High water (cont'd)

Soggy is the word for what most of this past week has been.  Back on Monday the TV weatherman said we'd be getting a month's worth of rain this week, and he wasn't kidding.  Paddlers I know in the more mountainous areas of the southeastern U.S. are enjoying some epic whitewater right now, and there's definitely a part of me that wants to go join them.  But I have yet to replace the boat that was stolen almost three years ago.  Until I find the will to do that, I guess my whitewater paddling career will remain on hiatus.

We got a dose of heavy rain from Friday night into Saturday morning.  There was a threat of severe storms Saturday, but when I got down to the river around 10 o'clock in the morning I found the conditions quite manageable: there was some intermittent light rain with a moderate east wind, and the temperature was a balmy 61 degrees Fahrenheit.

I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints in the harbor, and then paddled up the Mississippi River.  Several hundred meters above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge I reached the southern end of the Greenbelt Park.  This park is normally the domain of joggers, dog-walkers, picnickers, frisbee throwers, and the like; but with the Mississippi flowing at 37.4 feet on the Memphis gauge, today the park was best enjoyed in kayaks and canoes.  I paddled about halfway up the park, getting drenched in a brief downpour along the way, before turning around and heading back to the harbor and the dock.

A few more heavy showers moved through, but the severe weather never really materialized here in the Memphis area (at least one Mid South community was not so fortunate).  By early evening the rain was gone at last, and today we're drying out.  When I got to the river it was cooler--around 46 degrees--and breezy.  But the sun was out, and that always covers a multitude of Mother Nature's meteorological sins.

With the river up to 38.3 feet, I was keen to check out the flooded bottomland over on the Arkansas side.  I spent most of my 120 minutes in the boat paddling across the area between Interstates 40 and 55 and up north of I-40 as well.

Out of the boat I've been dealing with some discomfort in my right neck and upper back area, and I woke up this morning with some fairly intense aching in my lower right lat muscle.  It didn't really bother me in the boat once I'd gotten warmed up, but the rest of the day it's been unpleasant.  I've had this sort of thing several times before and it's always seemed to run its course over several days, and I hope that'll be the case once more.  The worst thing about it is it hurts to take deep breaths.


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