The residents of my city are, frankly, like the residents of most of the United States in that they are heavily reliant on private automobiles to get around. Public transportation here is pretty much just our city bus system, and it leaves much to be desired. Meanwhile, though our network of bicycle trails has grown quite a bit in the last 20 years, it still has a long way to go to serve the needs of those whose bikes are their primary means of transportation.
That's why I feel a sense of accomplishment any time my car stays parked all day. Sunday and Monday were two such days. And I didn't just sit in the house all day: on Sunday I did the bike ride I talked about in my last post, and on Monday I ran some errands on my bike in both the morning and the afternoon.
One of those errands was to my chiropractor's office to get more treatment for the soreness in my left deltoid and biceps area. She showed me a couple of exercises I can do at home with my rubber band that work the scapula, saying that it should take pressure off my upper arm area. She speculated that my scapula has gotten weak because it doesn't get worked by all the paddling I do. I told her that in recent years I've incorporated a little bit of backpaddling into each paddling session to work the opposing muscles, and she said that's a good idea.
All that set the tone for my Tuesday morning plans. I started at home with some full-body stretching and the exercises that my chiropractor had shown me. Then I cranked my car's engine for the first time in several days, and went down to the riverfront to get in the boat. I had a busy day ahead and had time for only 30 minutes of paddling, and I spent it doing a lot of backpaddling, with some balance drills and stroke drills thrown in.
Of course, it will take my muscles some time to respond to any rehab exercises I do, and for the rest of Tuesday my left arm hurt pretty bad and I felt a bit demoralized.
The weird weather pattern continues around here. After almost no rain in the month of July, the atmosphere seems to be oozing moisture here in August. The Internet radar shows rain cells sort of roaming aimlessly across the region. There was some heavy rain in my neighborhood last night, with some more showers this morning. In between showers it's been relentlessly humid.
This morning I did another round of my rehab exercises and then got on the bike. There had just been a heavy shower and it was still drizzling pretty hard, and I felt grumpy about having to ride on yet another rainy, humid day. But once I was out there in motion it didn't feel so bad. (Don't forget: skin is waterproof!) And our local rivers and creeks were flowing full of water. I got out my cellular telephone and shot a bit of video:
The first creek we see here is Cypress Creek (0:00 to 0:28), which drains the section of Memphis known as Hayden Place. Riding eastward on the Greater Memphis Greenline, the next creek is Harrison Creek in "near-east" Memphis (0:28 to 0:56). These two creeks are tributaries of the third waterway shown here, the Wolf River (0:56 to 1:25), which flows beneath the Greenline near Shelby Farms and winds around the north side of Memphis before emptying into the Mississippi River.
I did indeed get soaked during the rest of my ride, especially in Shelby Farms, whose trail network doesn't drain as well as the Greenline, which sits on an old railroad bed. But the sight of these swollen streams made a yucky day seem a lot better. Rushing water is something I'll never get tired of being around, whether I'm in a boat or on the bank.
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