It Sucks To Get Old...
but it beats the alternative. :-)
I rustled up my paddling buddy on Saturday, and enjoyed a couple of hours of sunshine and cold, fast water. The balance and timing is coming back faster than the strength and endurance.
Whitewater is a perverse sport: Mother Nature throws the most challenging conditions at you when you are at your weakest and least prepared.
The rivers at this time of year (in Northern latitudes, anyway) are colder, higher, and pushier, than at any other time of year. Except when they're frozen, maybe.
A dry suit works wonders for keeping the core warm, but the hands must still hold the paddle. Exposed skin would go numb almost immediately, so I wear a mitten-like thing called a "pogie", lined with synthetic fleece as insulation. It keeps most of the water off my skin, inside, where I hold the paddle, but some gets through, and steals my heat.
With the air and water both under 40F, its a constant battle to get enough circulation past the wrist gaskets of the dry-suit, to keep my fingertips from becoming cold, swollen, insensitive knobs, destined to ache when rewarmed.
Maybe Neoprene Pogies would work better.
Even my buddy, some dozen years younger, was complaining about his arthritis in these conditions.
But what a blast! Carefully aiming and timing my insertion into the energetic upstream eddies, to be rocketed back upstream and across the river, watching until the last second for reasons to abort entry into holes that look too hungry to trust. Hunting for the next standing wave to surf on, avoiding the pillow rocks. Assessing the trees, undermined and leaning heavily over the river.
It is still too cold to swim in these waters. Even a quick, successful Eskimo Roll brings on an Ice Cream Headache akin to having one's forehead drilled and tapped.
Cold or not, this dance is one of the things that makes life, for me, worth living.
I rustled up my paddling buddy on Saturday, and enjoyed a couple of hours of sunshine and cold, fast water. The balance and timing is coming back faster than the strength and endurance.
Whitewater is a perverse sport: Mother Nature throws the most challenging conditions at you when you are at your weakest and least prepared.
The rivers at this time of year (in Northern latitudes, anyway) are colder, higher, and pushier, than at any other time of year. Except when they're frozen, maybe.
A dry suit works wonders for keeping the core warm, but the hands must still hold the paddle. Exposed skin would go numb almost immediately, so I wear a mitten-like thing called a "pogie", lined with synthetic fleece as insulation. It keeps most of the water off my skin, inside, where I hold the paddle, but some gets through, and steals my heat.
With the air and water both under 40F, its a constant battle to get enough circulation past the wrist gaskets of the dry-suit, to keep my fingertips from becoming cold, swollen, insensitive knobs, destined to ache when rewarmed.
Maybe Neoprene Pogies would work better.
Even my buddy, some dozen years younger, was complaining about his arthritis in these conditions.
But what a blast! Carefully aiming and timing my insertion into the energetic upstream eddies, to be rocketed back upstream and across the river, watching until the last second for reasons to abort entry into holes that look too hungry to trust. Hunting for the next standing wave to surf on, avoiding the pillow rocks. Assessing the trees, undermined and leaning heavily over the river.
It is still too cold to swim in these waters. Even a quick, successful Eskimo Roll brings on an Ice Cream Headache akin to having one's forehead drilled and tapped.
Cold or not, this dance is one of the things that makes life, for me, worth living.