Home at last

There's no question I was beat to the socks on Saturday, but as Adrián and some other paddlers I knew headed out on a run from Stevenson to Home Valley in the afternoon, I decided to join in.  And I'm glad I did.  After a calm morning the wind was picking up, and the conditions, while not huge, were very enjoyable.  It felt good to link some runs and make the boat go fast for about 10 kilometers.

Yesterday morning Adrián and I checked out of our Air B&B and headed toward Portland in Adrián's rental car.  Along the way we stopped and looked at some sights along the Historic Columbia River Highway, including Ponytail Falls, the Oneonta Tunnel, and Multnomah Falls.  We got the rental car returned by the noon deadline and took an Uber to the Portland airport.  We got there just before noon, and my flight wasn't scheduled to leave until a minute before midnight, so what I hoped to do was check my bags and then take public transit into downtown Portland, where I might walk around for a bit.  But the airline agent informed me that it wasn't possible to check one's bags more than four hours before a flight.  I told her I didn't want to be stuck with my bags all day, and she suggested I put myself on standby for an earlier flight.

In short, I ended up on a one o'clock flight that arrived at Dallas-Fort Worth around 7:45 Central Time, then made a dash to a distant wing of the airport to board a plane to Memphis a half hour later.  I wasn't interested in hanging around the airport any longer than I had to, but the downside is that I had no time to find anything decent to eat.  Because the airlines seem to be feeding passengers next to nothing on domestic flights these days, I ended up eating very little all day yesterday.

I touched down in Memphis around 10:15 PM Central Time--more than two hours before my originally-scheduled flight out of Portland would take off.  My friend Rob very kindly came to pick me up.  We waited an absurdly long time for my baggage to emerge on the carousel, and spent another eternity in line to pay for the short-term parking, and then a trip up Airways Boulevard delivered me home at last.

And I am so glad to be back.  So glad.  I don't care how beautiful the places I visit might be, or how awesome the paddling might be; after a few days away from home all I want is to be back there.  The weather forecast here in the Mid South looks terrible, with the temperature currently predicted to hit 103 degrees Fahrenheit on Wednesday, and I suppose I'll be missing the cooler, less humid Pacific Northwest weather, but still... I'm home, and that outweighs the discomfort of the coming weeks.

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