Stop me if you've heard this before. October is my favorite time of year.
What's not to love? Let's start with it's my birth month. Add whitewater season to the mix and you have a month with lots of celebration. Crisp mornings and warm afternoons, colorful mountainsides and bonfires. Day trips to Keeneland. Football on tap. Halloween and halloween and halloween.
We're blessed with three days of whitewater releases this first weekend to get the month rolling. The coming fall colors are preceded by the technicolor gear of hundreds of paddlers aiming for the Breaks.
The eastern U.S. was in drought most of the spring and summer, so kayakers are anxious for that flow and have been streaming to other dam releases so far this early fall. We'll see nothing different.
The Russell Fork is still a must see destination for whitewater paddlers from all over the country and many return year after year. Others will be here for the first time, quietly anxious to see if the stories are true, to learn if they belong.
The Fork has a well earned reputation for separating the class 3 beater from the class 5 carver. Take it from this beater, the Fork has humbled many young hotshots over the years. Some old ones, too.
This beater will mostly be observing this month much to his dismay. Floating in my boat running the Class III stuff is still within my range but two years of chemo has left me so weak I can't carry my boat. That's a problem.
So I've gotten myself an inflatable kayak, also known as a duckie, that weighs less than half my creek boat. It's kind of like trading a high end 26 inch road racer for a 16 inch sidewalk crawler with training wheels and sparkly tassels coming out of the handle bar grips.
But at least I'll be boating down the lower part of the river from Rat Hole into Elkhorn with a couple of other old beaters from back in the day this afternoon. And hopefully, I'll hit the upper a couple of times over the next 3 weekends with old friends made on these banks.
On the last release weekend, after autumn has taken over the trees, the best kayakers from around the world will gather to challenge the river and one another in the Lord of the Fork race. Winners of this race have hailed from as near as Lexington to as far as New Zealand and make up a true who's-who of the sport over the last 30-40 years.
I'm happy to announce, if all goes according to plan, I will be able to maintain my 30 year streak of not paddling in the Lord of the Fork race. It's a hard streak to keep up, as you might imagine, but I'm confident I can once again not compete in my shiny new duckie.
I'll be satisfied letting all those younger guys and girls compete for that infamous race cup. I'm infamous enough as it is and that pope from Chicago says we should share the glory. I'm all about that.
I love to share my river with all these nice visitors. Come on out and join me!