed, Casey came back to make his third Olympic team the next year.  At Rio he raced in C1 and teamed with Devin McEwan to race C2 as well.

At this point Casey wasn't exactly old--he wasn't even 30 yet--but he was a veteran of two decades full of hundreds of thousands of paddle strokes all over the world.  And he was now married, with thoughts of starting a family.  The question of whether he shouldn't stow his paddle and get a "real job" was a legitimate one.  But after serious thought and support from his wife, Casey decided he wanted to try to do something no other U.S. slalom racer had ever done: make a fourth Olympic team.

That meant another four years of training, and the Covid-19 pandemic turned that into five years, as the Tokyo Olympics was pushed back into 2021.  And then Casey failed to make the team.  He was beat out at the trials by a surging Zach Lokken of Durango, Colorado.

Once again it was decision time.  But at least this time the next Olympics was just three years away, and Casey decided to give it one more shot.  A few more cycles of training brought him to this month's Olympic trials, which began the weekend of April 13-14 at Montgomery, Alabama, and concluded this past weekend at Oklahoma City.  Once again Zach Lokken was Casey's most formidable competitor, and coming out of the first weekend Lokken held a slim lead.  Lokken maintained a slight edge after first runs at Oklahoma City, and Casey would say later, "Honestly, I thought it was gonna be Zach after the first run."

But then came second runs, and Casey uncorked a simply gorgeous display of speed, power, and precision.  In the photo above he's just a couple of meters past the finish line, knowing he's posted a terrific time and unable to contain his emotions any longer.  At this same moment Zach Lokken is sitting in his boat up at the start, about to take his last run, and while he can't know exactly what Casey has done, he's able to hear the spectators' reaction and the commentary of the venue announcer, and he has to know that Casey has just done something exceptional.  In other words, he's not in an enviable position.  He went on and made a valiant attempt to stick to his plan, but a time error early in the run spiraled into bigger mistakes farther down the course.  I suspect he knew deep down it was game over.  You can watch video footage of both Casey's run and Zach's run here.

Casey is one of two slalom racers the U.S. will send to Paris this summer.  The other is Evy Leibfarth of Bryson City, North Carolina, the trials winner in women's kayak and women's canoe.  Unfortunately, the U.S. did not qualify to enter a men's kayak athlete in the Olympics this year.  Such qualifications are based on U.S. athletes' performances in last year's world championships and in a Pan American competition this spring.

I'll conclude by saying that even in this era of pro athletes at the Olympics and lucrative "N.I.L." endorsement deals and all that stuff, most Olympic athletes are not rolling in the dough, and that is especially true of athletes in the more media-marginalized sports like canoe and kayak racing.  Meanwhile, the expenses are quite huge.  In the several months between now and the opening ceremony at Paris, Casey will be traveling to train on the course there and also to do some World Cup racing to make sure his game is in order.  He might get a little bit of financial support from the sport's national governing body, but it won't be nearly enough to cover all the airfare and lodging and other expenses he'll face.  And so... anybody who would like to send a few bucks Casey's way can do so here.

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

Another week of spring-fever fun

It's been another week of trying to keep something going in the athletic department while having lots to deal with in my non-athletic life.  The next race I'm considering doing is in mid June, so before long I guess I'll ramp things up again.  But I'm satisfied with how this past week went.

I made it down to the river Tuesday for a 60-minute paddle.  It was quite breezy from the south and I went out on the river to see if there was any downwind action, but it was small.

I did a leisurely bike ride Wednesday afternoon, thinking I would do a more serious one on Thursday, which has been my bike-riding day lately.  But rain moved in Thursday afternoon.  I'm just fine with paddling in the rain, but riding my bike in the rain?  I don't like that so much.

So I pushed the bike ride to Friday, and I made it a good one, taking the Greenline out to Shelby Farms and looping around the lake before returning home.  I often see deer out in Shelby Farms or in the Wolf River bottoms, and they usually dash away when they see me coming.  But on Friday there was a whole flock of young deer grazing no more than 30 feet off the bike path, and when I rode by they stayed right there and kept on munching grass:

I continued on and did my loop around the lake, and when I passed back through this location about 20 minutes later, the deer were long gone.

Yesterday I was ready to get back in the boat for a longer paddle.  There was a strong south wind blowing, and rather than expose myself to all that with another trip around the Loosahatchie Bar, I elected to stay on the Tennessee side of the Mississippi River and paddle up the Wolf River to the Danny Thomas Boulevard bridge before heading back.  Up on the Wolf the water is much more sheltered from the wind, and I was able to relax and focus on technique and stroke mechanics in a way I can't quite do on rougher water.  Meanwhile, I was actually feeling tired and sluggish in the boat; I think Friday's bike ride took more out of me than I realized.  So it was a pretty tough two hours.  I had to paddle some rough water on my way back down the Mississippi, and I tried my best to relax and let the current carry me.  Even so, I was flat-out exhausted by the time I was back in the harbor.

I woke up a couple of times last night with my arms throbbing, probably because I'd used them too much out on the river.  I went back down there this morning planning to keep the intensity low.  The south wind was blowing even a bit harder, and I relaxed and didn't fight it as I paddled down to the harbor's mouth.  Once I got a look out over the river I saw some small but serviceable downwind runs, and I couldn't resist going out and playing on them a little.  I didn't stay out there too long: the runs were confused and hard to catch, and I also still wasn't entirely comfortable out there myself.  In another six weeks, when hot weather has settled in for the summer, I'll be able to go out there and not care about swimming.  Anyway, back in the harbor I paddled easy and tried to take good strokes until time had expired on a 50-minute session.

I'm still not in super-serious training mode, but I'd say it wasn't a bad week.

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Let's hear it for Admore!

I've visited the town of Fish Hoek, Cape Town, South Africa, twice.  A big reason that I want to get back there sooner or later is the daily dose of goodwill and hospitality I can expect from Mr. Admore Dzinzi.  The Zimbabwe native is the caretaker at the Fish Hoek Beach Sports Club, and it's clear the club members are fond of him as well.  Local You Tube celebrities Zach & Jerry put together this video in tribute to Admore and his commitment to the general awesomeness of the club, the town, and the sport of ocean paddling.

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The Loosahatchie Bar

I've paddled around the Loosahatchie Bar twice in the last two weeks, and it's occurred to me that it's been a while since I've shared a map of this route.  I'm kind of a hopeless case when it comes to generating maps from my G.P.S. device, but fortunately my friend Adam Davis has the procedure down.  Here's a map he produced after we paddled around the Bar several years ago:

The Loosahatchie Bar is the big island in the middle of the Mississippi River.  The river's main channel that the barge rigs use is to the east (right) of the Bar.  The narrower channel on the west side of the Bar is known as the Loosahatchie Chute, which happens to be maybe my favorite wilderness spot in the greater Memphis area.

This image shows the start/finish location at the downtown Memphis cobblestone landing, where Adam parked his car that day.  The distance units are in miles, and as you can see, we covered about ten and a half miles starting and finishing there.  I, of course, keep my boat at Harbortown Marina (circled in yellow), which is about a mile north of the cobblestone landing, so when I go around the Bar I cover about twelve and a half miles (that's about 20.1 kilometers).

On this day we ferried across the Mississippi's main channel where the 4-mile mark appears.  Sometimes I make the ferry higher up than that, and other times I make it sooner than that.  This past Saturday I ferried across about where the 3-mile mark appears in this image.  That's because there was a big river tour boat moored along the bank there, and rather than fight the current to get around it, I decided to just go ahead and ferry from there.

Anyway... I hope this image is helpful to those who have wondered what I am talking about when I mention paddling around the Loosahatchie Bar.

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Monday photo feature

A big reason I prefer to do my athletic stuff outdoors is the chance to see wildlife.  On the Memphis riverfront I see many species of waterfowl and wading birds, fish, beavers, turtles, and snakes.

Meanwhile, things I do in the middle of town--running and bike riding, primarily--might not offer as many wildlife-viewing opportunities, but there are a few.  When I ride my bike out to Shelby Farms like I did this past Thursday, I often see some wildlife in the park and in the adjacent Wolf River bottoms.  Most of the time it's deer, but on Thursday I came up on the creature pictured above near one of the smaller Shelby Farms lakes.  I could tell right away it wasn't poisonous; I'm not much of a snake expert, but I'm thinking maybe it was a king snake.  I dismounted my bike to watch it for a few minutes, snap its picture, and make sure it got across the path without being run over by other riders.  When I rode back through this location some twenty minutes later, it was nowhere in sight.

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Some paddling and some pedaling on days balmy and brisk

Warm weather continued for much of this past week, with the temperature exceeding 80 degrees Fahrenheit a couple of times.  I had a nice 60-minute paddle Tuesday morning in calmer conditions than what Adam and I had paddled in on Sunday.  The mornings are still cool enough that I'm not just dying to take a hose bath on the dock after I paddle, but those days will arrive soon enough.

I got a good bike ride in Thursday afternoon.  I took the Greater Memphis Greenline out to Shelby Farms, did a loop around Patriot Lake, and came back.  Riding neither super-easy nor super-hard, I did that in about 95 minutes.

Thursday was one of those days when I didn't even start up my car; the bike ride was my only venture away from home.  And on Friday I went all day again without cranking the engine.  I spent most of the day on a woodworking project for a client.  Meanwhile, Friday differed from Thursday in that it was much cooler.  A front had come through overnight, and I don't think we ever made it to 60 degrees on Friday.

It was time to paddle again yesterday morning, and I really didn't want to do it.  Part of the reason was that my homebodyish ways of the previous couple of days were starting to gel, and part of the reason was this "blackberry winter" we're having.  Six weeks ago I welcomed a day with a high temperature in the 50s, but after those 80-degree days we just had it feels awfully chilly.  The temperature was around 50 degrees when I got up yesterday, and a brisk wind was blowing.  I think the only reason I managed to get myself to the river is that I'm such a creature of habit: when it's Saturday morning, I paddle.  That's just how I'm wired.

I fought through a thick mire of ennui to get my boat off the rack and get myself dressed for paddling, knowing that once I was in the boat, I would find the energy.  And sure enough, I did.  I spent the two-kilometer paddle from the dock to the mouth of the harbor shaking off the sluggishness, and then I was ready to do a good long session.  I had a couple of options: with the Mississippi flowing at 21.7 feet on the Memphis gauge, I still had enough water to paddle around the Loosahatchie Bar.  Or I could stay on the Tennessee side of the river, paddle up to the mouth of the Wolf River, and then paddle up the Wolf to the Danny Thomas Boulevard bridge and back.  Helping me make the decision was a big river-touring boat (the Mississippi Symphony) moored along the bank up near the Wolf: while I could have just fought the Mississippi's current to get around it and access the Wolf, I decided that I might as well stay out in the channel and ferry across, thereby committing myself to a trip around the Bar.

The wind was blowing from the northeast, and I'd had some shelter from it while paddling up the Tennessee bank.  But over on the west side of the Mississippi's main channel I had to fight some stiff headwinds to get up to the top of the Loosahatchie Bar.  Once I was paddling down the Loosahatchie Chute the wind was coming from about my eight o'clock, so it was a mostly helpful tailwind  but not without some nuisance effects.  As I emerged from the Chute and rejoined the main channel I found myself with more of a beam wind.  Northerly winds don't cause the same kind of rough water on the Mississippi that southerly winds do, but I still had lots of pesky chop slapping against my boat on the port side.

I've mentioned in the past that I like to break two hours (elapsed time between leaving the dock and returning to the dock) when I go around the Bar.  By the time I was passing beneath the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, I knew I was going to have to push it to have a chance.  I made it from the bridge to the harbor entrance about as quickly as I could have asked, but then I had a headwind for the two kilometers back to the dock.  Having paddled this stretch thousands of times over the years, I knew just how imposing my task was as I passed one landmark after another.  With about 500 meters to go, I could tell I was going to fall just short.  I completed the journey in about two hours, one minute.

I left the river feeling good about it just the same.  I was dead-dog tired the rest of the day.  There were all kinds of events happening around town, including some live music I might have liked to hear, but in the end I stayed close to home.  I slept soundly last night.

This morning it was slightly cooler and just as windy, but at least the sun was out.  Today I would stay in the harbor and paddle mostly easy for 60 minutes.  As I set out I was quite stiff in my pelvic area after two hours of hip rotation in bumpy conditions yesterday.  I paddled to the harbor's north end first, trying to let my body move without forcing it as much as I could.  Eventually things loosened up for me, especially once I was paddling back south with the wind at my back.  Back on the dock I was tired again but congratulating myself on a solid few days of work.

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