Still out there paddling...
Note the difference between the following picture of me and the previous picture of Alex. The two pictures were taken about 24 hours apart. Sunday morning dropped a bit of snow on us, and the winds began to blow. Nonetheless, I had committed to going kayaking with Matt, and so around noon I found myself on West River Road near Boom Island unloading my kayak.
We had decided to do the full distance this time, going from the upper lock to 694 and back. Once we got going, it wasn't bad - only my feet were cold. I had brought my pogies this time (things that are on top of your gloves to keep them warmer), and noticed a huge difference in how warm my hands were. I am still working on the footwear issue, though. Neoprene booties with a pair of wool socks are marginal - cold feet, but not as numb as last time. (Progress!) On the educational side, there was a LOT more icing this time. I ran into problems getting my rudder up/down because of icing, and discovered it's almost impossible to put something under a deck bungy when there is ice and I am wearing gloves. (Temps were in the mid-20's, with a brisk north wind. Not sure of the exact amount, but the flags we saw were fully extended, so I would guess 10+ mph).
Here is a picture of Matt paddling upstream, about a mile south of where 694 crosses the Mississippi river:
We miscalculated (again!) the amount of time required for our trip. Part of this stemmed from the fact that it was very annoying to check the time, since it involved removing a pogie to gain access to my wrist to see the time. The upside was that we were finally headed back downstream around 4:30, and so were treated to a view of downtown as the lights were all coming on. It occurred to me that this would be a cool trip in the spring when it's a bit warmer, but it still gets dark fairly early.
All told, we ended up paddling 14 miles. We got out of the boats once to heed the call of nature, but other than that decided that the boats were the warm place to be! A highlight of the trip for me was when Matt shared some coffee out of his thermos with me - I had not thought to bring anything warm, so this was very, very tasty! We'll see if we are able to get out for another paddle in December - it will all depend on how iced up our potential launch zones are at that time.
We had decided to do the full distance this time, going from the upper lock to 694 and back. Once we got going, it wasn't bad - only my feet were cold. I had brought my pogies this time (things that are on top of your gloves to keep them warmer), and noticed a huge difference in how warm my hands were. I am still working on the footwear issue, though. Neoprene booties with a pair of wool socks are marginal - cold feet, but not as numb as last time. (Progress!) On the educational side, there was a LOT more icing this time. I ran into problems getting my rudder up/down because of icing, and discovered it's almost impossible to put something under a deck bungy when there is ice and I am wearing gloves. (Temps were in the mid-20's, with a brisk north wind. Not sure of the exact amount, but the flags we saw were fully extended, so I would guess 10+ mph).
Here is a picture of Matt paddling upstream, about a mile south of where 694 crosses the Mississippi river:
We miscalculated (again!) the amount of time required for our trip. Part of this stemmed from the fact that it was very annoying to check the time, since it involved removing a pogie to gain access to my wrist to see the time. The upside was that we were finally headed back downstream around 4:30, and so were treated to a view of downtown as the lights were all coming on. It occurred to me that this would be a cool trip in the spring when it's a bit warmer, but it still gets dark fairly early.
All told, we ended up paddling 14 miles. We got out of the boats once to heed the call of nature, but other than that decided that the boats were the warm place to be! A highlight of the trip for me was when Matt shared some coffee out of his thermos with me - I had not thought to bring anything warm, so this was very, very tasty! We'll see if we are able to get out for another paddle in December - it will all depend on how iced up our potential launch zones are at that time.
posted by Aras at 8:34 PM
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