This past week I made a couple of Internet transactions relevant to this blog. One of them was to sign up for the annual "Battle On The Bayou" canoe and kayak race on March 23. It's a 13.7-kilometer (8.5-mile) mostly-flatwater race on Old Fort Bayou at Ocean Springs, Mississippi. Anybody who'd like to join me down there can register here.
The other thing I did was submit an application for a permit to paddle the Colorado River through Grand Canyon in the summer of 2025. Yes, that's a long way off, and as of now I have given absolutely no thought to equipment I'll need or food I'll need or who will accompany me on the trip (the permit specifies up to 16 people). Right now I'm just hoping to get a permit. If I'm successful, there will be plenty of time to get my whole plan in order.
The race in Ocean Springs is definitely the more immediate concern, being just seven weeks off. I'm spending a bit more time in the boat now, and pretty soon I'll have to get some workouts going. On Saturday I took advantage of a 21.6-foot Memphis gauge reading to visit some places I couldn't paddle to when the river was low. I paddled over to the Arkansas side and went up the outflow channel from Dacus Lake until a mass of floating wood blocked my path. Then I paddled a short distance up into the Loosahatchie Chute before heading back to the harbor. It was a nice sunny morning, warmer than 60 degrees Fahrenheit, and I tried my best to enjoy it, but the truth was I was feeling tense in the boat. There was a lot of barge traffic on the river that made things turbulent, and even though the weather was nice I really didn't want to go for a swim in that cold water.
Normally I would have gone back to the river yesterday, but with nearly constant rain falling all day long, I opted to stay in and focus on non-athletic obligations. I did at least make time to do some full-body stretching and some rotation drills with a broom handle across my shoulders.
The sun was shining again this morning, so I went down to the river and did a calm session in the harbor, trying my best to stay relaxed and rotate at the hips. This is something for which I really could use the help of an in-person coach. While I know the general outline of what I'm supposed to be doing in my boat, I'm having a hard time knowing whether I'm really doing it the way I should. I need somebody to slap my wrist when I get it wrong and offer reinforcement when I get it right.
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