Dealing with aches and dealing with mud

The quest for a pain-free existence goes on.  I finally got in a follow-up visit with the spine surgeon after my second transforaminal (nerve block) injection, which seems to have brought no lasting improvement.  The doctor reiterated his reluctance to resort to surgery, and he made a point that I'd previously been unaware of: if I do go through with a surgical procedure, I can expect to lose quite a bit of my neck's range of motion.  To me, that sounds worse than my current state of being.

The doctor referred me to a clinic that ran some electrical current through my arms to test for any nerve damage.  I'll see him again tomorrow morning to go over the results of that test, and discuss what options I've got left.

In the meantime, I remain achy and sore.  Anybody who's ever lifted weights knows that when you start a new routine that your muscles aren't used to, you'll experience soreness for several days until the muscles adapt.  Well, these days I'm feeling like that all the time, and I haven't lifted a weight in several months.  When I paddled yesterday morning, the soreness was quite burdensome even though all other aspects of my fitness checked out okay.  Once again I focused on leg drive and rotation, getting my core muscles involved as much as possible.

There's a new low-water record for the Mississippi River here.  Last Wednesday the level bottomed out at 11.52 feet below zero on the Memphis gauge.  The previous record, set last year, had been -10.81 feet.  Nowhere is the low water more apparent than at the marina where I keep my boat.  When I went down there yesterday, the river flowing right at -11.0 feet, the entire end of the facility closest to the bank was up on dry land, and most of the houseboats were sitting in the mud.  I snapped this photo from the main pier:

Those ridges you can see through the sky's reflection are mud, under just a couple of inches of water.

When I got back down there this afternoon, the water was about half a foot lower (-11.48 feet).  I took another photo of approximately the same spot:

The forecast for the coming week says the river will be on a gradual rise.  That's a good thing, because we paddlers are about to run out of easy dock access to the water.  This photo shows the one low dock for human-powered craft that's still on some water:

That water that's within reach of the dock is only maybe four inches deep.  Once I was in my boat I had to sort of pole my way out to deeper water.  I stayed in the harbor and paddled fairly easy, checking out the parts of the bottom that I'd never seen exposed before.  I saw all manner of refuse that's been hidden underwater for who knows how long.  Under the Hernando DeSoto Bridge I saw the bottom half of a department store mannequin, and that brought back a vague memory of a film that was shot in Memphis years ago with a scene in which a body was thrown from the bridge.  I wonder if the mannequin could have been the prop for the body.  If so, shame on the filmmakers for not policing their litter.

By and by I paddled up toward the north end of the harbor.  As I moved along, a couple of times I hit submerged objects with my paddle.  I checked the depth with my paddle and discovered the water was only maybe two feet deep even though I was still over a half-mile from the harbor's north end.  I decided to turn around and stay in deeper water.  There's no telling what kind of industrial debris has been hiding on the bottom for decades, and all I need is to bash my rudder on something like that.

At the end of an hour I slid into the shallow water back at the dock.  I wasn't feeling great, but I think I was less achy than yesterday.  In any case, I'm glad to be keeping a little something going as I wait for my desire to get after it more seriously to return.

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