I mentioned in my last post that I was feeling sore in my upper back Wednesday morning. Well, by the time I was departing my sister's house my lower back was hurting too, and my legs felt incredibly tight as well. It made a long day of driving that much tougher. All I know is I'm very glad I took the time to do those drills on flatwater in my whitewater boat for the last few weeks. While they didn't prepare me for all the stresses that whitewater puts on my body, I hate to think how bad I would have been hurting if I hadn't done them.
I spent some nine or ten hours in the car on Wednesday, driving across North Carolina and up into Virginia, over to Norfolk and through the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, up the Eastern Shore of Virginia and Maryland. Finally I made camp in a state park near Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. The park was near the mouth of the Delaware River, and that's a very important detail. You see, the Delaware River runs along the state line between Delaware and New Jersey, and I had never paddled a boat in either of those states before. My goal yesterday morning was to remedy that situation.
An obvious course of action would have been to paddle right there at the mouth of the Delaware, from Cape Henlopen in Delaware to Cape May in New Jersey. The problem was that those capes are are some 15 or 20 miles apart, and being still sore from Tuesday's whitewater paddling and having a big race in just two days, I didn't need an epic endurance trek on my hands. So after studying the Google map on my cellular telephone device, I decided to drive upriver to the town of Delaware City, where the distance across the river appeared more manageable.
Here's a look at where I paddled:
I put in on the Delaware City waterfront and started paddling across the river, which was maybe 2500 meters across. Because the state line runs right along the New Jersey bank, I had to paddle up into one of those tributary creeks over there to make sure I did in fact paddle within the boundaries of New Jersey. I did a few 12-stroke sprints while I was out there, but because I was still feeling the effects of Tuesday's paddle I kept the intensity very low otherwise. Though I was hoping to paddle for 60 minutes, it ended up taking me more like 75. But I accomplished my mission, and I have now paddled in all but four states in the United States. One of those four is Maine, and with any luck at all I'll be crossing it off the list later in this trip.
It was not an easy paddling session: on top of my soreness and fatigue, it was hot outside and the sun was beating down, and I had to deal with a pretty strong headwind as I paddled back toward Delaware City. I had to make myself relax and not fight it. But by the time I was back in the car continuing the journey north, I could tell that I was feeling better than I'd felt before paddling. Getting some blood flowing through my muscles had done some good. I worked my way up through New Jersey on both the Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway, and the traffic was heavy in this most densely-populated region of the country. I stayed west of New York City and crossed the Hudson River at Newburgh, New York.
I spent last night at my buddy Rob's house in a little village called Holmes (yes, really). We had fun catching up last night and this morning, and now that he's gone to work I'm preparing to make the three-hour drive to the greater Boston area, where I've got a hotel room reserved in Gloucester. By the next time I post here I should have completed the Blackburn Challenge race around Cape Ann.
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