Pam LeBlanc and Sheila Reiter pull out after a brief stop at the Utley Bridge checkpoint during Saturday’s Texas Winter 100 paddle race. Photo by Libby Geisinger

I learned a lot at yesterday’s Texas Winter 100 canoe race, my first ultra-marathon distance paddling event.

One, I love spending a day moving with the water as scenery scrolls past. During the nearly nine hours I spent on the Colorado yesterday, I saw a river otter playing on the bank, a red-headed woodpecker perched on a branch, a spotted llama kneeling in the grass in someone’s backyard, and a hawk carrying a fish in its beak.

Hank the Hound Dog looks over my snacks during a brief pit stop at a checkpoint during Saturday’s Texas Winter 100 paddling race. Photo by Libby Geisinger

Two, I need to learn how to pee in a moving canoe, because there’s no stopping in canoe racing. Someone loaned me a woman’s urinal, and I gave it the old college try as my paddling partner Sheila Reiter kept the boat going downstream. No luck. We had to pull over, and my shoes got sucked into the mud as I did my business.

Three, my form still lacks. Especially on my left side. My wrist started hurting after about 5 hours, and was completely numb when I woke up this morning. I’m sure it has something to do with the way I’m holding my paddle.

Here’s the view from the back of the boat. There’s no stopping in canoe racing, but Sheila whipped out her phone and snapped this halfway through yesterday’s race. Photo by Sheila Reiter

Four, I love the rhythmic feel of paddling. It reminds me of swimming.

Five, word games take your mind off the blisters that are forming on your hands. As we rolled down the river, Sheila would name a famous person, then I’d name another whose first name started with the same letter as the last one’s last name. And so on. It’s remarkable how many names are stuffed inside the human brain.

Six, team crews make me happy. Heather Harrison, Jeff Wueste and Dave Froehlich handed us fresh water, hot tea and snacks, and kept us smiling at all the checkpoints.

That’s me and Sheila, at the top right, skipping through one portage while our crew hauls our boat. We’re spoiled. Photo by Patty Geisinger

We portaged twice – once at Longhorn Dam, where our crew carried our boat through a tunnel to the launch point downstream, and at Sheila’s Devil Dam, where we scampered up a slick bank and through some brambles to the put-in. We got lucky with the weather – mostly clear and cool – and the river was flowing at a great clip, which made the race easier than usual. We finished at the back of the pack.

I’m proud of the hat I earned for completing the race, and felt pretty happy gobbling up a bowl of homemade chili made by volunteers at Fisherman’s Park.

We smell bad and I’ve got a snot rag shoved in my sports bra so I look weird(er than normal), but we’re happy to have the Winter 100 in our rear view mirror. Heather Harrison photo

I woke up this morning sore all over, especially my back, but an hour-long swim at Rollingwood Pool loosened things up. Swimming makes everything better; I’ve always known that.

Yesterday’s race covered roughly 60 miles. That’s just a blip on the screen compared to the 260 miles I’ll have to cover at the Texas Water Safari this June.

Not going to lie. I’m scared about that one.

Onward!

Cruising into Utley Bridge – 46 miles down, 14 to go. Photo by Heather Harrison

Corey McKinney and his dog Bacon make a pass through the cement bowl at the Austin BMX & Skate Park on Shoal Creek Boulevard. Pam LeBlanc photo

Bacon wants his turn inside the deep cement bowl, and the crowd of skateboarders and cyclists at the Austin BMX & Skate Park respects that.

The brown and black pup, about the size and consistency of a couple of cinder blocks, barrels off the lip of the swimming pool-like structure and careens down its steep face, hot on the trail of his owner, Corey McKinney. Together, they zoom around the curved walls, McKinney somehow managing not to flatten the dog’s tail or mash a stray paw.

“I can’t stop him,” McKinney tells me, as dog and owner take a breather on the rim. Bacon can’t just sit by and watch. He chases after McKinney who swoops into the bowl at the 30,000-square foot park on the south side of House Park on his bike, then on a  skateboard.

The dog and its owner are fixtures at the park. Pam LeBlanc photo

I can’t take my eyes off them. I’ve come here to see if the park is as popular now as it was in 2011, when I wrote about its opening for the Austin American-Statesman. But I’ve never seen a dog run the course.

On this sunny but cold Sunday afternoon, teen-agers, and overgrown teens wearing knit caps and baggy pants who can’t quite give up their youth, swarm over the place.

Corey McKinney manages to avoid rolling over Bacon’s paws or tail at the park. Pam LeBlanc photo

The park was built with $1.7 million in bond money approved by voters in 2006, and is located just a few blocks north of the dirt jumps BMXers long ago built in a city-owned lot on Ninth Street. Together, the two obstacle fields — one concrete, one dirt — have helped solidify Austin’s position as a top skateboard and BMX destination.

Want to check out the free park? Austin BMX and Skate park is located at 1213 Shoal Creek Boulevard, just off of North Lamar Boulevard.

Pam LeBlanc looks off the South Rim at Big Bend National Park while hiking on Dec. 31, 2019. Photo by Chris LeBlanc

Want to know how you can help federal workers at Big Bend National Park?

The Big Bend Conservancy, which raises money to promote, protect and raise funds for the park, is planning an appreciation dinner on Jan. 25 for all federal employees and volunteers living and working in the park. The organization is also planning a Valentine’s Day party for those affected by the government shutdown.

The dinner is set for Jan. 25. The Conservancy will provide a meal, plus food supplies for workers to take home to their families.

Chris LeBlanc hikes around Balanced Rock at Big Bend National Park on Jan. 1, 2019. Pam LeBlanc photo

“We are first and foremost concerned with their health and well-being, and we wish to provide them with as much moral support as possible,” Conservancy officials said in a press release.
A Valentine’s Day party is also planned to show federal staff and volunteers how much the community appreciates their work in protecting the place they love.

To help:

1.   Make a donation to Big Bend Conservancy to help pay for food and beverages at both events. The link to make tax deductible donation is here.  If the donation is in honor of someone, email the Conservancy at membership@bigbendconservancy.org.
2)  Write a thank you note to park and border patrol staff, and mail it by Tuesday, Jan. 22 for delivery at the Jan. 25 dinner. Or email a note to  membership@bigbendconservancy.org by Jan. 24. Include anecdotes on why you love the park, and why the work park staff is  doing is important.
3)  Send park and border patrol staff a Valentine. Mail the cards by Feb. 7, and Conservancy staffers will deliver them at the Valentine’s Day party. Share a favorite memory of Big Bend, how a staff member helped you or how the park has made an impact on your life.

Donations and cards can be mailed to:
Big Bend Conservancy
PO Box 200
Big Bend National Park, TX  79834

The moon shines over Casa Grande at Big Bend National Park on Jan. 1, 2019. Pam LeBlanc photo

A collection of aerial photographs by Jay Sauceda, including this one, opens at the Bullock Texas State History Museum on Jan. 26, 2019. Photo courtesy Bullock Museum

If you’ve ever wanted to get a bird’s eye view of the sprawling state of Texas, check out the new aerial photography exhibit by Jay B. Sauceda.

“Texas From Above” opens Jan. 26 at the Bullock Texas State History Museum at 1800 Congress Avenue in downtown Austin.

Sauceda took the photos while flying solo around the state during six days in 2015. He originally took the pictures for a photo essay that ran in Texas Monthly magazine; they’re now part of a book called “A Mile Above Texas.”

The photos take the viewer from the beaches to the plains to the mountains through large format images. It’s like getting a private tour of places that are normally locked behind gates in a state that’s more than 90 percent privately owned.

“Getting to see the images printed large and in a walkable form will really give viewers the feeling of being along for the flight, which I’m very excited about,” Sauceda said in a press release from the museum. “More than anything, I want visitors to share in the excitement I had for exploring the state by plane.”

Doctors treat Thunder, a Kemp’s Ridley turtle, for tumors Jan. 18, 2019 at Sea Turtle Inc. on South Padre Island. Pam LeBlanc photo

Inside the hospital at Sea Turtle Inc. on Sunday, Dr. Kristi Hill and an assistant crouched over a foot-long Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle named Thunder, carefully removing bits of tumors that have popped up near its flippers.

Many of the sea turtles that come into the hospital these days suffer from a type of herpes virus called fibropapillomatosis that causes cauliflower-like tumors that appear both internally and externally, on turtles’ eyes, mouths and flippers. The same story is unfolding along other beaches in the Gulf of Mexico.

Scientists aren’t sure what causes the disease, but Jeff George, executive director of Sea Turtle Inc.,  which treats injured turtles, gathers eggs laid by nesting mothers and returns baby turtles to the ocean after they hatch,  says some researchers believe it’s related to water polluted by agricultural runoff.

It’s just one of the problems that critically endangered sea turtles face. Other patients in the hospital here are recovering from prop wounds or injuries sustained after they’ve been entangled in fishing nets.

Dr. Kristi Hill works on Thunder, an endangered sea turtle, at Sea Turtle Inc. on South Padre Island. Pam LeBlanc photo

I had a hard time looking at some of the injured animals. I’m a scuba diver, and love seeing sea turtles glide over reefs and crunch on coral. They’re beautiful, with expressive eyes, sharp beaks and shells that look like swirled green, brown and gray paint.

That’s why I’m appreciative of the work Sea Turtle Inc. does here on South Padre Island, where last year workers found and protected more than 60 turtle nests.

As I drove up the beach with marine biologist Mariana Devlin, who heads up the organization’s conservation program, she pointed out the rolling dunes.  Pregnant female turtles nest amid the sparse vegetation here between April and July.  But if there’s too much light or noise or activity, they crawl back into the ocean without laying. Sometimes, instead of trying to nest again, they give their eggs up to the sea, where predators eat them.

I’ll be writing more about the turtles and a project that’s brewing along the Texas coast that will mean good news for the turtles.