An upgrade in accommodations

By yesterday afternoon my terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day was starting to relent a little.

I got some boat-repair materials from a windsurfer who was camping near me, a really nice guy from Seattle named Zach whose wife, Monique, is originally from Nashville and attended Rhodes College in Memphis.  Small world.

There were a couple of deep dings that needed filling, but the rest of the scratches, while ugly, seemed to be mostly cosmetic.  Zach had some epoxy resin that hardens in a minute or so when exposed to ultraviolet light, so I worked quickly to cover the damaged areas.  Several of my patches were still rather lumpy once the resin was hard, so I had quite a bit of sanding to do.  As of this writing a couple of the areas are still works in progress, but at least the boat is now shored up and should make it through the rest of this trip, barring any further mishaps.

Thanks to the fast-hardening resin, I was able to paddle again in the late afternoon.  I drove back to the fish hatchery and paddled a 15-minute warmup into the strong wind.  My assigned workout was a pair of 250-meter pieces at maximum intensity to give my body one last conditioning to produce lactic acid before race day.  I did these two pieces also into the wind, climbing up and over the oncoming swells.  My times were dog-slow--around 90 seconds for each piece--but I certainly went lactic.  Maks told me to recover fully from the first one before starting the second one, so I gave myself five minutes in between.

By the time I finished the pieces I was more than a mile upwind of the fish hatchery, so I had a fun downwind paddle back there.  The conditions were the biggest I'd seen so far on this trip, and my balance was being challenged a bit more.  Several times I had good runs get away from me because I was a little off-balance and was a half-second or so too late taking the necessary stroke.  The boat I'm using out here (V10 Sport) is more stable than the boats I normally use back East, but its secondary stability kicks in kind of late and I need to get a little more used to that to have confidence in it.

This morning I packed everything up at my campsite and headed west on Washington Highway 14.  I stopped at the fish hatchery for a couple more laps in Swell City.  The wind was "nuking" and the river was crowded with windsurfers and kiteboarders.  My laps were fun and I was tempted to do more, but I knew I needed a slightly lighter day and limited myself to two.

From there I continued west to the town of Stevenson, where the Gorge Downwind Championships event will be headquartered this week.  Some other paddlers had started to arrive but I didn't spot anybody I knew.

I crossed the Bridge of the Gods to the town of Cascade Locks, Oregon, and located the house I've rented with a couple of friends for the week.  It feels good to have a bed to sleep in and some of the other amenities that camping lacks.  Camping in this hot, dry, windy climate drains a lot of energy and I think renting this house is a wise move for the week of a race.

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