Tom Diegel’s Gallivants (and Occasional Rants) Posts

With all the buzz of the Olympics and the very impressive performance of the Americans in track and field, and not only in the typical sprint events, but this time even the US distance runners had some very impressive results with bold, gutsy, and powerful finishes.  Watching the amazing finish by Kenneth Rooks in the steeplechase to take the silver (the video is very much worth watching!) – I was reminded of an equally-fun and…

Recently I was digging through some of my archives and happened upon a copy of the Gloucester, Massachusetts “Summer Sun” from July, 1994, and it reminded me of a story that I had just recently told someone, and it’s just kooky enough to create a short(ish) blog post. I had recently moved to the Boston area to take a job developing shoes for Saucony and didn’t know anyone and was trying hard to make my…

Last year a crew of us were able to do what we felt was one of our “best trips ever” (mostly due to only having short term memories!) in the Nahanni region of northwestern Canada. Between the beauty, scale, remoteness, weather, challenge, whitewater, weather, and crew it was pretty amazing, and as such it was a bit of a challenge to follow it up with another one this year, especially because two of our five…

Some years ago famed packrafter Mike Curiak went out to southern Oregon for yet another descent of the fabled Chetco River and when I asked him how it was afterwards he memorably told me “If there’s a more beautiful wilderness river out there than the Chetco I really want to be able to find and paddle that too.” The Chetco is tucked deep in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness in the Siskiyou Mountains of SW Oregon and…

Back in 2013 I created a blog post titled “The Beauty of the Beast” that extolled the many benefits of old-school “mountain bikes” being repurposed into not only 2-wheeled urban assault vehicles but also as viable steeds for the burgeoning activity of bikepacking.  Later I repurposed the post itself it as an article for Cycling Utah, and then again a few years later for the Utah Adventure Journal.  While clearly I’ve endeavored to make my…

To catch up……Our Zambezi trip started with a coupla few days of flatwater that was an interesting combination of mellow because of the flatwater and stressful due to the presence of crocs and hippos in the water with us, but we had no problems and had a memorable short safari that got us very much into African Animal land.  We spent a day dealing with the 300+ foot Victoria Falls – which I forgot to…

Finally the moment had come; we were putting on the mighty Zambezi, heading through the Big Water rapid section that I’d been looking forward to for lo these many years!   As the day before, we trooped down the trail to the river, where the porters had already mostly set up the rafts, and this time we were heading downstream.  As we rigged (and the kayakers sat around!) periodic screams pierced the roar of rapid…

While the Zambezi river is famous as a whitewater destination, it’s also well known among non-whitewater enthusiasts for its wildlife, because only a few of its 1600 mile length has any rapids, and the rest is super flat and thus provides a vital habitat for the thousands of species of birds and animals that rely on it for sustenance.  So while most rafters and kayakers go to the Zambezi for the rapids and to see…

Many years ago when I was first getting into kayaking in Oregon (I was tired of the mediocre skiing during the same season) I was all enthusiastic about the many low to medium volume creeks and rivers in the Pacific Northwest.  There were times when big rains would bring the local class 3/4 rivers up to “pushy” levels that I found pretty exciting, but between the medium-sized Clackamas river and the behemoth Columbia river I…