I let myself sleep this morning until I just woke up on my own, which meant it was morning but not by much when I got up. I decided to continue chillin’, so I went out & washed my kayak, located all the kayak stuff in the yellow bedroom & put the kayak paddle together (it comes apart for storage.) Loaded the kayak et all into my truck & headed over to the Rivanna for some paddling. It was hot but clear. Unloaded the boat, got it in the water, pushed off & flipped. The 3 guys and 2 boys fishing at the put-in got their afternoon comic relief performance. I was a bit short of dignity at this point but managed to re-launch nicely if not all that elegantly. At least I didn’t loose any gear.
Paddled out of sight of the landing as fast as was prudent - one flip in a “No Swimming” impound was enough for me – & headed towards the Ivy Creek Natural Area coves. Well at least I was a great deal cooler than when I unloaded the boat, being as I was soaking wet. A great blue heron flew over and landed at the head of the first cove & proceeded to get lunch-to-go in short order. I halted the kayak & watched said bird enjoy its suchi snack, then headed on into the 2nd cove & watched some turtles swimming in front of my boat.
Unfortunately I forgot to watch the weather. Just as I reached the back of the 2nd cove the sky gets dark, the wind picks up and the thunder starts. Great. I’m in an open boat, a thunderstorm is building & I’m about a half mile from the landing with the wind strong & against me. So I paddled to an opening in the trees near a granite boulder and beached the kayak to wait out the storm. Serious storm too, half an hour of locally severe weather, at one point I couldn’t even see the other side of the cove & its a modest cove. Once the weather moved on I paddled back to the landing post haste by following the shoreline. The wind was blowing diagonally across the water & strong enough to produce a nasty chop, so along the shore was prudent. I’ve flipped once already, let’s not make it twice ! Made it back OK, just very wet & very chilled.
Once I got home & into dry stuff I headed back out to C’ville for dinner, except C’ville had no power & thus no functioning places to eat out. This is clearly not exactly my day. Finally found a pizza place open on the way back home & had a meatball sub. Oh well. I had a good if somewhat shortened paddle, I finished the forsythia trimming & pine trimmings disposal after dinner and generally have recharged my internal batteries. Spent the remainder of the evening doing various small sewing projects since C’ville had no power & thus I had no interwebs. Funny thing, those servers want electric juice.
1 comment:
Hah - You were checking out the batteaux and it was contagious? Just had to get on the river yourself? Cool.
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