Taking a meandering course toward home

I said goodbye to Rob Wednesday morning and headed south.  By late morning I was in the western reaches of northern New Jersey, and I stopped to paddle on Spruce Run Reservoir near the town of Clinton.  I paddled for 50 minutes and did another six of those 12-stroke sprints.  Just in case there's anyone out there who thinks that my outing on July 13 shouldn't count as a paddling session in New Jersey, I have now paddled exclusively in The Garden State.

I continued west and south and spent the night camping next to the Potomac River at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.  Apparently this region hasn't had the sort of wet summer they've had up in New England, because the Potomac appeared quite low.

Up to this point the weather had been lovely, but as I moved down Interstate 81 in Virginia yesterday it began to rain, and the rain only intensified as I continued on into Tennessee.  It was utterly torrential by the time I was branching off on a little side trip.

My friends Drew and Louise live high up in the mountains between Johnson City, Tennessee, and Asheville, North Carolina.  This is another reason I'm glad I'm sticking to my plan of racing in Knoxville this weekend: if I'd decided to skip the Knoxville race, I likely would have had a shorter visit with Rob and then raced to get home by yesterday or today, not taking the time to pay Drew and Louise a visit.  As badly as I want to be home, I know that in the long run I'll be glad I took things a little slower and spent some time with friends I don't see very often.

Drew and Louise very kindly gave me some supper and put me up for the night.  I bade them goodbye this morning and came on to Knoxville, the site of tomorrow's Three Rivers Regatta.  Drew and Louise live in the headwaters of Big Laurel Creek, and the creek and its tributaries were pumping full of water as I drove toward Hot Springs.  There were many paddlers at the putin for the creek's main run, and I was tempted to stop, get my whitewater boat off the car, and join them.  But duty called, and on to Knoxville I went, where I paddled for 40 minutes, doing four 12-stroke sprints along the way.  I'm now holed up in a motel at an unremarkable interstate exit, hoping to get a good night's rest so I can do my best in the 6-mile (9.66-kilometer) race in the morning.  Then, with any luck, I'll drive six more hours and be home.  Home at last.

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