More rain, a flooded upper Mississippi, and the trip back south

I woke up around 4 o'clock Friday morning and it hadn't started raining yet, and I thought maybe it would hold off long enough for me to break camp and take off.  Then, as if on cue, I started hearing some drops on the tent: first about one every five seconds, then every three seconds, then every second, and finally a steady drizzle.  I fell back asleep and woke up again at 5:30, and the drizzle continued.  I got up and took down the tent and got everything in the truck as quickly as I could.  With the rain gradually intensifying, I definitely did not feel like making my own breakfast like I usually do.  Fortunately Grand Marais is one of those touristy towns, and the upside of that is there's sure to be a place that serves breakfast.  I went into town and enjoyed some pretty good food before hitting the road.

The rain came down with a vengeance as I drove around the west end of Lake Superior and started working my way south.  Eventually, some 100 miles south of Duluth, the rain stopped at last.  Meanwhile, I heard on the radio that this has been one of the wettest Junes ever in Minnesota, and parts of the state were dealing with flooding.

I'd been thinking I'd just spend the day driving, but once the rain stopped I considered getting in a paddle.  I stopped in the town of Hastings, Minnesota, a town on the Mississippi River downstream of Saint Paul.  As I drove through the downtown area looking for access to the river, I noticed a lot of streets and footpaths blocked off with barricades because of flooding on the river.  I got out of the truck and walked to a riverside park, and found a lady standing in front of TV news cameras conducting a press conference.  I gathered she was the mayor, and behind her stood an array of officials including a couple of law enforcement officers--the sheriff and the chief of police, probably.  I could hear the mayor saying something about federal and state emergency funds, and something told me this would not be a good place to put my boat in the water.  Not only would it be sort of insensitive--going out and "having fun" as a community coped with some weather damage--but also, if I were to paddle across the background of the TV screen while the mayor delivered her solemn remarks, the mayor might order her law enforcement henchmen to arrest me, or worse.

So, I moved on.  I checked for river access in a couple of other towns, but the situations there didn't look much better.  And then it started to rain again.  And it was starting to get late, and I was tired.  I finally checked into a motel in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, and as I did so the heaviest rain I've seen on this trip moved in.  Getting my things from the car into the motel room without them getting drenched was a challenge.

I got up yesterday morning and was pleased to see the sun shining outside.  I wouldn't be done out of paddling this time: I'd studied a map of LaCrosse and found a good access to the Mississippi River, and after breakfast I went straight there.  I paddled a pretty leisurely 60 minutes, and I made sure to paddle well over onto the Minnesota side of the river, so now I can say I've paddled in that state more than just that one time on Thursday.  The river was high, and I saw several places I could tell were normally dry land, such as an RV park whose electric and water hookups were sticking up above the water surface.  But paddling some floodwater didn't seem a big deal to a guy who's done it plenty on the lower Mississippi.

I was feeling sluggish in the boat, and the truth is that I was just plain tired at the end of this two-week trip.  All the paddling and the driving and the camping in the rain had taken it out of me.   The journey had been interesting, but by yesterday morning I just wanted to be back home.

And that was the sole objective once I'd finished paddling yesterday.  I made it as far as Springfield, Illinois, before stopping for the night.  I was definitely seeing a transition into a warmer climate from the cool, wet conditions up north, but in Illinois it was quite pleasant.  It was just plain delightful when I got up this morning, with sunny skies and a nice cool, dry breeze.  I got in the car and headed south, and about six hours later I was back in Memphis, where it was hotter and more humid but not as bad as it can be.  With all of July and August yet to come, I expect we'll get our allotment of sweltering heat.

If I could change one thing about my travels in the last two weeks, it would be to lessen the amount of rain.  Now, I'm not anti-rain; the world does need rain.  But it sure did put a damper on certain things.  One example: there had been talk of a get-together at a nearby brewery after the race last weekend, and that might have been a chance for me to get to know a few of the racers in that part of the country better; but it was called off because it was pouring down rain and the brewery's seating was mostly outside.

All that rain also reduced the amount of exploring I was inclined to do, and so I probably didn't get to experience the Great Lakes region as fully as I might have.  It didn't help that I was so frequently on the move: I covered a lot of distance in fifteen days and didn't stay more than a couple of nights in any one place.

Oh well... I'm glad I went up there just the same.  I did see enough to know that the environs of Lakes Michigan and Superior are exceptionally beautiful.  If the region were in a warmer climate, I expect it would be the hottest tourist destination in the world.

As glad as I am to have taken the trip, I'm every bit as glad to be home.  There's just no place like it.  What kind of paddling is up for me next?  I have no idea.  In the immediate future I have a lot of non-athletic stuff I have to take care of, so I'll be easing into whatever I do.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Continuing on around the big lake

Here’s some follow-up to my last post.  Before I left the Nipigon-Red Rock area yesterday morning I took a little hike up the Nipigon River trail to the top of a ridge that offers this view of where I paddled on Tuesday:

That's the town of Red Rock in the right portion of the photo.  You can see the town's white water tower along the photo's right edge.  The marina complex extends into the water from the town.  The Nipigon River flows in from the lower left, and the body of water we're looking at is Nipigon Bay.  The island marked "A" is LaGrange Island, and the one marked "B" is Burnt Island.

On Tuesday I paddled out from the marina and did a clockwise loop around LaGrange Island.  One of the things I know but am sometimes lulled into forgetting is how deceiving distance can be out on open water: as I looked from the marina out to LaGrange Island I thought, "It's not that far."  But it took me just about an hour to reach the island's left-most point, even with the sprints I threw in to catch some little downwind runs.  As I said in my last post, the wind came up dramatically as I rounded LaGrange, and the roughest water I encountered was in that channel between LaGrange Island and Burnt Island.

One thing I forgot to mention in my last post was that I did have my drink pouch full of an electrolyte-rich sports drink, but I almost didn’t take it.  At home when I go for an under-two-hour training paddle, I usually don’t bother with it, choosing instead to be well-hydrated ahead of time and have some water waiting for me on the dock.  But on Tuesday something made me decide at the last minute to take some fluids along.  It might be hyperbole to say that decision saved my life, but then again, it might not be.  I was definitely grateful to have them once I found myself with a much longer, harder paddle on my hands than I’d expected.

Anyway, I hope this photo gives you a better idea of what I was talking about in my last post.  I should note that the bay is much more placid in this photo than it was when I was out there paddling.

After the hike I got in the truck and headed west.  My destination was a campground in Grand Marais, Minnesota, where I'd made a reservation.  I'd decided I'd had enough of Canada for the time being.  That's not because my time there wasn't interesting and enjoyable; I simply was ready to be back where I know how everything works, and where the features of my phone are fully functional.  Also, I'd chosen to pass through Canada without going to the trouble of getting any of its currency; if there was something I couldn't pay for with a credit card, I simply went without it.  Now I was ready to be back where my money will spend.

It was raining in Grand Marais when I made my camping reservation, but I checked the forecast and it looked like the rain would be moving out.  I drove through some of that same rain as I proceeded west.  It was also quite chilly--I'm guessing it was no more than maybe 55 degrees Fahrenheit.  The weather was what we normally have in March in Memphis.

The rain was indeed gone when I got to Grand Marais, and it started clearing up later in the evening, but it remained chilly.  Fortunately I have a good sleeping bag, and I was nice and cozy once I was settled in for the night.

Today has been sunny and beautiful, but cool.  I think it stayed below 60 degrees Fahrenheit.  The campground is right on the shore of Lake Superior, and this morning I went out for a 70-minute paddle.  I headed in the direction of Duluth for 35 minutes, then turned around and came back.  The breeze wasn’t strong, but at least it was blowing in, toward shore.  On the way back I had some more of those small downwind conditions that I’ve seen a lot of on this trip, and I had some fun working them.  The most peculiar thing about paddling here is the water seems noticeably colder than it was up along the Ontario shoreline.  If I paddle here again I’ll layer up a little more.

Of course, the most significant thing about this morning’s session is that it was my first time ever to paddle in the state of Minnesota.

This afternoon I opted for a bike ride.  A part of the Gitchi Gami State Bicycle Trail runs through Grand Marais, so I went to check it out.  The ultimate goal of the trail builders is for it to run from Duluth all the way to the Canadian border, but it’s being built in segments as funding becomes available—the same thing that’s happening with our Wolf River Greenway in Memphis and Shelby County.

So the section I rode today was a few miles long, and it was a good ride, with some rolling terrain and some nice views of Lake Superior.

Today was probably my only day in Minnesota with good weather.  The forecast says rain will be moving in overnight, and tomorrow the rain chance is 100%.  I’m really hoping it won’t start raining here until I’ve broken camp, but it’s sounding like I shouldn’t count on it.  This evening I’m going to pre-pack as much as I can so I can get up and out quickly in the morning.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

More rain, then some sunshine, a beautiful part of the lake, and, finally, an epic

I left Michigan Sunday thinking I'd left the rain behind.  The Internet radar was showing no serious rain approaching the area I was traveling to, and the sun even started peeking through the clouds as I drove into the northern reaches of Michigan's lower peninsula, across the upper peninsula, and across the border into Ontario.

Not long after that I realized that I had no Internet service on my phone.  I had thought that my SIM card would work in Canada, but apparently I was wrong.  That meant, among other things, that my phone's map app wouldn't work.  As I headed up the Trans Canada Highway that curves north and then west along the northern shore of lake Superior, several times I wanted to use that app to double-check my progress toward my destination at Lake Superior Provincial Park; but the only way I could do that was to stop someplace that had free wifi so I could access the Internet.  And such places are few and far between in this part of the world.  This is not a heavily-populated region, and this part of the Trans Canada Highway features lots of 80-mile-plus stretches with no gasoline or other services.  The last place I drove that was like this was the heart of Nevada.

At least it was a scenic drive, with fairly frequent views of Lake Superior.  The Great Lakes truly are a majestic marvel of nature.  I thought the same thing during my time along the shores of Lake Michigan even though I didn't get to enjoy it fully because the weather was so lousy.  If this were a warmer climate, I believe the shorelines of Michigan and Ontario and Minnesota and Wisconsin would be the hottest tourist destination in the world.  Maybe in another hundred years...

Connectivity difficulties aside, I drove along thinking all was well.  But then, as I moved within 60 miles or so of my destination, it started to rain.  My heart sank.  Having spent four straight nights camping in the rain, I really didn't want to do it again.  I hoped maybe it was just a small cell and I would be out of it in another ten or twenty miles, but it just kept on.

I knew Lake Superior Provincial Park was somewhere in the vicinity of the town of Wawa, Ontario, but I didn't know exactly where, and I was unable to check on my phone.  As I drew closer to Wawa I saw some public-looking signage, but it was hard to read in the rain, and I'm pretty sure I did not see anything that said "Lake Superior Provincial Park."  Finally I reached Wawa, and I found a place with some wifi and checked the map.  It turned out I had passed the park almost 30 minutes back.  Meanwhile, the rain continued to fall, and it was quite chilly as well.  I pulled up the Internet radar and saw a huge blob of precipitation parked over the entire eastern portion of Lake Superior.  I don't know where it had come from--there had been no sign of it on the radar earlier in the day--but I had had enough.  Reservation or no reservation, I was not going to drive back to the park, pull out all my soaking-wet gear, and spend another night in the rain.  I found a nice down-to-earth-looking motel in Wawa, and checked in.

I had my first hot shower in five days, and enjoyed a good night of sleep.  Monday morning the rain had stopped and a dense fog hung over the town.  As I departed Wawa the fog was burning off, and it appeared I finally had a lovely day with some sunshine and pleasantly cool air.

I was still on the east side of Lake Superior, and the Trans Canada Highway runs north for a while.  North of Wawa it veers away from the lake, and between the lake and the road likes a huge roadless wilderness area that includes, but is not limited to, Pukaskwa National Park.  Though I don't know for sure, I would guess that this area is the setting for much of Bill Mason's films like "Waterwalker" and "Song of the Paddle."

Eventually the highway curves around to head west, rejoining the lake along its north shore.  It was here that I stopped at the town of Marathon and paddled for a while in Carden Cove.  I was still tired from Saturday's race and just paddled a relaxed pace.  The wind seemed to be blowing from the south, but it wasn't so strong and the water's surface was small bumps.

After paddling I continued west for another couple of hours until I arrived at the town of Nipigon.  As I mentioned in a post last week, Nipigon is the site of a park that honors the story of Paddle-to-the-Sea, and I made sure to stop and check it out.

Just a few miles south of Nipigon is a little lakeside town called Red Rock, and here I had a reservation at the Red Rock Inn.  I'd found the place on Expedia or some similar site and I didn't think it was much more than another motel, but it's a sure-enough old fashioned inn.  The innkeeper is this old dude who might have been around when the town was founded, and the place is basically a museum for early-to-mid-twentieth-century technology:

And there's also a lot of arts and crafts by First Nation people.  It was hard to get good photos of the visual art because of the reflection off the glass, but here are a couple of my favorites (because they've got canoes in them!).

This morning I checked out of the inn and went down to the town's marina to paddle.  How did it go?  Well, what I thought would be no more than a two-hour session turned into three hours.  The weather was sunny and calm when I set out; the forecast called for a 15-mph wind from the west, but it wasn't blowing anywhere near that, and I've paddled in my fair share of 15-mph winds anyway.  My plan was simple enough: paddle east (with the wind at my back), go around LaGrange Island, and return to Red Rock.  On the way out there was just enough breeze to create some small bumps, but nothing for a downwind lover to get excited about.  As I approached LaGrange Island the bumps grew into the sort of rideable-if-you-work-hard swells, and in the last ten minutes or so before I made the turn to round the island, there were some small but fun downwind conditions.  I was sorry to be leaving them behind as I entered the lee of LaGrange Island.

As I rounded the island, I suddenly felt several gusts that seemed a lot stronger than 15 mph.  I hoped they would be short-lived, but as I came around the island to where I could see the Red Rock water tower, I was greeted with easily a 20-25 mph wind and some good-sized swells coming from the northwest rather than the west.  Again, this was nothing I haven't paddled into before, in places like South Africa and the Columbia River Gorge and even my own Mississippi River at Memphis.  But by this time I'd been in the boat for more than 90 minutes and I was getting tired.  I paddled up and over one swell after another, and while my skills were up to the task for the time being, I wondered how long I would have to keep fighting.

After a while I stopped trying to paddle directly toward the water tower and went over to Burnt Island, where I took about a 10-minute break.  Then I aimed for the shortest path to the mainland shore.  Once there I would then have to paddle another couple of miles along the shore to where I'd put in, but at least I would have some shelter from the wind.  I just hoped I still had enough energy to get over there.

I told myself to relax and not try to set any speed records.  In this case, "slow and steady" would win the race.  At last I made it back to the mainland, and even though I was now running on fumes with a lengthy paddle back up to the marina, at least I knew that if nothing else I could just go to shore and collapse for a while, and be on the same landmass that my truck was parked on.

Lake Superior commanded my respect today, and it was a lesson to be more careful about paddling any distance away from shore.  One of the things that had lulled me into a false sense of security is that this part of the lake is enclosed in an archipelago of islands--it's actually the prettiest part of Superior I've seen so far, and I was excited to get out among those islands.

I am unsurprisingly dead-dog tired this evening.  I'm staying in a motel up near Nipigon and I hope to get a good night's rest.  I will most likely stay on dry land tomorrow; a bike ride is a strong possibility, as is a hike on one of the local trails.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Monday photo feature

Here's one of several shots of Rob Hartman that I got during his gig in Grand Rapids last Monday.  He and his mates in the John Shea Trio served up some quality entertainment, and they seemed to have quite a following in the bar.

I got to watch Rob perform in another venue on Saturday: the 45 North Solstice canoe and kayak race in Suttons Bay.  Rob was pretty virtuosic there too, winning the 9-ish kilometer race with little trouble.

Under ordinary circumstances, I probably wouldn't have left home until maybe Wednesday in order to get to Saturday's race.  I might have been able to get the central air conditioning situation at my house squared away Monday or Tuesday, and that would have been a load off my mind.  But Rob's gig on Monday was the only one he had scheduled during my time up here, and I really wanted to see him play.  The simple truth is that I really enjoy music of all kinds, and even though I have almost no talent of my own for making it, I'm fascinated with people who do.  What's more, one thing I love about my sport is that the people who do it tend to be interesting, talented people in a more general way.  If somebody is a really good canoe and kayak racer, it's a good bet that he or she does some other things really well, too.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Some soggy camping and some flat racing

I decamped from Fisherman's Island State Park in a stubborn rain Friday morning and headed for Suttons Bay, the site of this weekend's race.  I would be camping there as well, and there was a lot more rain in the forecast.  I arrived at my new accommodations and found it to be fairly typical of privately-owned campgrounds in that the owners seemed to put most of their effort into the RV sites while the tent sites looked like an afterthought.  But it was a marginally nicer spot than where I'd been at Fisherman's Island.  The bugs were not nearly as bad.

Friday afternoon I got an e-mail from the race director calling off the downwind race because of both lack of wind and the likelihood of severe weather Saturday afternoon, when the downwinder was to have taken place.  My registration was reassigned to the 10-kilometer race Saturday morning in a sheltered portion of Suttons Bay.  I wasn't really surprised; I'd known when I signed up that there was a pretty good chance that no downwind race would happen.  I turned in Friday night hoping to be rested for an ordinary flatwater race.

Yesterday morning I reported to Sutton Park, site of the 45 North Solstice canoe and kayak race.  (The name of the race is a reference both to the summer solstice that happened on Thursday and to the fact that Suttons Bay sits at 45 degrees north latitude--halfway between the Equator and the North Pole.)  The 10K race was supposed to commence at 10 o'clock, but the race organizers pushed it up to 9 AM due to imminent heavy rain.  We got in our boats, warmed up, eased up to the starting line, and we were off.  The course was an obtuse triangle of buoys, and we would make three laps, meaning that each lap was, presumably, three and a third kilometers.

Rob Hartman of Holland, Michigan, whom I'd just seen thumping his big bass fiddle in Grand Rapids last Monday, is quite an accomplished paddler as well, and he wasted little time opening a lead on the pack.  Nick Murray and Jonathan Sanborn gave chase, while I found myself a few boatlengths back with Greg Hintz.  I'd sprinted pretty hard off the line and it took some work to move myself up onto Greg's stern wake, but once there I felt that I could hang there comfortably for a while.  Pretty soon Jonathan got dropped from the lead pack, and I thought if I stuck like glue to Greg's stern we might be able to run him down.  At that point any one of us could end up with the third-place medal.  Up front, meanwhile, Rob opened a gap on Nick around the second buoy turn of the first lap.

Greg and I hit some shallow water with terrible bottom-drag near the end of the first lap.  Up to that point I'd been feeling reasonably good, but the extra effort I expended to stay on Greg's wake was a shock to the system.  Before I knew it, Greg had opened a boatlength on me.  I hung back on the third wave behind his boat, thinking a couple of sprints would get me back in the position I wanted to be in.  Instead, Greg kept on pulling away and soon had bridged up to Jonathan.

I've mentioned in previous posts that I've gone light on the training this spring.  Going into this race I wondered how I would perform under those circumstances, and now I had my answer.  I didn't like it, but I couldn't really complain.

The second lap was the worst for me, largely because my right wrist had started to hurt.  I tried to relax it and will some blood to flow there.  I was struggling to maintain 10.5 kilometers per hour--not even 7 mph--and it was a little depressing to realize that maybe I'm just not in very good shape these days.

As I entered the third lap I started to feel something of a second wind.  Maybe it was the mental boost of having just a lap to go; I'm not sure.  My wrist was feeling better, and that helped a lot.  At this point it was clear that I would be finishing no better than fifth, and I was motivated by the desire not to be caught from behind.

Rob had built a commanding lead by the final buoy turn heading into the home stretch to the finish line.  Nick was solidly in second, so the only question was whether Greg or Jonathan would nab the last podium spot.  I tried my best to keep my boat gliding, and with about 2000 meters to go I raised the stroke rate a little in the hope of finishing strong.  I was several hundred meters out when Jonathan and Greg reached the finish: Jonathan appeared to have the lead, but there was still a sprint up the beach to the official finish line.

Rob won convincingly in 42 minutes, 40 seconds.  I've admired Rob's ability for a number of years, and he didn't disappoint with his effort this weekend.  Nick finished a little over three minutes back to take second.  As it turned out, Greg did indeed outsprint Jonathan on the beach to claim third.  They were both not quite two minutes behind Nick.  And then it was my turn to finish: I was fifth across the line with a time of 49:11.  If the course had been a full 10K, I would have been ecstatic with such a time.  But my G.P.S. device measured the distance at only 8.95 kilometers.

Kelsey Lewis was the fastest female, clocking an hour plus 21 seconds.  The complete results are posted here (click on "10K Race").

The rain moved in just a short while later, and it was pretty heavy at times as we huddled under the park's one pavilion for the awards.  I ate a modest lunch from the provisions I had in my car; after that, there wasn't much for me to do but go back to my campsite and take a long afternoon nap in my tent while the rain poured down.

This morning I broke camp in the rain again.  It just will not stop raining around here.  I was motivated to get up and out early because at the race yesterday there had been talk of a group downwind paddle this morning from Lee Point to Traverse City.  The conditions were expected to be modest at best, but I would have enjoyed working even some small bumps.  The latest plan I heard was to meet at Lee Point between 8:00 and 8:30, but when I arrived there at 8 o'clock sharp I didn't see a soul.  I drove around the area a bit just to make sure I had the right meeting spot, but nowhere did I see any vehicles with surfskis on them.  I texted the guy who was supposed to be one of the leaders of the group, but I never got a reply.  There was no more than a light breeze blowing, and the bay looked pretty flat as far as I could see, so I figured the people who'd been talking about paddling had abandoned the idea.  I hung around until 8:45, and left.

It would have been fun to paddle, but I wasn't heartbroken, seeing as how I've got about a five-hour drive to my next destination, Lake Superior Provincial Park on the eastern shore of--you guessed it--Lake Superior.  It'll be good to get there sooner rather than later to get my bearings.

My plan is to camp tonight, and I sure hope it won't be raining.  Tomorrow night I have a reservation in the lap of luxury: a motel room!  In any case, I'm ready for a change of scenery.  Both Charlevoix and Suttons Bay are tourist-oriented towns, and that means all the local services are targeted toward tourists rather than the locals (read: overpriced).  For example, I stopped in a bookstore on the main drag of Suttons Bay, and instead of a store with rows of dusty shelves where a book-lover could browse for hours, it was a boutique-ish kind of place that carried only the most famous titles while devoting a lot of store space to coffee mugs and similar gift items.  It didn't take but a couple of minutes for me to realize it wasn't my kind of place.  I sure hope to find some more down-to-earth places in the second week of my trip.

So, as soon as I finish typing all this here in a Traverse City coffee shop, farther north I will go.  I sure hope our neighbors up there will let me in; as crazy as my nation has become, I won't blame them if they don't.  But I'll give it a shot.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Some great paddling and some good paddling on Lake Michigan

I rose bright and early Monday morning and continued north from Effingham.  Some five hours later I was in the southwestern Michigan city of Grand Rapids, where I'd reserved a room in an Air B & B.

I had a specific reason for stopping here.  One of the guys I'll be racing with up at Suttons Bay this Saturday--one of the favorites to win the race, I'd say--is a guy named Rob Hartman, and besides being a really good canoe and kayak racer, he's quite the musician.  And he had a gig Monday evening at a restaurant and bar in downtown Grand Rapids, about a 15-minute walk from where I was staying.  I got to see him play his upright bass with his mates in the John Shea Trio, pianist John Shea and drummer Fred Knapp.  I'd seen the trio in several videos on You Tube and I knew they were good, and they did not disavow me of that belief Monday.  Rob thumped some hot solos, too.

On Tuesday I headed north yet again, this time driving for only about three hours.  That delivered me to Fisherman's Island State Park, where I'd reserved a campsite for three nights.  Finally, I could put down some shallow roots.

I've stayed at all kinds of state parks, and their campgrounds run the gamut in the sort of amenities they offer.  Some are downright posh, with flush toilets, hot showers, water and electricity at each site, and more.  At Fisherman's Island, things are closer to the rustic end of the spectrum.  The restrooms are pit toilets, and the only water source is a couple of pumps that bring up rust-colored water from a well.  And these facilities are a bit of hike from the campsite I reserved online last week.  I'm mostly unfazed, having lived the rustic life a few times in the past.  More of a challenge is that even though the temperature when I arrived was some 15 degrees lower than back home in Memphis, it was still very muggy.  And the mosquitoes are pretty bad: they're easy to kill, and their bites don't seem to make me itch, but it's nevertheless annoying to have them buzzing around all the time.  It was quite windy when I arrived, but the woods are so dense that the wind can't really get in to offer some relief from the mugginess and drive away the bugs.  I could hear the wind whistling through the treetops, but on the ground I could barely feel it at all.  On the bright side, it's just a short walk from my campsite to the edge of Lake Michigan, where I can enjoy a breeze and not have so many bugs.

Yesterday morning I was ready to paddle for the first time since leaving home.  I drove to the nearest town (Charlevoix, Michigan) because I needed a couple of supplies, and I figured there should be some access to the water there.  The way the wind had been blowing, I couldn't imagine that there wasn't some decent downwind action on the lake, and it turned out to be much more than just decent: the runs were as lovely as anything I've seen on the Millers Run.  Unfortunately, the south-southwest wind was blowing out (i.e., away from shore) by at least a 10-degree angle, and being by myself and unfamiliar with the area, I knew I had to be cautious.  I availed myself of maybe ten minutes of utterly enjoyable downwind surfing, then decided I didn't want to get any farther from shore.  Fortunately, I felt right at home paddling back to shore in beam conditions: while the Mississippi River doesn't offer true downwind very often, it's given me many days of practice in crazy washing-machine stuff, and paddling laterally across clean downwind runs seems easy by comparison.

I'd been on the water for about 50 minutes.  As I took out, I devised a plan for the afternoon: back at Fisherman's Island State Park the shoreline was more in parallel with the wind direction, and there I should be able enjoy some downwind action for longer.  I went back to my campsite and had some lunch and rested for a while, and then drove down to the park's beach area.  Once there, I realized that the weather had not been cooperative: the wind had abated considerably.  I got in the boat and started paddling, hoping that farther out from the beach some decent conditions might be lingering.  I found that there were indeed some rideable runs, but they weren't the kind we all dream about, where you can stop paddling and just surf for minutes at a time.  Out here I would catch a run but have to keep paddling to keep my boat moving sufficiently to link to another run.  It was actually very good practice for me, the kind I really could use a lot more of if I really want to get good at downwinding, but it wasn't the pure fun of the conditions I'd found in the morning.

The dying wind was part of a changing weather pattern.  By suppertime the air seemed less muggy, and a while later, when I'd taken my camp chair to the lakeside to sit and read my book, I felt the wind shift so that chillier air was coming from the north.  Back at the campsite I put on another layer of clothing.

As I lay in my tent waiting to fall asleep last night, some light rain started falling.  Then, around 5 o'clock this morning, I woke up to find it raining something fierce.  I managed to fall back asleep for another hour and a half, and when I woke back up it was just a light drizzle, so I got up and made coffee in damp, but not sodden, conditions.

After breakfast I returned to the beach to paddle again.  Yesterday I had paddled the more stable of the two surfskis I have with me (a V10 Sport), but today I opted for the other one (a V10L).  Once I was on the water I realized that the conditions were not dead calm, but in fact very similar to what I'd paddled yesterday afternoon, albeit from the northwest rather than the southwest.  I felt just fine in the V10L, and after paddling against the conditions for a half-hour, I turned around and did the same kind of workout I'd done yesterday afternoon.

This afternoon I'm back in Charlevoix, using a coffee shop's wifi to write and upload this post.  Having had a couple of poor-man's suppers in my campsite the last two nights, I think I'll see what the eating options are here in town this evening.  Tonight is my last night at Fisherman's Island, and tomorrow I'll make the trip over to the town of Suttons Bay, the site of this weekend's race, near which I've reserved a site in another campground.

The race on Saturday is supposed to be a downwind.  But of course, how truly downwindy it is will depend on the weather.  The race director has been sending out e-mails, and the latest says the conditions are likely to be fair, but not epic.  Maybe they'll be similar to what I paddled on yesterday afternoon and this morning.  If so, I'll have to be ready to throw in lots and lots of sprints, and whether my fitness level is up to the task remains to be seen.  I'll post a full report here the next time I get where there's some wifi.

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Monday photo feature

Summer vacation 2024 has begun.  I plan to spend this first week in the state of Michigan, looking for interesting things to do and hopefully having a good race on Saturday.

After that my plan is to head up into Ontario and around the north shore of Lake Superior.  During this period I'll be passing near Lake Nipigon, home of the boy who carves and launches the eponymous wooden canoeist in the storybook pictured above.

We didn't actually have Paddle-to-the-Sea in my house when I was a kid, but the film version was shown at my school when I was in maybe second or third grade, and it captured my imagination.  I had probably been told of the hydrologic cycle by then, but in this film the concept of "source to sea" came alive for me.  That film version, made by Bill Mason for the National Film Board of Canada, is up on You Tube, and you can watch it here.

I understand there's some kind of Paddle-to-the-Sea historical site in the town of Nipigon, Ontario.  I'll definitely have to go pay homage when I'm in that area next week.

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Wrapping things up at home and commencing vacation

It was time for another bike ride Friday afternoon.  After a couple of weeks of abbreviated rides, I did my full 90-minute course out the Greater Memphis Greenline to Shelby Farms, around Patriot Lake, and back home via the Greenline.  While it was mostly a nice not-so-humid day, it was sunny and hot: I think the temperature was about 91 degrees Fahrenheit.  Most of the Greenline is shaded by a nice tree canopy, but out at Shelby Farms I was fully exposed to the sun for about a half-hour.  I was reasonably well hydrated and I don't think heat exhaustion was the issue, exactly, but I was feeling quite fatigued during the ride back and the heat probably had something to do with that.  I continued to feel worn out for the rest of the day back home.

Indeed, a higher level of heat is moving into the Mid South.  Out on the river yesterday morning it looked like the sort of summer day lifelong Memphians like me know all too well: sunny, humid, temperature already approaching 90 degrees at 9 AM, and a thick haze hanging over the landscape.  I paddled on my home water for one last time, and while I needed some recovery from Thursday's workout and Friday's bike ride, I didn't want to do absolutely nothing because it'll probably be Tuesday or Wednesday before I paddle again.  I did a medium-intensity loop out on the Mississippi, and I could feel the fatigue in my legs from Friday's ride.  A northbound barge rig was well upriver as I left the harbor, but up around the Hernando DeSoto Bridge there were some lingering waves that I played around on.  They were small, but just barely big enough to get several good rides on.  If nothing else, it prompted me to rev my engines a little bit.

And today?  I hit the road.  I made it as far as Effingham, Illinois, which proudly calls itself "The Crossroads" because it's at the junction of Interstates 57 and 70.  I understand cooler weather awaits me farther north, but right now I have yet to outrun the heat.

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Sweating through myriad hassles

I'm into my last few days before I head north for a race in Michigan and some exploring of Lakes Michigan and Superior.

On Tuesday I went down to the river and paddled for 60 minutes.  The weather was calm and the river was free of barge traffic.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, then paddled mostly steady the rest of the time.

After lunch Tuesday I was greeted with bad news from the company I've hired to install a new HVAC unit at my house: contrary to what they had led me to believe, they will not be able to perform the job before I depart on my trip.  I protested that I need to have the problem fixed before I leave town, that I have pets who must be kept in a livable environment, and so on.  They responded that they could loan me several window units to keep the place cool until I return.  I wasn't wild about that idea--I've never much cared for window units because they're inefficient and they're noisy and they can cause water damage if they're not installed properly--but that was apparently the best they could do, so I acquiesced.

I doubt anybody will ever mistake me for a sharp businessman or an expert in management, but I do know the importance of a company having all its personnel on the same page when it comes to communicating with its customers.  In this case, I had technicians at my house telling me one thing and the lady in the office telling me the opposite thing.  As a result I've had to deal with more hassles as I try to get out of town, while for them it's just another day at the office.

And this is the part of home ownership that never fails to drive me certifiably insane.  Long-time readers of this blog have probably deducted that a stable home is one of the main pillars of the life I live.  I cherish having my own space, enjoying the company of my pets, surrounded by pictures on the walls and other mementos I've lovingly curated.  Sure, I could rent rather than own, but when you rent you have no control over crucial things: the landlord could, for instance, up and decide to sell the property, forcing you to move on short notice.  So I prefer to own.  And look--I'm very fortunate to have that option.  I promise you, that's not lost on me.  But there are times--like right now, when I'm trying to get away on vacation--when I wish I could shed my home and all my other material possessions and give myself over to the ways of the nomad.  I guess that's the inspiration for the "van life" concept that's so trendy these days.

But, anyway... the window units are now in place, and they seem to be doing the job, and I guess I can live with this state of affairs until I get back home.  Meanwhile, I'm grateful that my few days with no air conditioning coincided with with mild weather outside.  Now the heat is rising: the latest forecast says that most days in the foreseeable future will have high temperatures above 90 degrees Fahrenheit.  But so far the humidity still isn’t bad, and that’s a godsend.

It was right pleasant when I got down to the river this morning: sunny, mid 80s, and a light breeze that seemed westerly.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then did another set of four bridge-to-bridge sprints starting every 8th minute.

The conventional wisdom for most sports is that the body takes around ten days to adapt to the stress of a hard workout.  That means that less than ten days before race day is too late for your body to realize the full benefit of a workout by race day.  And so if you're preparing for a big competition that you want to be in peak form for, you should do your last really intense workout about ten days out, and then rest and recover after that.  I don't know how "big" my race in Michigan is, but it's the only one on my schedule for a good while.  Today is actually nine days before race day, but hopefully my body will be mostly adapted on the 22nd of June.

The workout went pretty well.  I didn't have a headwind like I did last Sunday, so my times were a little faster.  The times were 2:10, 2:10, 2:08, and 2:10--still not as fast as I was able to go in my full glory of six years ago, but at least it was a good consistent effort, and that's really the most important thing.  My technique seemed to come together in the third piece better than in the other three, and that's why that piece was a bit faster.

I've got some packing to do, along with a few more loose ends to tie up.  I hope the stuff I've done in the boat will enable me to have a good showing a week from Saturday, even if I don't conquer the world.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Monday photo feature

I've had no air conditioning in my house since lunchtime Thursday, and so far I've been hanging in there.  Fortunately, summer hasn't yet reared the ugliest of its ugly heads.  The temperature outside has stayed mostly below 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and the humidity has been moderate for this area.  But it's creeping on up, and my thermostat's room temperature display has peaked a little higher each day.  What we see above is yesterday's highest reading.

As of this writing I have picked a contractor to install the new unit, but we haven't booked a day and time yet.  I hope to speak to their office as soon as they open for business this morning, and I sure hope I can get on their list for sooner rather than later.

Meanwhile several people, including my mother, have told me I'm welcome at their houses if things get unbearable here.  If this goes on too much longer, maybe I'll have to take somebody up on that.  But I prefer to be in my home.  My kingdom.  The heat will have to be oppressive indeed to drive me out of here.  After all, I've camped out in worse summer heat than this.

Anyway... we'll see.  At least life continues to go on, and addressing tasks outside the house--including paddling my boat on the river--has been a welcome break the last several days.

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Boy, am I HOT! (But not the way I wish I were.)

For the second straight Friday, nuisance circumstances forced me to truncate my bike ride.  While the nuisance had been just some rain on the previous Friday, this past Friday I had a greater menace to deal with: my house's central air conditioning unit had died on Thursday, and I had to spend much of Friday shepherding technicians from a couple of companies through so they could take a look at the equipment and work up their quotes for its replacement.

I wasn't really counting on riding at all Friday, but I still had some afternoon left once the contractors had cleared out, so I went out and rode for an hour.  It felt good to do something physical and take my mind off the tribulations of home ownership for a bit.

I will be living without air conditioning until sometime this coming week.  It's quite a bummer, yes, but at least it's not the worst time for this to happen.  Even though it's starting to get hot here in the Mid South, with daily highs up around 90 degrees Fahrenheit, we haven't yet had the sort of sweltering humidity that July and August always bring here.  I've got the windows open and all the ceiling fans running, along with a couple of extra fans, and that's kept things bearable.  When I attended summer camp from the late 1970s until the early 1990s, I lived in open-air cabins with no AC, and I survived.  Yes, my camp was in the North Carolina mountains where the summers aren't nearly as brutal as they are here in the Mid South, but the hottest days there were about like what I'm experiencing right now.

Yesterday morning I went to the river and paddled for 70 minutes.  There was a wake boat making some nice waves in the harbor as I paddled out toward the river, and I did some brief surfing there.  All was quiet out on the river.  I was feeling sort of tired and sluggish, and after doing a small loop on the river I returned to the harbor hoping that some more surfing behind that wake boat might snap me out of my doldrums.  But by this time the boat was on a trailer on one of the boat ramps, so that ship had, quite literally, sailed.

This morning I went down to the river to do a workout.  Yes, a workout.  If you've paid close attention to my posts the last couple of months, then you know that I haven't really been doing those lately.  Not "serious" ones, anyway.  I've been getting in the boat and having all kinds of fun, surfing barge wakes and stuff like that, and I've engaged all my various gears and energy systems in the process.  But I haven't worked those things in a more organized, focused way.  I haven't even switched on my G.P.S. device during this period.

The truth is that the motivation just hasn't been there.  I'm enjoying paddling as much as ever these days, but making myself the fittest, strongest, fastest paddling machine I can be hasn't been a priority.  There's a complex web of reasons, but chief among them is the aging process: it seems that I've finally reached an age where I'm unable to do things I could do twenty, ten, or even just five years ago.  It's hard to get excited about training myself to average 5:30 per kilometer over 5 to 10 kilometers when not that long ago I was averaging 5:00 per kilometer.  And then there's just the fact that I've been doing this a long, long time, training pretty hard year after year to attain whatever non-elite level might be within my reach.

Maybe the motivation will return by and by.  Maybe it won't.  All I know is that for now I'm more interested in paddling for the general exercise and the time outdoors.

But I do have this race coming up in two weeks up at Suttons Bay, Michigan.  And so for today I decided to do a fairly intense long-sprint workout to grease up my higher gears a little more, or at least to get some clearer idea of my current fitness level.  I warmed up and did three 8-stroke sprints, and then did four bridge-to-bridge sprints, starting every 8th minute.  Conditions weren't good for fast times: there was a north breeze blowing not that hard, but hard enough to lift the flags that were flying from boats on the harbor.  It was a little demoralizing when I got the first sprint underway and couldn't manage much more than 12 kilometers per hour--that's 5 minutes per kilometer, which as I said above is a pace I could handle for a 5- to 10-kilometer race just a few years ago.  I had to make myself not pay attention to my speed or elapsed time, because it's not a good idea to do that during a workout like this anyway.

What I did want to monitor was my stroke rate: I aimed for no more than 90 strokes per minute because I thought that would allow me to stay under control and produce a good consistent effort over all four sprints.  And that's what I did: my times were 2:15, 2:15, 2:17, 2:16.  Once again, it's hard not to compare myself to my younger versions; according to this post I was doing all four sprints under two minutes just six years ago.  I shouldn't care, because Lord knows nobody else does, but it's hard to watch my powers slip away like that.

Oh well... I plan to do a similar workout later this coming week, and maybe it'll go better.  Other than that I need to get my air conditioning back in service, along with the more normal tying of loose ends before I leave town a week from today.

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Summer is almost here, and I'm feeling pretty good

One topic I haven't been discussing much here this spring is the aches and pains in my arms and shoulders and neck area.  And the reason for that is that I've been feeling pretty good.  There are probably a whole variety of reasons for that and I would say that they're largely a mystery to me, but I would like to believe that ONE reason for my lack of upper-body discomfort is my effort to rotate from the hips when I paddle, and derive as much power as possible from my leg-drive.  Doing so takes a lot of pressure off the smaller muscles of the upper torso--the upper back, the neck and shoulders, the biceps, the forearms.

And so, I extend credit and gratitude to Coach Chris Norbury, who alerted me to my inadequate rotation during our training camp in Florida back in January.  I've been working on the issue ever since, and while I'm probably not doing it perfectly, or even all that well--if Chris watched me paddle right now, he very well might lambaste me all over again--I'm pretty sure I'm doing it better than I was back in January.  And, well... that's something.

Meanwhile, lest we think that my physical health picture is completely rosy, just in the last day or so my right big toe has become swollen and sore, to the point that just walking around really kind of hurts.  I can't remember doing anything to cause such a thing-- I haven't stubbed my toe, or dropped anything on it, or anything like that.  Whatever this is, I sure hope it'll run its course in just a day or two.

I paddled for 60 minutes Tuesday morning.  There was little barge traffic on the river, so it was mostly a steady paddle, but I did get to follow a downstream-moving rig on my way back to the harbor.  The waves were small, and it was more like riding the wake of a fellow paddler than outright surfing, but that's okay.  It was a good little workout.  I worked to read the conditions and get as much aid from the waves as I could.

It's getting warm now.  The forecast is showing the daily Fahrenheit highs nudging into the high 80s and low 90s.  It was around 78 degrees when I went down to the river this morning, and by the time I'd finished paddling it was up in the mid 80s on its way to a high of about 90.  Fortunately a light breeze made things pleasant out on the river.  I paddled for 60 minutes at varying paces, and coming back toward the dock in the harbor I timed myself in my bridge-to-bridge sprint, clocking 2 minutes 10 seconds.  That's not a great time for me, but under the circumstances, it was a decent effort.

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Monday photo feature

In my last post I mentioned a guy named Matt Taylor, who with Lecky Haller competed in the 2000 Olympic Games slalom race in men's double canoe.  The first time I ever saw Matt was in the spring of 1993, at which time I was living in the New York City area.  I wasn't really racing slalom myself yet, but one weekend I went up to watch the annual Rattlesnake Classic on the Housatonic River at Falls Village, Connecticut, and Matt was competing in both double canoe and, in this photo, single canoe.  Note the ugly patch on the stern deck of his boat!

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Patching one boat and paddling another

I was very tempted to skip the bike ride on Friday.  There was some rain falling outside in the morning with more expected later in the day, and my head was deeply immersed in the current project in my woodworking shop.  In the end I compromised a little, riding for just an hour rather than the usual 90-minute loop.  The Internet radar was showing a dry window a little after 8 AM, so I went out and got it done.

It rained off and on the rest of the day, and I was happy to stay in the shop.  My main concern was the woodwork project, but I did find time to patch the crack in the stern of my V10 Sport:

The brown stripe is a strip of Kevlar.  There's a layer of fiberglass on top of it, but fiberglass is transparent once it's saturated in resin.  It’s an unsightly thing, isn’t it?  I've patched my share of boats over the years, but one skill I've never picked up is using gelcoat to match the color of the rest of the boat.

I want my boat to look nice as much as anybody else, I guess, but then again, making a boat look nice doesn't make it faster.  Back in 2000, when I was still racing slalom, one of the teams expected to compete for the U.S. Olympic team spot in men's double canoe was Lecky Haller and Matt Taylor, and at the Olympic trials they had to race in a boat that had been badly damaged by the airline during a training trip to Australia, the Olympic host country that year.  The boat had a big ugly patch like the one pictured above, except it was across the hull amidships, where it was probably more of a detriment to their boat's performance than the one above is to my boat’s.  But Lecky and Matt won the trials anyway, edging out the talented team of David Hepp and Scott McCleskey by the narrowest of margins.  I remind myself of this story every time I'm feeling upset over a broken boat.

I was back in the V10L yesterday, paddling for 70 minutes on a river that was a bit choppy with a south breeze blowing.  I really am surprised how good I’ve felt the first couple of times back in that boat; I thought for sure it would be a tougher adjustment after paddling something more stable.  After all, it's the same boat I could barely handle at all in the Atlantic Ocean during the Blackburn Challenge last summer.  While yesterday’s conditions were nothing like that day in the Atlantic, they commanded some attention, but I felt good and relaxed.  I paddled a loop out on the river, and on my way back to the harbor I surfed a few little bumps that a downstream-moving barge rig was generating.

When I got to the river this morning the wind was light and conditions were placid.  I paddled to the mouth of the harbor and found a barge rig moving upstream, so I ferried out to try some more surfing.  I got several decent rides--maybe even a couple of very good ones.  But the waves' sweet spots were small, and they were wandering pretty far right and left, so no ride lasted long.  I spent maybe five minutes playing around before I decided it was time to move on.  I paddled up the Arkansas bank and looped around back to the harbor and back to the dock to complete 60 minutes in the boat.

This past week has been warm but quite pleasant, especially in the mornings and evenings.  But today we're knocking on the door of just plain hot.  It was 86 degrees Fahrenheit when I finished paddling this morning, and I think it was pushing 90 by the afternoon.  The forecast is showing at least one 90-plus day in the coming week.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.