Nose to the grindstone

You know something is amiss when your 'honey-do' list is topped with a browbeating to get you blog up to date. I guess me excuse is a combination of a busy couple of weeks followed by bone-numbing cold that just has us holed up in a wintery daze. Here's whassup.

January 6 we made a first run on the Smith River in Martinsville, VA with the Triad River Runners. It was a tame little river with class I=/II- but it was fun to see some olds friends and shake out the cobwebs.

Later the following week we closely watched some rain traipse across the northern mountains and wound up heading to Damascus and Abingdon, VA for our first run down the lower Whitetop Laurel: a creek been wanting to do for a long time. The run only whet my appetite for doing the upper section of the creek. On Sunday a smaller group of 4 of us did a class II+ section of the Clinch River. Slightly cooler and cloudier but we drove home well sated by a weekend of paddling.

The weekend of the 19th was the annual CCC officers meeting that we sat in for most of the day Saturday followed by Raleigh's annual "Rollapoolooza". Nan and I set up an exhibit table for CCC and ACA. The event was well attended despite snowy conditions that never really amounted to much accumulation.