We're finally getting a break from the suffocating moist heat that tormented the Mid South--and quite a bit of the wider nation--for several weeks. This weekend the Fahrenheit temperatures are in the mid 80s, and north breezes have brought in not-so-humid air.
Yesterday I got in the surfski and paddled from the dock to the mouth of the harbor. There I looked out over the Mississippi and saw a big barge rig that was perfectly positioned for an extended session of wake surfing. It was moving up from beneath the Harahan and Frisco and Memphis-Arkansas Bridges, so I could make my leisurely way down to it and then surf the waves back upriver.
Maybe these waves were especially well tuned to my particular skill set, but whatever the case, I felt like a surfing stud as I carried my speed from one wave to another, linking runs. Having spent the last couple of weeks sort of puttering through workouts, it felt good to feel like I was doing something successfully again.
This morning I paddled the ski to the mouth of the harbor again, and found no barge traffic on the river. So I returned to the marina and got in the whitewater boat for the first time in over a week. I did a bunch of stroke drills and Eskimo rolls.
Of course, I'm still looking ahead to the Grand Canyon trip, and unfortunately that means keeping an eye on the Dragon Bravo fire on the North Rim. By the end of this past week it had grown to over 111,000 acres and was just 9% contained. The smoke appeared very bad, especially in the first 80 miles or so of the Colorado River below Lee's Ferry.
On Friday evening I chatted on the phone with Emily, one of the members of my party, and I remarked that keeping my eyes glued to the fire situation probably wasn't very good for my mental health. Her response was to order me to take the weekend off from looking at fire data. "Promise me," she commanded, and reluctantly I said, "I promise." And so, both yesterday and today, I have stayed away from the app and the websites I've been using to follow the firefighters' progress. I don't say "I promise" unless I mean it. Tomorrow morning I'll look back at those things because each Monday I send an email out to the group, and I want them to be aware of what's going on out in the Grand Canyon. It has indeed been a good thing to take a break from that--it's not like my being informed up to the minute is going to change anything that's happening. I'm hoping that when I do check tomorrow morning, maybe things will be a little bit better than they were, rather than worse.
For more information on what this blog is about, click here.
