A Paddler's Style Weekend

This weekend was crazy!! I have been home so little this weekend! I paddled two days and hiked half a day! Try all that in a standard weekend and let me know how you feel on Sunday evening at 9:45pm. I am most assuredly not complaining!! This was one of the better weekends of the year I would say! So let me tell you about it in detail!!!

Saturday:

I got up at 6:15 like it was another work day and I started getting things ready for my biggest day of the weekend. This is the biggest day of the year for a lot of southeast boaters! This is the day of the famed Green River Narrows Race!! So, I get my stuff together and wait for Melissa to get to my house. We are meeting here at 7:30am to drive up to Hendersonville and have breakfast. She gets here on time and... surprise, she is super hung over! LoL!! She asks me to drive and so I load my boat on her car since she has all of Daniel's stuff too and he is meeting us later in the day. And so the day begins. we drive up to Waffle house and she tells me all about her night out with teacher friends. We eat some breakfast and drive over to McDonald's where everyone else is meeting us. We gather all of them up and head for the Green.

The Green Race:

We arrive there nice and early and get parking right near the trail head. We are talking like 200 yards from the trail!!! This is a big deal, because when we left, the traffic went up the road close to two miles!!! We started our hike in at 9:30 and walked at a nice steady pace. It was very pretty up in the wooded mountains and got me thinking of doing a little more hiking. We got to where the trail goes down the steep part in about 30mins and we all were feeling pretty good still. We started scaling down the trail/goat path and surprisingly we were at the bottom, by the river, in 20mins. So our whole descent was 50mins. The dam was releasing 24 hours a day so we did not get to see the water come up like I did last year, but it is still impressive to see! We ran into lots of friends and got to see these guys and girls paddle some crazy stuff! We watched the first hour of the race and then began our ascent out of the gorge. This had a whole new level of difficulty to it because people were still coming down the goat path in a steady stream!! We made it out in and hour and five mins. A very respectable time! We said our goodbyes the friends we were with and headed for the lower Green.

The lower Green:

This was an adventure right off the bat! We got down there right on time, about 2:30. Daniel was waiting for us there. We began to unload our gear and Anah called and said she was at the top of the hill and would be down in about twenty mins. She finally gets there and so we run shuttle vehicles and now our group is ready for the water. Our group is Me, Melissa, Daniel, Randall, Tyler, Paul, Mike, and Anah. We get in and start paddling at Superman, loosening up and getting situated in the boat when Mike decides to take a gander at the fish. I know you are not supposed to throw people under the bus when they swim but this was Mike's first time on moving water, so first swims are allowed on first descents! I gathered him and his boat up and he seemed fine. Not too shaken! I reassured him that he would figure it out and we headed on down the river. We had no more swims and Mike found his place on the Green. Anah spent most of her time eddy hopping, Daniel was really working his ferrying, Melissa was really content not swimming, and I was happy to be back on the Lower! (It had been a while) After we all got done paddling four of us went into Columbus for pizza and had a great time relaxing and talking over dinner. It was good to be back in Brick, that too had been quite a while. I finally got home about 9:30 and started unloading everything. I hung up my wet stuff had a glass of wine with Daniel and then just laid around till Ashley got home. We talked for a while and then I could no longer hold my eyes open so off to bed I went.

Sunday:

Woke up at 7:30 and headed out to load all my gear for a flat water paddle through the Biltmore estate. The weather was, again, absolutely beautiful! I loaded up and set out at 8:15. I met everyone at the Dunkin Donuts in Travelers Rest. I knew this was going to be big group, and I have since decided this will be our last meet-up in their parking lot. We packed it out. We also packed out the Spinx parking lot, so next year we are meeting at the old Eckard/Rite Aid that closed across the street from Hardee's! I think we made it up to them finacially, because I think everyone bought something! So after about 30mins here we all headed up the mountain to the put in. Once everyone got unloaded, I got everyone to gather around one of the picnic tables and we worked out the shuttle details. I took a herad count and guess what... 53 Paddlers!!! Can you believe that? 53!!! That is my biggest so far and it beat my last one by 21! Well we all got situated and started paddling and everyone had a good time. We got back to Greenville about 5:00. I went over to Easley and had dinner with Ashley and then went home and died a little in front of the computer. Another great weekend came to close!

Family weekend - No paddling

So this past weekend, my parents came up from Darlington, SC. They have been pretty tired of the lower part of the state for a while and I think my Dad is about ready for a move again. They have been dropping hints about moving and so I think they finally have the bug. Dad asked me about a week ago to start looking for some land for them. So this weekend they came up and luckily Ashley was off for most of it! We drove around for half a day on Saturday and half the day on Sunday. We saw lots of property and several they liked but nothing for sure on the first visit. They are looking for 7-10 acres in pickens county. If you know of any land for sale under 100k let me know.

So I went an entire weekend with out paddling. I am now going through with draws. Lucky for me this is the first week of FPC roll practice. I have some friends coming over tomorrow evening for wine and boat outfitting. I am going to work with them on getting their boats more comfortable. I am debating on buying a new float bag for my boat. I have been told to try a bag under my knees. I think I may have to try it. Ashley has said she is going to try getting in my Godzilla. She is going to go to roll practice for the next few weeks and see if it interests her at all. I told her I would work with her at all the roll practices and then when spring gets here we can put her on the lower Green and see how she likes moving water. So we will just have to see how the rest of this week goes. I will let you know!