Canoe U 2008

What a fun couple of weeks we had!!!

We all fulfilled our growth potential as kayakers and did a smashing run of the Upper Kettle thanks to an auspicious combo of instructors, safety boaters and paddling buddies!

Here a video of Bea running Blueberry Slide with Megan in the lead. Megan's quite the racing star, so watch her form and her strokes, aren't they graceful!


I'm having a spot of trouble uploading videos at the moment, but once I've got that fixed there'll be movies of Sarah, Lynn, and Jim as well with some more of our instructing godesses: Natalie & Tina.

But getting to the point were we could run the Kettle with confidence and style was a fun journey too:

Jim & Kathy with Lynn and Megan just getting started!

Here's Jim, a kayaker and a gentlemen with a COMBAT roll after only a few days on the river!!!

Here's David "Hoss" and Josef "Little Joe" in the front. Even at the danger of loosing a couple of fingers there was no holding our Hoss back!!!

Bea!

Little Joe having fun on and off the water!

Mike and Natalie, who had never instructed together but who were working together like a right and a left hand! Or two paddles on one shaft! Or a fork and a knife! You get the picture :-)

Still doing some technical stuff on the lake.
Little Joe.

It takes a village to raise some kayakers.



Ah and here's what goes with kayaking like carrots go with peas: the cameraderie!

Ya can't beat sitting around a camp fire after a satisfying day on the river and the tummy full of Bob Dodd's or Jimmy's sterling cooking!

Now what is that? I can see a UFO checking out what all this fun is about. It's clearly hovering between Natalie and Jim who are standing. You see, there's no kayaking on Mars because we have it all :-) Between them a very smiley Megan Lynn and Bea. Bea's evening seemed to have turned into a bit of a blurr there. On the left sitting, Dan "monkeyboy" Monskey, who is regularely featured on telly and Oggie, who had an offside roll even before getting out on the water.

Jade in the middle, soon to be boofing off the highest waterfalls.

It's a dog's life!

The Kettle, isn't she beautiful! (Just under Blueberry)

In between rapids, enjoying the scenic river.

Here's Nora in the middle! She was our safety boater for the second year running and she is just a great mentor for kayakers in general. I have a great movie of her seal launching herself, which will be posted here as soon as I can get this @#$% movie upload working properly :-)

I just love that picture of Megan so relaxed floating to the next set of rapids!

I can't wait for Natalie's pictures of our seal launches!!! Now those were fun!!!

Hey and check out Nora's blog! Her blog is wellread all over the globe and she's posted some FUN pictures of the run :-)

Here's to the survivors party on Thursday!!! SYOTR

Ice Out!!!

Everybody was desperate to get water under their hulls! Unfortunately the day a couple of canoers got trapped and eventually capsised and were immersed for quite a while until being rescued and restored to their warmer selves. All's well that ends well!

But for us kayakers it was all fun and games :-) The sea kayakers are some colleagues from ISK who came out to do a TV piece on how to boat safely at this time of the year.

Now, I had never really thought about it, until my colleague warned me that drifting ice is actually quite dangerous: Give it a wide birth, make sure you're dressed for immersion in ice cold water and make sure, that your wearing your pfd and otherwise, HAVE FUN! :-)

How Much Longer Until Ice Out???

Villa Rosa for my layover in San Jose - not too shabby!

I've been checking my lakes for open water, but even with lots of imagination, there isn't enough to put a kayak in yet :-(

On the bright side, I was watching an elusive beaver play in one of the open pools for quite a while. Always fun - they are just too cute. It looked pretty skinny for a beaver, I bet it’s looking forward to some better weather too!

But since the weather can't be helped, we might as well look at some pictures from my Costa Rica vacation 2 years and 2 weeks ago now and keep our hopes up! :-)

Cherrie blossoms while waiting for the bus to the yoga retreat on the East coast only a hop skip and a jump away from Panama.

At Samasati.

Bananas! What would PB be without them?

Name that funny fruit!

Porto Viejo. Lots of hippies calling their kids "Buddha" and Rastas napping in wheel barrows. Lots of cute little cafes and restaurants for the tourists, so you don't have to miss your cappuccino and your bacon and eggs...

Views from my porch.

Looking down to the ocean from the hot tub on one of the many rainy days. They weren't exaggerating, when they called it the rain forest :-)

Walking trees! No seriously they move up to a foot or so each year by putting roots out in front of them and slowly uprooting at the back, always moving towards the sun.

Guavas just lying around left for the monkeys to nosh on.

Coconuts!

LOOK SHARP!!! In the foto above, what may look like a bit of dust on your screen are hundreds and hundreds of large birds sailing on the thermos screwing themselves up higher and higher. I was watching that for a long time. I was positively mesmerized. I wished I had a better camera but you'll just have to use your imagination a little here. It was like a tornado funnel of birds, which corkscrewed higher and higher without a single beat of their wings!

More views from the retreat.


Is that a white egret?

An old pontoon with a tree taking it for a big plant pot.




Porto Viejo.
Aren't those houses fun? Why aren't we using more color?

My little treehouse in the rain forest! I absolutly loved it! It came with a little gecko to keep me company. Also there were little bats hanging off the eaves so I could watch them lying in bed. My favorite sound to wake up to is definitely the song of the howler monkeys! It's somewhere between a roar and a belch and echos through the forest as they are swinging from tree to tree. (Least favorite companion under the shower - scorpion!)



But how's that for a refreshing shower!?! I went on a waterfall tour, a highlight of my vacation! We were guided by a local hunter who obviously knows the forest and showed us medicinal plants. He also showed us little berries the Tucans adore for their intoxicating nature. They sing a lot, when they are "stoned" or should I say "berried". And we could tell the difference in areas with lots of those berries :-) Tucans are just so funny to watch flying. It just looks like the swing their little wings like crazy nuts in order to propell that HUGE beak through the air!


Ah now, this little not very exciting looking tree is the source of one of the most coveted substances on the planet: Chocolate!!! This is one of the trees of a Bri Bri Indian woman who makes chocolate by hand and sells it to the tourists. So from growing the beans to the tourist's mouth she does everything herself, apart from the cane sugar. A buddy makes that for her but also himself. She showed us all the many different steps in her dirt floor manufacturing facility :-) . She also let us try the raw beans, which don't taste like much, apart from bitter and astringent. Now THAT did make me wonder, if there wasn't an interventionist God involved, but then again, they didn't have much else to entertain themselves with back in the olden days other than what the forest provided. That's a lot of time on your hand to try all sorts of stuff and see if something good comes of it.

Oh and yes, the chocolate she makes is delicious. My personal favorite was her ginger chocolate!

On my way home after a few days of particularly torrential rain. It nearly looked like we wouldn't be able to leave Limon. But our driver tried various routes and eventually one led us savely out. I was starting to get a little worried, when an acutal log swam past our mini bus...

Bye bye Costa Rica. I had been a good trip and my first time in a developing country. Quite an eye opener. We are just taking so many things for granted! Also I was really disgusted by the behavior of some of my fellow tourists. But that's no way of ending a post!

Back to the lack of open water. I am going to end on a high note and predict a first lake kayaking session for next weekend! Next week we are supposed to hit 70 and no temp below 57. That's gotta mean some good melting by Saturday!