Weekend activity
Jul. 18th, 2010 09:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beige_alertBack to the beach Saturday, 65km up to Harrington Beach in 2:50. The lake was slightly less cold, I actually did some wading out to knee depth and even briefly was sort-of swimming. Too cold to spend much time in the water in a bathing suit rather than a wet suit (or maybe a dry suit) but still at least more than a moment at ankle depth before running back out. I finally did walk all the way around the quarry lake. Back home in 2:48. The weekly trip up there I've been making is good for the legs.
Today the weather was better than forecast, and I did get out on the river in the kayak. 12.8km in 3.5 hours. Normally the rivers in the city have only the faintest current. You know they must be flowing downhill to the lake, but you can hardly see it. We had some serious rain earlier in the week, though. The Milwaukee River wasn't running much stronger than usual, but the Menomonee was obviously flowing much faster than usual. Normally we give up just after the low railroad bridge where it gets very shallow, but with more water it was deeper, and I got a good but farther upriver than before. I ended up turning around when I reached a point where the current was as strong as I was. The GPS was reading 0 speed, looking at the shore I could see I was making just very slight progress while working quite hard. Working out on a stationary paddling exercise machine located in the middle of the river seemed likely to get old fast, so I turned around and made amazingly fast progress downriver (and with the wind). I also went to the ends of the South Menomonee Canal and the Burnham Canal.
The South Menomonee Canal receives cooling water from Valley Power Plant. I commented on how warm the canal was last year in fall when it was wet suit weather. It's very warm now in summer. I saw a few other people on the canal, in powerboats. The Milwaukee and the Kinnickinnic have a lot of recreational boating traffic, the Menomonee and the canals much less.
My arms are tired now for some reason....
Today the weather was better than forecast, and I did get out on the river in the kayak. 12.8km in 3.5 hours. Normally the rivers in the city have only the faintest current. You know they must be flowing downhill to the lake, but you can hardly see it. We had some serious rain earlier in the week, though. The Milwaukee River wasn't running much stronger than usual, but the Menomonee was obviously flowing much faster than usual. Normally we give up just after the low railroad bridge where it gets very shallow, but with more water it was deeper, and I got a good but farther upriver than before. I ended up turning around when I reached a point where the current was as strong as I was. The GPS was reading 0 speed, looking at the shore I could see I was making just very slight progress while working quite hard. Working out on a stationary paddling exercise machine located in the middle of the river seemed likely to get old fast, so I turned around and made amazingly fast progress downriver (and with the wind). I also went to the ends of the South Menomonee Canal and the Burnham Canal.
The South Menomonee Canal receives cooling water from Valley Power Plant. I commented on how warm the canal was last year in fall when it was wet suit weather. It's very warm now in summer. I saw a few other people on the canal, in powerboats. The Milwaukee and the Kinnickinnic have a lot of recreational boating traffic, the Menomonee and the canals much less.
My arms are tired now for some reason....
