Some mild weather fun

The milder weather brought to us by the outer bands of Hurricane Hanna has continued this week.  Most days the Fahrenheit high has been in the upper 80s, the humidity has been moderate, and breezes have provided some relief.

Joe and I paddled a loop of the harbor on Tuesday.  The sky was full of pretty cloud formations--another benefit of this unsettled weather.

When I got downtown yesterday morning there was quite a stiff south wind blowing.  Summertime is not normally a windy time of year here and I haven't been paying attention to the wind forecast website I use, but I'm guessing it was blowing somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 knots yesterday.  As I warmed up and did a set of three 8-stroke sprints, I anticipated some possible downwind conditions out on the Mississippi.

When I got out there, what I found were conditions that were not very big--it wasn't going to be "surf city" or anything--but defined enough to enable some work on my skills.  In some ways I find the small bumps more intimidating than the bigger stuff; the water is choppier and makes balance trickier.  And any run you catch is brief, so you have to keep working to find new ones.

I spent the better part of an hour trying to apply the downwind principles I've learned over the last couple of years in places like False Bay in South Africa and the Columbia River Gorge in the Pacific Northwest.  I was having enough fun that I would have liked to stay out longer, but I had things to do at home, and I could tell I was getting tired and wouldn't be able to do good work much longer, so I returned to the harbor and headed for the dock.  Until the next downwind opportunity...

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