there's no stress relief like a surf wave

This afternoon, I didn't feel like getting in my boat. My job is intense and demanding right now, and I considered spending the day getting ahead. But I know that balancing my life with time in my boat makes me more focused and productive. Plus it was a gorgeous fall day. Around 5pm, I put my boat on the car and drove to the river.

For a workout that I wasn't super excited about, it was one of the best experiences I've had on the water in a long time. The river was just over 17 feet on the Jeff City gauge -- high enough to top all the wing dikes -- which makes for some strong current and interesting features. Big boils and swirling eddies form in corners of the river that are normally calm. It's fun to play with water that actually plays back.

I normally paddle upstream along the north shore, and then sprint back down the middle of the channel at the end of my workout. With the dikes only a few feet under water, the attainments over them were challenging. After several floods this fall, however, the tops of the dikes are not at all even. The resulting irregular water helps me climb up more easily (there are spots to sneak through).

Paddling on much lower water earlier this week, I watched an Army Corp of Engineers boat rebuilding the third dike up from the Jeff City bridge. Unlike the others, it's now a tall, uniform wall of rocks. When I got up to it tonight, the difference was obvious. There was a clear, uniform horizon line extending out into the main current of the river. With the river dropping an good 2+ feet as it passed over the dike, there was no way I was going to get up over this one. But below it: a perfect surf wave.

Surfing on a river is the same principle as surfing on the ocean -- but with waves that never run into the shore, you can sit on them indefinitely if you get your balance right. In the fast current, it took me a while to find the sweet spot. But once I did - oh, this was the perfect wave for a slalom boat. Long and glassy. Carving back and forth with my hips, paddle relaxed in the air, it felt like I could sit on the wave forever.

There is nothing more relaxing the sitting on the upstream face of a wave with fast current rushing the other direction underneath you, and to be stable and balanced. It is magic. It was heaven. It was just what I needed. I stayed on the wave until sunset. Then I raced back down the main channel, feeling more relaxed and centered than I've been in a long time.

I snapped the picture with my phone as I drove back over the bridge.