Decompression and recalibration

I arrived home in the late afternoon Sunday after about a 12-hour process of getting myself from Hood River to Portland in a car, from Portland to Houston on an airplane, and from Houston to Memphis on another airplane.

Since then I've been slowly returning to normal activities here at home.  The house needed cleaning after the cats had eight days of shedding and scattering litter around with no one to sweep it up; and projects awaited in the workshop.

One happy coincidence has been a system of very pleasant weather that moved into the Mid South late Monday.  Since then the temperatures have been cooler and the humidity lower than usual.  If anybody would like to thank me for bringing this weather back from the Northwest with me, I'll graciously accept it.

On Tuesday I paddled for the first time since my two downwind runs of the previous Friday.  Joe and I did our usual loop of the harbor.  I was a little out of practice paddling here at home: I usually take an apple down there with me so I can eat it in the car on the way home, but on Tuesday I forgot it.

I remembered my apple when I returned to the riverfront yesterday.  After warming up and doing three 8-stroke sprints, I spent the rest of the 60-minute session doing whatever I felt like doing.  That turned out to be paddling up the Mississippi above the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, coming back downriver and playing around in the wake behind a barge rig (there wasn't much to surf there), and returning to the harbor.

What's next for me?  That's a good question.  My plan had been to race in "The Paddle Grapple" on Fontana Reservoir in western North Carolina on August 3, and then go down to Lake Lanier in Georgia to race a K2 with Christian Massow in the U.S. flatwater sprint nationals on August 7-10.

But that pretty picture is suddenly very blurry.  Just yesterday I learned that The Paddle Grapple race has been called off because of permitting problems.  And on Tuesday, when I tried to register for the flatwater nationals, I was told that registration was closed even though the event is still two weeks away--it's been a long time since I've entered an event in which governing bodies and their inherent bureaucracies are involved, and I guess I'd forgotten that two weeks' lead time isn't necessarily enough.

So, now I'm pondering my alternatives.  I'm waiting to hear back from a nationals official on whether it's still possible to get myself entered in that event.  Meanwhile, there's another race on August 3 that I actually would like very much to enter, but it's on the Ohio River up at Cincinnati, meaning I would have to a lot more driving than I'd planned to participate in two events in that August 3-10 period.

For now, I guess I won't decide anything until I know whether I can get into the nationals.  If I can't, that'll simplify the process of traveling to Cincinnati.  But I'd also been hoping to incorporate a visit to my niece and nephew over near Charlotte, North Carolina.  What to do, what to do... sigh.


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