Was it Before or After the Storm?

I met R at Caseys Beach on one of the those mornings when your body is tired but you go out anyway because Sunday is paddle day. Doug and I had been climbing the day before, a cold winters day that did not seem to warm up much. The road in was laced with fallen trees from the last big wind storm and we had to walk twice as far as normal. There is a bonus to this which I try to focus on instead of thinking about the ease and convenience of road-side cragging and that is carrying a heavy climbing pack is tremendously good for your legs and core. It’s still early season where climbing anything but the easiest routes feels tremendously hard, but, then again, as I look down the barrel of my 6^th decade on the planet, this could be the new normal.

There are only two of us on the Sunday paddle which means I could change the destination to anything that R is happy to paddle, but, sometimes it’s easier to just stick to the plan, and, on a day I felt fatigued with sore hamstrings, easier seemed appealing.

As usual, I wanted to do my 20 kilometres, but, ended up doing 28 kilometres as, on the way back from Snapper Island, R wanted to go down to Black Rock, seven kilometres to the southeast. Of course, had I known this before, we could have gone to Black Rock first, and saved eight kilometres paddling into a light wind and swell. In fact, that circuit would have been 20 kilometres dead on, but, I’m an agreeable person, despite what you read here, and was happy enough to paddle the extra distance. After all, the wind was light and the sun was out and an East Coast Low is expected to arrive on Monday night with up to 120 mm of rain and strong wind. We may as well be outside while we comfortably can!