Aaaargh.

The place I'm camping near the town of White Salmon has been mostly adequate for my needs this week: it has nice flat tent sites and a bathroom with showers.  It even has wifi.  What it doesn't have is electrical outlets that the tent campers can use, and I've been having problems keeping all my electronics (laptop, phone, Go Pro camera, G.P.S. device) charged.  I'm also getting tired of having to buy ice to keep my perishable food cold in my ice chest--I don't think I've ever seen ice melt as fast as it's doing on this trip.  Tomorrow afternoon is when I can move into the rental house I'm sharing with Rob Flanagan and Michael Meredith, and I'll be very glad to have a kitchen with a refrigerator and some electrical outlets to use.

On Thursday afternoon I heard about a group doing a downwind run from Drano Lake to the fish hatchery, and I decided to join in.  The conditions weren't huge, but they were big enough to be a lot of fun.  So far I've been feeling really good out there.  I think my trip to South Africa is paying off even though it was almost a year and a half ago: I feel like I'm seeing paths forward through the swells that I used not to see.  I also am having success sprinting onto runs that used to get away from me, and I can probably credit all the power-building workouts that Maks has put me through for that.

These downwind runs are sort of encroaching on what should probably be recovery time for me.  My assignment from Maks for Thursday afternoon was "one hour unspecific activity active regeneration."  Not exactly the same as a vigorous downwind session.

Yesterday the wind was light, and I decided to give myself a day off to recover from the previous several days.  I also had some chores to do.  When I paddled on Bear Lake on Sunday, some water got under the crystal of my G.P.S. device; for the next couple of days it was fogged up so badly that the device was barely useable.  When I paddled with Greg on Tuesday afternoon, I asked him if he could suggest a remedy (Greg is known for being very good at fixing things on the fly).  He told me there's not really a fix for that: once water gets inside the device like that, it might work for another week or so but then it'll just die.

So getting a new G.P.S. device was on my list of chores.  Being out on vacation like this, I ought to be relaxing, with not a care in the world, but for some reason it seems like I have a lot of things I want to do and not enough time to do them all, and I was annoyed to have this addition.  If I were at home I'd probably just find a reasonably-priced device on Ebay or some such place, but since I want to have one to use while I'm here in the Gorge, I had to go to a store in the upscale (read: overly pricey) town of Hood River and pay full retail for one.

This morning the wind was starting to pick back up.  Maks had assigned me a hard aerobic/anaerobic workout to do: five 5-minute pieces with 1 minute rest in between, at a stroke rate of over 70 spm.  He said it "will help you immensely at the long race."  I decided to drive several miles upriver to the town of Bingen, thinking maybe the water might not be so rough out on the Columbia there.

I pulled into the parking area for the public boat ramp.  I unstrapped my boat and left it sitting atop the car while I turned on my brand-new G.P.S. device.  I had played with the settings yesterday afternoon and I thought I had saved the screen with all the data fields I like to use, but when I turned it on this morning it had reset itself to the original factory settings.  One thing I am not is tech-inclined, and I grasped at straws trying to figure out how to get the thing into some state where I could use it.  As I fiddled with the device, a gust of wind blew my boat off the rack and it came crashing down onto the gravelly-asphalt parking lot.  I watched in horror as the boat rolled three times before coming to rest.

The stern end had taken the worst of the impact.  Fortunately this was little more than a cosmetic problem, as the ends of a boat are just plugs of resin.  But there were other spots on the hull that raised concern.  The gelcoat was scratched through in a half-dozen places, and several spots felt soft as I pressed on them.  The rudder had a small bit of abrasion but fortunately no major damage.

I decided my best immediate action would be to go ahead and paddle: at least I'd get the workout in, and I would get some idea of how badly the boat leaked.

Needless to say, I was absolutely furious.  Furious at everything and everybody.  Furious with myself for unstrapping the boat before I was fully ready to take it off the rack.  Furious at my old G.P.S. device for giving out on me while I was out on the road.  Furious at my new G.P.S. device for distracting me from looking after my boat.  Furious at Maks for giving me these stupid workouts to do when all I really want to do is go out on downwind runs.  Furious at all the hassles of charging devices and keeping food cold and everything else.  Furious at having to add yet another item (boat repair) to my to-do list.

At least the workout didn't feel all that taxing as I took out all my frustration.  I did the five pieces into the wind, and then rode the small swells back to the Bingen boat ramp.  Once I was out of the boat I did an inspection to see how much water I'd shipped, and was pleased to find that there was hardly any.  But the boat definitely needs some repair work to shore it up, and I expect that's what I'm going to spend the rest of the day doing.  Maks has given me an afternoon workout--a couple of hard 250-meter pieces--but it looks somewhat doubtful whether I'll get that done.

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