The flood continues, and it's cold, too

For all the optimism I was oozing in my last post, winter is still not over.  This weekend has been overcast, chilly, and wet, and the temperature is supposed to plummet tonight and stay below freezing for another day or two.

On the other hand, we have a harbinger of spring that's as certain as any: baseball is back.  I've been streaming radio broadcasts of the Cardinals' spring training games in Florida for a week now.

The Mississippi River continues its climb toward a midweek crest of 41.5 feet on the Memphis gauge.  When I paddled yesterday it was at 40.8 feet.  During 100 minutes in the boat I made a loop through the bottomland on the Arkansas side.  In the last several years the Big River Trail, a bike-pedestrian path, has been established there, but right now the Big River is so big that not much riding or walking is taking place:

The river is definitely flowing faster at this high level.  I don't know the miles-per-hour figures, but I do know that I have to paddle a lot harder to make progress going upstream, and it's more difficult to ferry across without getting swept downriver.

With rain falling and the temperature at 40 degrees Fahrenheit this morning, I was very tempted to stay home.  But I've got some stuff in my non-athletic life that may prevent me from paddling in the first half of this week, so I stiffened my upper lip and went downtown.

The river had inched up to 41.1 feet and I was hoping to do some more exploring, but an icy north wind was blowing pretty hard and I decided it would be wiser to stay in the harbor.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then the rain intensified and I realized it was one of those days where I just wanted to get something in the books and return to the warmth and safety of home.  For the rest of my 60 minutes in the boat I paddled a mostly-strong tempo with several hard surges.

I got back to the dock, and as I changed into dry clothes the rain turned to sleet--I could hear it on the marina's metal roof.  I was actually okay with it because during the walk up to the car it would bounce off me rather than soak into my clothes.

My car's temperature display told me it had dropped to 35 degrees.  Some forecasts show it dropping below 20 degrees overnight tonight.

My right lat muscle isn't completely healed, but it's been hurting less the last couple of days.  I'm still having that tightness on the right side of my neck/shoulder area, and I'm thinking the lat pain is some inflammation that sprouted from that.  I'm hoping to swing by the chiropractor's place sometime this week.


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