Many paddle strokes here in my city and in that city overseas

This morning I did a gym session before heading down to the river.  Oppressive heat has returned to Memphis and the Mid South, and the temperature was pushing 90 degrees Fahrenheit when I got downtown.  Once again I spent 30 minutes in the surfski and 30 minutes in the whitewater boat.  There was a robust south breeze that kept me cool as I paddled the ski down to the mouth of the harbor, but when I came back toward the dock with the wind at my back the heat bore down.  I also had bad stinging in my eyes: with the wind at my back the sweat on my face doesn't evaporate before it runs into my eyes.  Back at the dock I hopped in the whitewater boat and did all kinds of drills, including plenty of Eskimo rolls.  The water felt great out in that heat.  I took a cool hose bath once I'd finished, and came home feeling pretty good.  I'm enjoying these variety-filled paddling sessions.

At the Olympic Games over there in Paris, the whitewater slalom men's canoe class had its semifinal and final on Monday.  French paddler Nicolas Gestin won the gold medal, and whereas Jessica Fox had saved her best run for last in women's kayak, Gestin posted the fastest times in the preliminary round, the semifinal, and the final.  His final run was a remarkable 5.48 seconds faster than that of silver medalist Adam Burgess of Great Britain.  Matej Benus of Slovakia claimed the bronze, 0.19 second behind Burgess.

NBC was so kind as to post this footage on You Tube of the final runs for Burgess and Gestin, and Gestin's run is truly a thing of beauty.  It reminds me of moments I had while racing slalom (not at the world class level, of course) when it felt like everything was going right, like all the skills I knew I had were right at my fingertips.  I've had similar moments in downwind paddling more than two decades later.  Such moments are elusive, but when you have them it makes all the many hours of work you put in feel worthwhile.

The Olympics came to an end in the rudest of ways for U.S. C1 paddler Casey Eichfeld, for whom I shared some backstory in this post three months ago.  He received a 50-second penalty for missing a gate that knocked him back to last place in the semifinal round.  As of this writing I have not seen video footage of Casey's run, but I would guess that the penalty resulted from a blink-of-an-eye error that Casey is now wishing he could have back.

That is very much the nature of this supremely unforgiving paddlesport discipline.  A major league baseball player can make a fielding error, or an N.B.A. basketball player can commit a turnover, and there are still chances for their teams to come back and win.  When you make a similar mistake in elite-level whitewater slalom, that's it.  You lose.  This is almost certainly Casey's last Olympics and I'm really sorry it had to end in such a way.  Over his long career Casey has been a lot of fun to watch and has been an exemplary citizen in the international athletic community, and I hope that in the fullness of time he'll be able to look back on all that and be satisfied.

The action in Paris has now moved on to the other two classes.  In today's preliminary round, the women's canoe field got trimmed from 21 athletes to 18 and the men's kayak field from 23 to 20.  Among the 16 female canoeists who will line up in tomorrow's semifinal is Evy Leibfarth of Bryson City, North Carolina, who finished 11th today.  The male kayakers will have their semis and finals Thursday.  The U.S. did not qualify to enter an athlete in that class for these Games.

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Monday photo feature

The whitewater slalom competition is underway at the Olympic Games in Paris.  Coming into the Games, there was probably no favorite more solid than the one pictured above, Jessica Fox of Australia.

Slalom success runs in Fox’s family: her father Richard, who competed in men's kayak for Great Britain, was heralded as perhaps the greatest the sport had ever seen while winning five world championships (1981, 1983, 1985, 1989, 1993).  Her mother Myriam was a world champion in 1989 and 1993 while competing in women's kayak for France.  Though slalom was absent from the Olympic programme for much of their careers, Richard and Myriam hung around long enough to become Olympians in the 1990s, Myriam winning a bronze medal in 1996.

When Jessica was four, the family moved to Australia so that Richard could take a coaching position with the national team there, and that's how Jessica came to compete for that nation.  Now Jessica is the one people are saying might be the greatest slalomist ever.  That doesn't mean she wins the gold every time out; the competition is strong enough, and the sport is fickle enough, for her to take her share of defeats.  But she does wind up on the podium with remarkable regularity.  She has medaled in kayak, canoe, or both at eight of the ten world championships held since 2010, and finished first eight times.  She has also amassed an eye-popping 75 medals in World Cup competition.

In the picture above, an 18-year-old Jessica is competing at her first Olympics at London in 2012 (I lifted it from her Instagram page).  The moment captured looks like a potential disaster, but she held her act together to claim the silver medal in women's kayak.  Four years later in Rio, she was the bronze medalist.  Women's canoe made its Olympic debut in Tokyo three years ago, and Jessica won the gold medal in that class while taking another bronze in women's kayak.

That brings us to this past weekend in Paris.  Jessica was the second-fastest athlete in the preliminary round Saturday.  Yesterday she started off low-key by finishing 8th in the semifinal round, five seconds (including a 2-second gate-touch penalty) off the pace.  But she came through when it counted, winning the final with a clean run to claim her first Olympic gold in kayak.  She still has the canoe class to come: that starts tomorrow.  And at age 30, she's quite likely to have at least one more Olympic Games in her future.  I don't take much stock in "greatest of all time" debates, but Jessica Fox's reign over this particular era cannot be denied at this point.

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A little of everything for me, and action on the big stage for the Olympians

It's been mostly overcast this weekend with rain moving through the area.  The temperature has continued to be below normal, and I'm trying to savor that because it looks like hotter days will be moving in this coming week.

After a gym day on Friday, I was back in the boat yesterday.  It was pouring down rain when I arrived at the river, and it rained on me a good bit as I paddled.  As I paddled toward the mouth of the harbor there were a bunch of law enforcement and search and rescue craft on the water.  I was curious to know what was going on, but I stayed out of their way.

Out on the river there was a big barge rig coming upstream.  I paddled down to it and found the best wake surfing I'd seen in several weeks.  There was no one wave I was able to ride for long, but there were some linkable runs and I had a lot of fun working those.  I felt comfortable paddling aggressively, and once again I think having my most stable surfski down there has helped a lot.  Barge wakes aren't exactly the same as downwind conditions, but here I was working on skills that will transfer directly to a downwind situation.  It makes me want to go back to South Africa, although with the Grand Canyon trip coming up in 13 months I doubt I have it in me, energy-wise or money-wise, to squeeze in a big trip abroad like that.  Maybe in 2026...

Eventually the waves petered out as the barge rig moved farther upriver, and I paddled up the Tennessee bank back to the harbor.  I got a chance to talk to a couple of Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency rangers, and they told me they had just recovered the body of a drowning victim.  Apparently sometime Friday the victim and a friend were in a fishing boat that capsized; emergency responders rescued the friend, but failed to find the drowning victim until yesterday morning around the time I was down there paddling.

I did a gym session this morning before heading to the river.  We'd gotten some more rain overnight and early this morning, but the sun was peeking through by the time I was headed downtown.  I paddled the surfski to the mouth of the harbor and found no barge traffic on the river, so I returned to the dock and paddled the whitewater boat.  That wrapped up a pretty good weekend: I enjoyed some surfing FUN yesterday, and logged some more forward stroke practice and some whitewater drills today.

Meanwhile, the Olympics have begun over in France, and medals have been won in one of the four whitewater slalom classes.  At 30 years old, Jessica Fox of Australia has solidified her status as one of the greatest of all time with her victory in the women's kayak class.  Klaudia Zwolinska of Poland earned the silver medal, Kimberley Woods of Great Britain the bronze.  The U.S. entrant, Evy Leibfarth of Bryson City, North Carolina, finished 15th in the semifinal round; only the top twelve finishers advanced to the final.  It was a disappointment for Evy, but her Olympics isn't over yet: she'll compete in the women's canoe class starting Tuesday.

The semifinal results are posted here; the final results are here.

The men's canoeists are next: their semifinal and final are scheduled for tomorrow.  The U.S. team's entrant, Casey Eichfeld of Drums, Pennsylvania, advanced to the semis with a 10th-place finish in yesterday's preliminary round.

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

An ordinary guy does his thing here at home while the gifted are ready to go across the ocean

I did a gym session Tuesday morning.  I didn't get down to the river until the afternoon because of a morning obligation.  I paddled for 75 minutes and got showered with two periods of pretty good soft rain.  I thought it was beautiful out there.

We've continued to have cooler temperatures than normal, but the humidity has been at typical July levels this week.  I got good and sweaty during a 90-minute bike ride Wednesday, and yesterday I had sweat in my eyes while paddling the surfski out on the Mississippi yesterday.  I paddled the ski for 40 minutes at a fairly high intensity level, then came back to the dock and spent 20 minutes doing some drills in the whitewater boat.

Meanwhile, some paddlers of the world-class variety will be in their boats as the Olympic Games get underway in Paris.  The whitewater slalom competition will take place during the first week, and then the flatwater sprinters will take over for the second week.  I understand that the preliminary heats for women's kayak and men's canoe will take place tomorrow; the female kayakers will have their semis and finals on Sunday, and the male canoeists will have theirs on Monday.

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

Monday photo feature

Sonny Salomon snapped this picture of me doing some surfing on the Caney Fork River in Rock Island State Park near McMinnville, Tennessee.  The year is 1998.

I no longer have the boat in this picture.  It was stolen eight years ago.  But last year I got my hands on one that's the same make and model, and that's the boat I've been messing around in on the riverfront in the last couple of weeks.  I've always liked the design: it's reasonably stable, surfs well, and is a decent general-purpose river-running boat.  I reckon it'll be the boat I use in the Grand Canyon next year, unless I stumble across something that I like even better.

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I still have some higher rungs to reach for

I did a gym session Friday, and that wasn't the only weight-bearing exercise I got that morning.  I had a steel ladder that I wanted to mount on the side of my building, and I recruited a friend to help me.  It was a heavy item, especially whenever we had to hoist the thing up over our heads, and I feared that just two of us might not be enough for the job.  But we took it slow, and discussed the best course of action for each step, and in the end we got the ladder up on the wall and bolted in place:

The temperature continues to be below normal here, with Fahrenheit highs in the 80s.  Right now the forecast says it'll be that way for at least a week.  I don't understand it, but I'm sure not complaining.

I went down to the riverfront yesterday with the same plan I'd been following for a couple of weeks: paddle the surfski to the mouth of the harbor and see if there were any wake-surfing opportunities out on the Mississippi, and if there weren't, come back to the dock and paddle the whitewater boat.  I was in the first leg of this process when I encountered two guys on personal watercraft (jet skis).  As they taxied side by side out of the harbor toward the main river, they created a nice big wave that I settled onto and surfed for the better part of a minute.  Once we were beyond the no-wake zone, they opened up their throttles and left me behind.  I don't think they even saw what I was doing behind them.

There was no barge traffic on the river, so I returned to the dock and got in the whitewater boat.  Once again I did all kinds of drills: forward paddling drills, backpaddling drills, spins on sweeps and draws, Eskimo rolls.  My skills really aren't as rusty as I was afraid they might be, and that's put me in an upbeat mood.  It sure feels good to get wet, too, even on a cooler-than-normal July day.

This morning I did a gym session and went back down to paddle.  Sitting in the surfski at the harbor's mouth, I found things quiet out on the river once again.  So I headed back toward the dock.  I haven't mentioned it lately, but my mission to rotate from the hips more effectively goes on.  Occasionally the motion feels as natural for me as can be, and occasionally it feels totally forced; most of the time it's somewhere between those two extremes.

I capped off the morning with some more whitewater drills followed by a hose bath.  Even here in the Mid South, summer can feel pretty good sometimes.

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Summer fun continues

Tuesday morning I did a gym session and then headed down to the river for some paddling.  When I reached the mouth of the harbor I saw the fuel barge that services touring riverboats coming the Mississippi, so I paddled out to inspect its wake.  I surfed a tiny bit but there wasn't really much action.  After that I went over to the Arkansas side and paddled upriver.  There's a series of wing dams over there, and with the river flowing at 16.4 feet on the Memphis gauge they were well underwater but creating lots of boily water, and I had some fun paddling through that.  Back when I was racing whitewater slalom I really struggled with keeping my boat gliding and making precise moves in boily water, and even today I make a point of working on that.  A 6.4-meter-long surfski with a rudder is a lot easier to keep gliding than a rudderless slalom boat that's no more than four meters long, but I still enjoy it when I can master this old slalom nemesis.

Tuesday was probably the most oppressively hot day we've had since I returned from my vacation, and as I paddled up the harbor back toward the dock I did some remount practice to cool off--twice from the left and twice from the right, because I like symmetry.

Yesterday morning there was some rain headed this way.  A look at the Internet radar showed a huge mass of rain over Arkansas, but it was moving eastward slowly enough that I thought I could get in a bike ride before it moved in.  The western sky looked pretty clear when I left the house, but by the time I was at my turnaround point at Shelby Farms there were dark clouds on the horizon.  I hoped for the best as I pedaled back toward home, but a few stray raindrops turned into a steady drizzle, and over the last couple of kilometers I got pretty good and soaked.  Fortunately I was in my last ten minutes of riding by this time.  And of course, "skin is waterproof," as we used to say at camp.

This morning I was back in the boat.  Commercial traffic has been scarce when I've been down there for the last couple of weeks, but when I reached the mouth of the harbor today there was a nice big barge rig moving upstream on that section of the river.  I paddled out and found waves that were less steep than normal, and they flattened out quickly the farther I got from the towboat's screws.  I did lots and lots of hard sprints and got only a handful of brief rides, but the effort was fun.  I've really enjoyed using a more stable ski than the one I've usually kept on the riverfront, as I'm seeing all kinds of little things I'm able to do that I couldn't before.

The nice thing about yesterday's rain is that it's cooled things off here.  Today's high temperature was in the mid 80s Fahrenheit.  I can't ask for better than that in the middle of July.

I haven't paddled the whitewater boat since Sunday.  I've been feeling a lot of soreness in my hips and lower back lately, and I think that was caused by all the Eskimo rolling and aggressive hip-snapping drills I did over the weekend.  So it's probably not a bad idea to give that area some extra time to recover.

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

Monday photo feature

I didn't spend a whole lot of time in Minnesota last month, but I thought the landforms along the state's north shore of Lake Superior were interesting.  In particular, the many rivers and creeks running off the terrain into the lake caught my attention.  It had been raining a lot and all these streams had healthy flows.

This area of Minnesota seems to be most commonly known as the Sawtooth Mountains, a part of the Canadian Shield.  The streams that drain into Superior are generally short, but many of them have steep gradients with whitewater ranging as high as Class VI in difficulty.

Sadly, I really wasn't prepared to do much whitewater paddling.  I did have my whitewater boat on the truck, but I hadn't done any research or reached out to anybody in the local paddling community--very important tasks for somebody who wants to run lesser-known wilderness streams that are only runnable during rainy periods.  I also didn't have much time: by the time I reached Minnesota I was in the final days of the period I'd allotted for vacation.

The reality is that I've fallen out of the whitewater world--not completely out, but pretty close.  With one exception, I really don't know any regular whitewater paddlers anymore.  And it doesn't help that I live in a whitewater-poor part of the country.  Here in Memphis I'd rather paddle my surfski because it's a much more fun boat to paddle on the riverfront.  A decade or more ago I felt that I could just jump in the whitewater boat and paddle it any time I wanted, but in recent years I haven't felt so confident of that.  These days I'm convinced that I have to ease my body into anything the slightest bit different from what I normally do.  Is that true, or is it just in my head?  Hard to say.  It's an aspect of aging that I'm struggling with.

Whatever the case, my days of whitewater paddling aren't over yet, seeing as how I've got a trip through the Grand Canyon on the calendar about 13 months from now.  A chunk of next year will be dedicated to getting my body ready for all the stresses that will be imposed on it in that environment.

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

Enjoying some variety

I did a gym session Friday afternoon.  I'd worried that working my biceps and triceps would bring back the chronic soreness I dealt with last year and maybe a year or two before that, but so far those muscles have responded well.  I've long said that gym work is my least favorite part of training, and in the last decade or so I've kept it as brief and simple as possible for that reason.  But it does make me feel good when I keep at least a small gym routine going.  I believe it helps me as a paddler, and if nothing else, having some muscle tone satisfies my vanity.

By yesterday morning the heat and humidity were settling back into the Mid South.  It was 87 degrees Fahrenheit as I headed down to the river just after 9 o'clock yesterday morning, an I broke a sweat on the dock just getting my boat and gear ready.  I paddled the surfski to the mouth of the harbor to see if there were any barge-wake-surfing opportunities out on the Mississippi; when I saw that there weren't, I paddled back to the dock and hopped in the whitewater boat.  I did a bunch of stroke drills and also some Eskimo rolls, which felt really good on a hot sunny day.  In all, I spent a half-hour in each boat, and that was fun--it reminded me of the many days I spent as a kid at summer camp, playing around in different boats on the lake.  After paddling I took a hose bath on the dock, and came away feeling just as good as I would after visiting any spa.  Better, probably.

This morning I did another gym session and then headed back to the river.  It was clearly going to be another hot one, and paddling turned out to be the same story as yesterday's, too.  I paddled the surfski to the mouth of the harbor and saw no wakes to surf out on the river, so I returned to the dock to complete 30 minutes in the ski and then put in another half-hour in the whitewater boat.  I topped it off with another hose bath and came home feeling like I'd made some more good use of a hot Mid South summer day.

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

Nothing special, but I'm keeping it moving

Hurricane Beryl came ashore in Texas and Louisiana on Monday, and by Tuesday were getting some of the remnants here.  The heart of the counterclockwise-rotating storm stayed west of us, and here on the eastern fringe showers were moving from south to north, interspersed with periods of sunshine.  The nice thing was that it kept the temperature below 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

Tuesday morning I did a gym session, and managed to strain my right lat muscle a little.  I think I did it during the triceps extensions.  I went down to the riverfront and paddled my whitewater boat for a half-hour, and while the lat didn't bother me too much, it seemed to be worse when I paddled on the right (my whitewater boat is a C1).  That's the opposite of what I was expecting.  The south wind was stronger than I'd realized, and I suspected there might be some decent downwinding to be had out on the Mississippi, but paddling the whitewater boat is what I'd planned to do, and, well... I just can't do it all.  I'll go downwinding again some other day.

By Tuesday night the rain had moved out, and yesterday was a much more gorgeous day than we have any right to expect in the Mid South in July.  I had a variety of chores to attend to, but I got in a good bike ride in the late morning.

This morning I was back on the riverfront, back in the surfski, hoping for some more surfing opportunities.  But out on the river there was no barge traffic in sight.  I did a steady 60-minute paddle, and I felt tired in the boat, though I'm pleased to say that lat muscle has improved since Tuesday.

The temperature rose into the low 90s today, but the humidity wasn't so bad.  The forecast shows highs in the 90s most days in the foreseeable future, and I expect the humidity will come back and we'll have some triple-digit heat indices soon.

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Monday photo feature

Here I am paddling in Nipigon Bay on the 25th of June.  This is before the weather turned crazy on me.

I thought this was the loveliest part of Lake Superior that I saw.  There's quite an archipelago separating Nipigon Bay from the heart of the lake.  On my right here is LaGrange Island, while off to the left is Vert Island.  Vert is the French word for "green," in case you're wondering.

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The river can be exciting in more ways than one

We're getting a little bit of a break from the sweltering heat this weekend.  The Fahrenheit highs have been in the high 80s and low 90s, as opposed to the mid to high 90s.

I rode my bike Friday morning, doing my usual 90-ish minute loop.  Once again the ice cubes in my water bottle had melted by the time I got out to Shelby Farms, but this time the water was still fairly cool when I stopped to drink it.

When I went down to the river yesterday morning the temperature was in the low 80s--not cool, exactly, but much less oppressive than what I'd paddled in on Thursday.  I paddled out of the harbor hoping to do some more surfing out on the river, but alas, there was no barge traffic in sight.  So I ended up just doing a steady 60 minutes with a few surges.

This morning I did the same gym routine I started on Wednesday, and then headed for the river.  I had the whitewater boat on top of the car, and my original plan was to paddle it in the harbor for a bit.  But a look at the weather forecast revealed that today was going to be mostly sunny and calm, while on Tuesday thunderstorms are likely (probably remnants of that Tropical Storm/Hurricane Beryl).  That means that on Tuesday I might want to stick close to the marina in case bad weather comes along, and paddling the whitewater boat will assure that I do that.  So I shifted today's paddling plan to Tuesday.

As for today, I decided to paddle the surfski to the mouth of the harbor, and see if any barge traffic was around.  If there was, I would go out in search of surfing FUN!  If there wasn't, then I would return to the dock and paddle the whitewater boat for a bit.

When I reached the harbor's mouth I found that two barge rigs had already moved upstream past downtown Memphis, and a third was coming up from beneath the Harahan and Frisco and Memphis-Arkansas Bridges.  Surfing it would be.  I fell in behind that third rig and found big waves that were moving fast and tough to catch.  The downwind rule of "little ones lead to big ones" often works with barge wakes, too, and I managed to get several decent rides this way, though nothing as good as I'd had last Thursday.

Besides being big, the waves were a bit rough and confused, and several times I failed to get on a wave because I was a little too off balance to get in that one crucial stroke.  But most of the time I felt in solid control, and I think my V10 Sport surfski is much better for me in these conditions than my less-stable skis.

As I played around out there, I started to hear sirens from Riverside Drive where it passes by Tom Lee Park.  First I heard one, and then I heard one or two more, and when I had a chance I looked in that direction and saw an ambulance and a pumper truck driving along beyond the park.  Wondering what all the fuss could be about, I scanned the South Bluffs residential area in search of smoke, but didn't see any.  Maybe somebody in the park was having a heart attack.

Once in a while--maybe once every five or six years--somebody on the bank sees me paddling out on the river and thinks that I am in trouble, and calls in the EMS authorities.  It crossed my mind that maybe somebody had done that today, but I quickly dismissed that idea.  If somebody were worried about me, wouldn't they send out the police harbor patrol boat, or maybe a Coast Guard crew?  An ambulance squad standing on the bank could do absolutely nothing for a guy out in the middle of the river.

But as I concluded my surf session and started working my way back over to the Tennessee shore, it appeared that the rescue team was there because of me.  I could see several people who looked like they were wearing uniforms standing up in Tom Lee Park looking and pointing in my direction.  I continued paddling toward them, trying to appear nonchalant, as though I weren't doing anything I hadn't done hundreds of times in the past (that was the case, after all).

When I was close enough to the bank, one of the men yelled, "You good?"  I looked up and said, "Pardon?"  "Are you okay?" he yelled back.  I nodded and gave him thumbs up.  He waved back and spoke into his walkie talkie, and that seemed to be the end of it.

To be clear, I am genuinely grateful to these rescue personnel for responding to this call, and I am sorry it turned out to be a false alarm for them.  The thing that gets under my skin whenever this happens is the absurdity of somebody thinking I was in deep distress.  I mean, paddling is something I have spent almost my entire life trying to be good at; how could somebody think I look so hapless out there that dialing 911 is the appropriate course of action?  If I am ever truly in distress, waving my arms over my head and screaming help! help! help! is what I will be doing.  I was doing no such thing today.

Sure, a majority of Memphians are utterly unfamiliar with my sport, and they think the Mississippi River is such a dangerous, nasty, horrible place that nobody in his right mind would go out there at all, let alone into the waves behind a big barge rig.  But still... does it really not look like I at least sort of know what I'm doing?

Oh well.  I paddled back up into the harbor and continued toward the dock.  I half expected some EMS or law enforcement official to call me over to the bank for a scolding, but none did.  In general I'd say that the post-vacation phase of my summer is off to a good start, and I came home feeling pretty good about that.

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The heat is on

Monday was my first full day back home, and I got a break with the weather: I think the Fahrenheit temperature stayed below 90 degrees.

Tuesday was dedicated to getting my new central air conditioning system installed.  The crew showed up and got the job done with no complications.  I'm now a few dollars poorer, but at least I have a comfortable home again.  And it's not a moment too soon: by yesterday the temperature was back up in the 90s with a triple-digit heat index value.

I hadn't done any kind of gym work since March.  The reasons were a mixture of busy times in my non-athletic life and struggles with motivation, all of which I've documented in past posts here.  Yesterday I decided it was time to get a gym routine going again at last.  I'm keeping it simple for now: some bicep curls, some situps, and some tricep extensions.  I'd been shying away from any kind of arm exercises since the diagnosis of my spinal nerve impingements last year, but since I've been mostly feeling good in that area in recent months, I decided it was time to try some arm lifts again and see how those muscles respond.

Also yesterday I got in a good bike ride in the afternoon.  I did my ride out the Greater Memphis Greenline, around the lake in Shelby Farms, and back home.  I definitely needed to be mindful of hydration in the heat of the day.  Before leaving the house I packed as many ice cubes as I could fit into a water bottle, topped it off with refrigerated water, and put the bottle in the cage on my bike's frame.  By the time I got out to Shelby Farms the ice had melted and the water was already lukewarm.  I gulped it down and refilled the bottle at one of the park's water fountains for the trip back.  The nice thing about riding this time of year is the same thing I hate in cold weather: you generate your own wind chill.  So the heat didn't bother me too terribly.  It also helped that the Greenline is shaded by a tree canopy.  I finished the ride to cap off a solid day of exercise, and I hope that will set the tone for the coming weeks.

Bike riding is one thing I didn't do as much of on my trip as I would have liked because of the lousy weather.  Something I didn't do any of on the trip is paddling my whitewater boat.  I had it up on my truck's roof racks, and it never came off.  There was in fact some good whitewater to paddle in Minnesota, but the weather was poor during most of my visit to that state, and of course whitewater paddling has the logistical challenge of running a shuttle, something I don't have to fool with paddling a surfski on a lake.

I do want to start getting in the whitewater boat again soon.  I hope to do so once a week in the coming weeks just to do some drills and practice Eskimo rolls.  Then, in August, I have a trip to North Carolina planned for my camp's 100th anniversary, and I hope to incorporate some paddling on something like the Nantahala River or the Pigeon River or the Ocoee River.  I'll need to devote time next year to preparing for my trip through the Grand Canyon, and I figure now is the time to lay some groundwork for a whitewater routine.

This morning my muscles were surprisingly not that sore.  I went down and paddled on the Memphis riverfront for the first time since I got back home.  It definitely had the makings of a sizzling summer day: as I left the house a little after 9 o'clock, it was already in the high 80s.  A south breeze kept things bearable as I paddled to the mouth of the harbor and out onto the Mississippi.  Out there I found some barge traffic.  I tried surfing behind a downstream-moving rig, but it was moving too fast for me to find much I could ride.  I paddled down toward an upstream-moving rig and fell in behind it, and the first wave I got on was awesome.  I was able to surf it for close to a minute, and a few good paddle strokes got me onto several other good waves.  Once those rides had ended it was much harder to find any more because the waves were wandering back and forth across the river, as so many barge wakes tend to do.  But that first ride was worth it.

There was another barge rig coming upstream from below the Harahan and Frisco and Memphis-Arkansas Bridges, and I briefly considered hanging around to try some more surfing.  But I decided to head back for the harbor, and by the time I was re-entering that water body, I knew I'd made the right decision.  The sun was beating down, and with the breeze now at my back I had nothing to take the edge off the heat.  It normally takes me about 15 minutes to paddle from the mouth of the harbor back to the dock, and today it was a tough 15 minutes.  The season for practicing surfski remounts has arrived, and I did a couple to cool off as I moved along.

At last I reached the dock and drank deeply from the cold water I'd brought along in an insulated bottle.  And the season for taking a hose bath on the dock after I paddle has most definitely arrived.

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Small downwind on Lake Michigan

Here's a short clip from my paddling session on Lake Michigan on the afternoon of June 19.  That morning I'd seen some awesome downwind conditions; by the afternoon the wind had abated and the conditions weren't so big, but they were there, nevertheless.  I had to keep paddling to stay on a run, and that made this session hard work.  But I was able to link a lot of runs, and that made it fun.  I would think that for an elite-level surfski athlete, training should include a lot of sessions on water like this.

The shoreline that's visible in the distance is Fisherman's Island State Park near Charlevoix, Michigan.

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Americana fun (2024 edition)

As I mentioned in a recent post, I paddled in the state of Minnesota for the first time ever last week.  There are now just two states in which I have never paddled a boat.  If all goes according to plan, I'll pick up one of them, Arizona, next year when I paddle the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.  Then just one state will remain: Alaska.  The Last Frontier.

The rules are simple: I have to be in a kayak or canoe and take at least one paddle stroke to declare that I have paddled in a given state.  In some states I have paddled many, many times; in others I have paddled just once.  My hope is that sooner or later I'll get back to some of those states I've paddled in just once, and paddle some more there.  That is in fact what I did in Michigan this summer: before my trip I'd done just the bare minimum of paddling there.  Back in 2008 I entered a race on the Saint Joseph River that started in Michigan and finished in Indiana, and that was my one episode of paddling in Michigan.  But in the last two weeks I got the chance to shore up my paddling CV in that state very nicely.

In summary, here's a list of the fifty states of the United States.  I have visited every one of them at least once.  I have marked with an asterisk (*) those states in which I have not paddled:

Alabama
Alaska*
Arizona*
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming

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

Monday photo feature

IT'S PADDLE-TO-THE-SEA!!!!!!!!!!

Last week I visited the town of Nipigon, Ontario, home of a nice little exhibit in honor of the story by Holling Clancy Holling.  In the story, Paddle's journey begins on a snowy hillside above Lake Nipigon, which you might call the headwaters of the Great Lakes system.  The Nipigon River drains Lake Nipigon into Lake Superior, and the town of Nipigon sits on the bank of this river.

Though it was written for children, I recommend Paddle-to-the-Sea to everybody.  There's also a short film adaptation, shot and edited by Bill Mason back in 1966 for the National Film Board of Canada, and you can watch it here.

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More rain, a flooded upper Mississippi, and the trip back south

I woke up around 4 o'clock Friday morning and it hadn't started raining yet, and I thought maybe it would hold off long enough for me to break camp and take off.  Then, as if on cue, I started hearing some drops on the tent: first about one every five seconds, then every three seconds, then every second, and finally a steady drizzle.  I fell back asleep and woke up again at 5:30, and the drizzle continued.  I got up and took down the tent and got everything in the truck as quickly as I could.  With the rain gradually intensifying, I definitely did not feel like making my own breakfast like I usually do.  Fortunately Grand Marais is one of those touristy towns, and the upside of that is there's sure to be a place that serves breakfast.  I went into town and enjoyed some pretty good food before hitting the road.

The rain came down with a vengeance as I drove around the west end of Lake Superior and started working my way south.  Eventually, some 100 miles south of Duluth, the rain stopped at last.  Meanwhile, I heard on the radio that this has been one of the wettest Junes ever in Minnesota, and parts of the state were dealing with flooding.

I'd been thinking I'd just spend the day driving, but once the rain stopped I considered getting in a paddle.  I stopped in the town of Hastings, Minnesota, a town on the Mississippi River downstream of Saint Paul.  As I drove through the downtown area looking for access to the river, I noticed a lot of streets and footpaths blocked off with barricades because of flooding on the river.  I got out of the truck and walked to a riverside park, and found a lady standing in front of TV news cameras conducting a press conference.  I gathered she was the mayor, and behind her stood an array of officials including a couple of law enforcement officers--the sheriff and the chief of police, probably.  I could hear the mayor saying something about federal and state emergency funds, and something told me this would not be a good place to put my boat in the water.  Not only would it be sort of insensitive--going out and "having fun" as a community coped with some weather damage--but also, if I were to paddle across the background of the TV screen while the mayor delivered her solemn remarks, the mayor might order her law enforcement henchmen to arrest me, or worse.

So, I moved on.  I checked for river access in a couple of other towns, but the situations there didn't look much better.  And then it started to rain again.  And it was starting to get late, and I was tired.  I finally checked into a motel in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, and as I did so the heaviest rain I've seen on this trip moved in.  Getting my things from the car into the motel room without them getting drenched was a challenge.

I got up yesterday morning and was pleased to see the sun shining outside.  I wouldn't be done out of paddling this time: I'd studied a map of LaCrosse and found a good access to the Mississippi River, and after breakfast I went straight there.  I paddled a pretty leisurely 60 minutes, and I made sure to paddle well over onto the Minnesota side of the river, so now I can say I've paddled in that state more than just that one time on Thursday.  The river was high, and I saw several places I could tell were normally dry land, such as an RV park whose electric and water hookups were sticking up above the water surface.  But paddling some floodwater didn't seem a big deal to a guy who's done it plenty on the lower Mississippi.

I was feeling sluggish in the boat, and the truth is that I was just plain tired at the end of this two-week trip.  All the paddling and the driving and the camping in the rain had taken it out of me.   The journey had been interesting, but by yesterday morning I just wanted to be back home.

And that was the sole objective once I'd finished paddling yesterday.  I made it as far as Springfield, Illinois, before stopping for the night.  I was definitely seeing a transition into a warmer climate from the cool, wet conditions up north, but in Illinois it was quite pleasant.  It was just plain delightful when I got up this morning, with sunny skies and a nice cool, dry breeze.  I got in the car and headed south, and about six hours later I was back in Memphis, where it was hotter and more humid but not as bad as it can be.  With all of July and August yet to come, I expect we'll get our allotment of sweltering heat.

If I could change one thing about my travels in the last two weeks, it would be to lessen the amount of rain.  Now, I'm not anti-rain; the world does need rain.  But it sure did put a damper on certain things.  One example: there had been talk of a get-together at a nearby brewery after the race last weekend, and that might have been a chance for me to get to know a few of the racers in that part of the country better; but it was called off because it was pouring down rain and the brewery's seating was mostly outside.

All that rain also reduced the amount of exploring I was inclined to do, and so I probably didn't get to experience the Great Lakes region as fully as I might have.  It didn't help that I was so frequently on the move: I covered a lot of distance in fifteen days and didn't stay more than a couple of nights in any one place.

Oh well... I'm glad I went up there just the same.  I did see enough to know that the environs of Lakes Michigan and Superior are exceptionally beautiful.  If the region were in a warmer climate, I expect it would be the hottest tourist destination in the world.

As glad as I am to have taken the trip, I'm every bit as glad to be home.  There's just no place like it.  What kind of paddling is up for me next?  I have no idea.  In the immediate future I have a lot of non-athletic stuff I have to take care of, so I'll be easing into whatever I do.

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Continuing on around the big lake

Here’s some follow-up to my last post.  Before I left the Nipigon-Red Rock area yesterday morning I took a little hike up the Nipigon River trail to the top of a ridge that offers this view of where I paddled on Tuesday:

That's the town of Red Rock in the right portion of the photo.  You can see the town's white water tower along the photo's right edge.  The marina complex extends into the water from the town.  The Nipigon River flows in from the lower left, and the body of water we're looking at is Nipigon Bay.  The island marked "A" is LaGrange Island, and the one marked "B" is Burnt Island.

On Tuesday I paddled out from the marina and did a clockwise loop around LaGrange Island.  One of the things I know but am sometimes lulled into forgetting is how deceiving distance can be out on open water: as I looked from the marina out to LaGrange Island I thought, "It's not that far."  But it took me just about an hour to reach the island's left-most point, even with the sprints I threw in to catch some little downwind runs.  As I said in my last post, the wind came up dramatically as I rounded LaGrange, and the roughest water I encountered was in that channel between LaGrange Island and Burnt Island.

One thing I forgot to mention in my last post was that I did have my drink pouch full of an electrolyte-rich sports drink, but I almost didn’t take it.  At home when I go for an under-two-hour training paddle, I usually don’t bother with it, choosing instead to be well-hydrated ahead of time and have some water waiting for me on the dock.  But on Tuesday something made me decide at the last minute to take some fluids along.  It might be hyperbole to say that decision saved my life, but then again, it might not be.  I was definitely grateful to have them once I found myself with a much longer, harder paddle on my hands than I’d expected.

Anyway, I hope this photo gives you a better idea of what I was talking about in my last post.  I should note that the bay is much more placid in this photo than it was when I was out there paddling.

After the hike I got in the truck and headed west.  My destination was a campground in Grand Marais, Minnesota, where I'd made a reservation.  I'd decided I'd had enough of Canada for the time being.  That's not because my time there wasn't interesting and enjoyable; I simply was ready to be back where I know how everything works, and where the features of my phone are fully functional.  Also, I'd chosen to pass through Canada without going to the trouble of getting any of its currency; if there was something I couldn't pay for with a credit card, I simply went without it.  Now I was ready to be back where my money will spend.

It was raining in Grand Marais when I made my camping reservation, but I checked the forecast and it looked like the rain would be moving out.  I drove through some of that same rain as I proceeded west.  It was also quite chilly--I'm guessing it was no more than maybe 55 degrees Fahrenheit.  The weather was what we normally have in March in Memphis.

The rain was indeed gone when I got to Grand Marais, and it started clearing up later in the evening, but it remained chilly.  Fortunately I have a good sleeping bag, and I was nice and cozy once I was settled in for the night.

Today has been sunny and beautiful, but cool.  I think it stayed below 60 degrees Fahrenheit.  The campground is right on the shore of Lake Superior, and this morning I went out for a 70-minute paddle.  I headed in the direction of Duluth for 35 minutes, then turned around and came back.  The breeze wasn’t strong, but at least it was blowing in, toward shore.  On the way back I had some more of those small downwind conditions that I’ve seen a lot of on this trip, and I had some fun working them.  The most peculiar thing about paddling here is the water seems noticeably colder than it was up along the Ontario shoreline.  If I paddle here again I’ll layer up a little more.

Of course, the most significant thing about this morning’s session is that it was my first time ever to paddle in the state of Minnesota.

This afternoon I opted for a bike ride.  A part of the Gitchi Gami State Bicycle Trail runs through Grand Marais, so I went to check it out.  The ultimate goal of the trail builders is for it to run from Duluth all the way to the Canadian border, but it’s being built in segments as funding becomes available—the same thing that’s happening with our Wolf River Greenway in Memphis and Shelby County.

So the section I rode today was a few miles long, and it was a good ride, with some rolling terrain and some nice views of Lake Superior.

Today was probably my only day in Minnesota with good weather.  The forecast says rain will be moving in overnight, and tomorrow the rain chance is 100%.  I’m really hoping it won’t start raining here until I’ve broken camp, but it’s sounding like I shouldn’t count on it.  This evening I’m going to pre-pack as much as I can so I can get up and out quickly in the morning.

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More rain, then some sunshine, a beautiful part of the lake, and, finally, an epic

I left Michigan Sunday thinking I'd left the rain behind.  The Internet radar was showing no serious rain approaching the area I was traveling to, and the sun even started peeking through the clouds as I drove into the northern reaches of Michigan's lower peninsula, across the upper peninsula, and across the border into Ontario.

Not long after that I realized that I had no Internet service on my phone.  I had thought that my SIM card would work in Canada, but apparently I was wrong.  That meant, among other things, that my phone's map app wouldn't work.  As I headed up the Trans Canada Highway that curves north and then west along the northern shore of lake Superior, several times I wanted to use that app to double-check my progress toward my destination at Lake Superior Provincial Park; but the only way I could do that was to stop someplace that had free wifi so I could access the Internet.  And such places are few and far between in this part of the world.  This is not a heavily-populated region, and this part of the Trans Canada Highway features lots of 80-mile-plus stretches with no gasoline or other services.  The last place I drove that was like this was the heart of Nevada.

At least it was a scenic drive, with fairly frequent views of Lake Superior.  The Great Lakes truly are a majestic marvel of nature.  I thought the same thing during my time along the shores of Lake Michigan even though I didn't get to enjoy it fully because the weather was so lousy.  If this were a warmer climate, I believe the shorelines of Michigan and Ontario and Minnesota and Wisconsin would be the hottest tourist destination in the world.  Maybe in another hundred years...

Connectivity difficulties aside, I drove along thinking all was well.  But then, as I moved within 60 miles or so of my destination, it started to rain.  My heart sank.  Having spent four straight nights camping in the rain, I really didn't want to do it again.  I hoped maybe it was just a small cell and I would be out of it in another ten or twenty miles, but it just kept on.

I knew Lake Superior Provincial Park was somewhere in the vicinity of the town of Wawa, Ontario, but I didn't know exactly where, and I was unable to check on my phone.  As I drew closer to Wawa I saw some public-looking signage, but it was hard to read in the rain, and I'm pretty sure I did not see anything that said "Lake Superior Provincial Park."  Finally I reached Wawa, and I found a place with some wifi and checked the map.  It turned out I had passed the park almost 30 minutes back.  Meanwhile, the rain continued to fall, and it was quite chilly as well.  I pulled up the Internet radar and saw a huge blob of precipitation parked over the entire eastern portion of Lake Superior.  I don't know where it had come from--there had been no sign of it on the radar earlier in the day--but I had had enough.  Reservation or no reservation, I was not going to drive back to the park, pull out all my soaking-wet gear, and spend another night in the rain.  I found a nice down-to-earth-looking motel in Wawa, and checked in.

I had my first hot shower in five days, and enjoyed a good night of sleep.  Monday morning the rain had stopped and a dense fog hung over the town.  As I departed Wawa the fog was burning off, and it appeared I finally had a lovely day with some sunshine and pleasantly cool air.

I was still on the east side of Lake Superior, and the Trans Canada Highway runs north for a while.  North of Wawa it veers away from the lake, and between the lake and the road likes a huge roadless wilderness area that includes, but is not limited to, Pukaskwa National Park.  Though I don't know for sure, I would guess that this area is the setting for much of Bill Mason's films like "Waterwalker" and "Song of the Paddle."

Eventually the highway curves around to head west, rejoining the lake along its north shore.  It was here that I stopped at the town of Marathon and paddled for a while in Carden Cove.  I was still tired from Saturday's race and just paddled a relaxed pace.  The wind seemed to be blowing from the south, but it wasn't so strong and the water's surface was small bumps.

After paddling I continued west for another couple of hours until I arrived at the town of Nipigon.  As I mentioned in a post last week, Nipigon is the site of a park that honors the story of Paddle-to-the-Sea, and I made sure to stop and check it out.

Just a few miles south of Nipigon is a little lakeside town called Red Rock, and here I had a reservation at the Red Rock Inn.  I'd found the place on Expedia or some similar site and I didn't think it was much more than another motel, but it's a sure-enough old fashioned inn.  The innkeeper is this old dude who might have been around when the town was founded, and the place is basically a museum for early-to-mid-twentieth-century technology:

And there's also a lot of arts and crafts by First Nation people.  It was hard to get good photos of the visual art because of the reflection off the glass, but here are a couple of my favorites (because they've got canoes in them!).

This morning I checked out of the inn and went down to the town's marina to paddle.  How did it go?  Well, what I thought would be no more than a two-hour session turned into three hours.  The weather was sunny and calm when I set out; the forecast called for a 15-mph wind from the west, but it wasn't blowing anywhere near that, and I've paddled in my fair share of 15-mph winds anyway.  My plan was simple enough: paddle east (with the wind at my back), go around LaGrange Island, and return to Red Rock.  On the way out there was just enough breeze to create some small bumps, but nothing for a downwind lover to get excited about.  As I approached LaGrange Island the bumps grew into the sort of rideable-if-you-work-hard swells, and in the last ten minutes or so before I made the turn to round the island, there were some small but fun downwind conditions.  I was sorry to be leaving them behind as I entered the lee of LaGrange Island.

As I rounded the island, I suddenly felt several gusts that seemed a lot stronger than 15 mph.  I hoped they would be short-lived, but as I came around the island to where I could see the Red Rock water tower, I was greeted with easily a 20-25 mph wind and some good-sized swells coming from the northwest rather than the west.  Again, this was nothing I haven't paddled into before, in places like South Africa and the Columbia River Gorge and even my own Mississippi River at Memphis.  But by this time I'd been in the boat for more than 90 minutes and I was getting tired.  I paddled up and over one swell after another, and while my skills were up to the task for the time being, I wondered how long I would have to keep fighting.

After a while I stopped trying to paddle directly toward the water tower and went over to Burnt Island, where I took about a 10-minute break.  Then I aimed for the shortest path to the mainland shore.  Once there I would then have to paddle another couple of miles along the shore to where I'd put in, but at least I would have some shelter from the wind.  I just hoped I still had enough energy to get over there.

I told myself to relax and not try to set any speed records.  In this case, "slow and steady" would win the race.  At last I made it back to the mainland, and even though I was now running on fumes with a lengthy paddle back up to the marina, at least I knew that if nothing else I could just go to shore and collapse for a while, and be on the same landmass that my truck was parked on.

Lake Superior commanded my respect today, and it was a lesson to be more careful about paddling any distance away from shore.  One of the things that had lulled me into a false sense of security is that this part of the lake is enclosed in an archipelago of islands--it's actually the prettiest part of Superior I've seen so far, and I was excited to get out among those islands.

I am unsurprisingly dead-dog tired this evening.  I'm staying in a motel up near Nipigon and I hope to get a good night's rest.  I will most likely stay on dry land tomorrow; a bike ride is a strong possibility, as is a hike on one of the local trails.

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Monday photo feature

Here's one of several shots of Rob Hartman that I got during his gig in Grand Rapids last Monday.  He and his mates in the John Shea Trio served up some quality entertainment, and they seemed to have quite a following in the bar.

I got to watch Rob perform in another venue on Saturday: the 45 North Solstice canoe and kayak race in Suttons Bay.  Rob was pretty virtuosic there too, winning the 9-ish kilometer race with little trouble.

Under ordinary circumstances, I probably wouldn't have left home until maybe Wednesday in order to get to Saturday's race.  I might have been able to get the central air conditioning situation at my house squared away Monday or Tuesday, and that would have been a load off my mind.  But Rob's gig on Monday was the only one he had scheduled during my time up here, and I really wanted to see him play.  The simple truth is that I really enjoy music of all kinds, and even though I have almost no talent of my own for making it, I'm fascinated with people who do.  What's more, one thing I love about my sport is that the people who do it tend to be interesting, talented people in a more general way.  If somebody is a really good canoe and kayak racer, it's a good bet that he or she does some other things really well, too.

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