I believe pretty strongly that a bad day paddling is better than a good day sitting at a desk or something, but Saturday's session was rather unenjoyable nevertheless. It's quite common for me to have some stinging in my eyes when I'm paddling with the wind at my back on a sweaty summer day, and usually all I have to do is wipe my eyes and forehead with my hat and the problem is solved. But on Saturday my right eye was stinging unbearably, and every time I stopped to wipe it with my hat, it came right back within twenty seconds. Splashing my face with water, turning around and paddling into the breeze... nothing I tried could make my eye stop stinging.
I'm not saying the morning was a complete loss; I paddled for 70 minutes, during which I did a set of three 8-stroke sprints and worked on balance and glide in the boily eddies below the Hernando DeSoto Bridge pilings. But it was an ordeal of discomfort, and I was grateful to be back on the dock washing my face over and over under the hose and hoping the experience was a one-time aberration.
Throughout this pandemic paddling has been an effective antidote for whatever stress I've experienced in my non-athletic life. But right now I'm engaged in a home-improvement project that I'm actually feeling good about and even enjoying to some extent. After Saturday's frustrating exercise I decided to take a break from paddling yesterday and see how much work I could get done at home. I'm repairing some interior brickwork and it's a long, slow process, and it was satisfying to knock out a good chunk of it yesterday.
For today, I had a plan: I wanted to meet up with John Wellens, a fellow racer from South Carolina who is paddling the Mississippi River from source to sea to benefit the National Alliance on Mental Illness. I knew from looking at his G.P.S. track that he was starting this morning some 80 or 90 miles above Memphis near Blytheville, Arkansas, so he was likely to arrive at the Memphis riverfront in the mid to late afternoon. He would have a companion with him: Bruce and Liz Poacher had driven over from Erwin, Tennessee, and Bruce would be paddling with John today while Liz served as their shuttle driver.
I spent this morning doing another round of masonry work, and then around 12:30 I drove to the mouth of the Wolf River. From there I paddled upstream for four or five miles to the Hickman Bar. At the current river level (19.9 feet on the Memphis gauge) there was a nice sandy beach along the bar, and I cooled off in the water and watched the river for a pair of kayakers coming down. I knew I had to watch carefully because it's not hard for a tiny paddlecraft to slip by unnoticed out on the big river.
The better part of an hour went by and I didn't see any paddlers. I finally got back in the boat and ferried over to the Arkansas side, thinking it might be easier to spot them from there. I'd spent less than ten minutes hanging out near that bank when I saw them. I paddled out and joined them, and they seemed surprised at how I'd apparently come out of nowhere but glad to have some more company.
By this time they'd been paddling for about 70 miles and were eager to get to Memphis. We dealt with some headwinds from a nearby thunderstorm but the mighty river delivered us to our destination in the space of an hour or so. Liz met us at River Garden Park and very kindly gave my boat and me a ride back up to the mouth of the Wolf where my car was parked.
The website for John's journey is here. He also has a page on Face Book called "NAMIpaddle." I encourage folks to check it out as he continues toward the Gulf of Mexico. I consider it an honor to have joined him for a tiny snippet of the adventure.
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