I was mostly excited about Hurricane Irene because I was looking forward to kayaking the Potomac in flood. I headed out Sunday without checking the flood gauges because I just wanted to experience the river first-hand. I'd been working upstream the day before and it had seemed adequately rainy, but when I put in, the river was running silty for fall, and a bit faster than usual, but not much higher. I've been out on the river during pretty wild floods, and it's gorgeous.
I've been kayaking the same stretches of the river for ten years now, and while I might argue that I'm experienced enough to know what I'm doing, the feeling of being out on a flood river is probably closer to that of charging across a battlefield in the Civil War. Not to trivialize that experience, but I'm reading George Walsh's "Damage Them All You Can" and that's the metaphor that comes to mind.