Friday, September 28, 2007

2007 Vacation - Day 07

Day 07 – 27-Sep-2007

I left my cousins place a 6am in order to catch the ferry to the Sunshine Coast. The ride over was nice. I managed to take a couple of pictures as it was foggy and overcast for most of it.

I had breakfast at Molly’s Reach in Gibson. It was pretty cool to actually see this place as I grew up watching the Beachcombers in the 70’s and 80’s.

I headed up to Egmont. I could not find some of the Ontario paddlers that were going to be there. I did the 4km hike wearing my Crocs into the Skookumchuk tidal rapids. I managed to see the whirlpools, etc for the outflowing tide just before noon.

I hung out in the woods for the rest of the day as the other rapid that the paddlers use would not be in until 5:29pm for incoming tide. I spent the afternoon taking pictures of the rainforest and marine life and having a nap under my umbrella as it was raining. By this point I had less than 9 hours sleep in the last 58.

The Skook wave started coming in around 4ish slowly building to its peak. I managed to take some pictures of two paddlers from Colorado as the Ontario paddlers were not around. The pictures were not exactly great quality as it was crappy weather but at least I got some.

I did the 4km hike out and decided to head back to Vancouver as I hand time to make the last Ferry. I managed to get to my other cousins place around 10:30ish. I finally crashed after midnight. I woke up an hour later with my hand still on the mouse as I was waiting for the pictures to upload.

I will be in Vancouver for a few days and then off to the Revelstoke, Glacier, Yoho, Banff - Jasper parks for the rest of my journey.

Link to some pictures

2007 Vacation - Day 12

Day 08 28-Sep-2007 – Day 11 01-Oct-2007

I spent most of my time at my cousin Prescott’s place with his family. I played mister fixit around the house fixing things that were out of Prescott’s area of expertise. Well not exactly on one of the jobs as he is a plumber by trade … I ended up taking a hairball the size of my fist out of his daughters bathtub as the water was draining out very slow. Linda has invited me back next year at the same time. She said she will start making a list and will pay my flight out. We will see about that.

I also had dinner with my aunt, uncle, and cousin from my moms side of the family. I found out from my aunt and uncle that I had relatives in Revelstoke, BC.

I can’t believe how much is has rained over the last few days. At least 50mm of rain a day. I hate the rain and even worse I hate driving in it.

I ended up staying in Maple Ridge one extra day due to the crappy weather in the area I was going.

Day 12 – 02-Oct-2007

I left Maple Ridge at 04:30am and headed east. I was hoping to get at least to Revelstoke by 4pm. I had to make a 180km detour in order to see my last remaining living grandmother in Princeton, BC. I spent a couple of hours visiting and continued my journey.

I stopped in Kamloops at the Costco for lunch. I have been to at least five different ones since I have started my vacation. Addiction is a good thing?!

I stopped to see the Last Spike. This was the last spike of the railway linking the east to the west.

I managed to make it to Revelstoke around 4:30ish. My mom was born here and I thought it would be nice to check the place out. It is a nice little town. I went up to the dam and took a couple of pictures. This is the smaller dam. The larger Mica dam was another 175km up the road but I was not going there.

I found the house my Aunt Shirley lived at. She supposedly held me when I was a baby. It felt kind of strange knocking on someone’s doors and asking if they were home or not. She thought I was a salesman until I explained who I was. I actually got invited in the door without even having to show ID. She filled me in on her family and I filled here in on what was going on with mine. Go figure it turns out we are all dysfunctional. She also lives at the corner of the street named after my mothers side of the family. She invited me out to dinner with her daughter Debbie.

After dinner I continued my journey eastward. I managed to get to Glacier National Park. I decided to grab a room at the Best Western at the bottom of the glacier. It is also just west of Rogers Pass. I hope to get some nice pictures in the morning.

Link to some pictures

Thursday, September 27, 2007

2007 Vacation - Day 06

Day 06 – 28-Sep-2007

I left at 4am to drive over to the ferry terminal. I was 5th car in line in my lane. I figured the cost of $14.45 was well worth the price of gas and driving for another few hours to reach my destination for the day of Seattle. I am going to play tourist for the day in the city before heading up to Vancouver.

I think I found POBO or at least his bike. It was beside my car on the ferry. I took some pictures of it but could not wait for its owner to come back.

I managed to get into downtown Seattle at 06:30am. I washed up and put on some clean clothes in order to not look like a country hick.

I spent some time at the Pike Market. I watched the fish being unloaded and the stands being setup. I came across a really neat hot pepper produce stand.

I also managed to take the Underground City tour. Thanks Peter for the suggestion. It was really informative and entertaining.

I managed to head over to Chinatown for a Dim Sum lunch at the House of Hong. The food was excellent. I pigged out but it was worth it.

Well it was getting close to 1:30pm. I figured I should leave and head up to Vancouver before the rush hour traffic started. I managed to get to my cousins place just before 6pm as I had to stop for a 20 minute nap on the way up as I have had less than four hours sleep since the morning of the 25th.

Mike and I went out for dinner at Hons House of Noodles and then for a walk around the marina. Lots of money tied up down there.

I have had a few questions from people on what I am using to take my pictures. It is a Pentax K10D SLR. It is the top of the line Pentax 10 mega pixel camera. It has a full aluminum body and is fairly water resistant. I rarely use a tripod. The only time I have used a tripod is the pictures with me in them. I normally shoot my camera in full manual mode. I am getting really good at hold the camera steady down to 1/6th of a second shutter speed, Sometimes even a 1/30th of a second for really low light situations.

I have officially put 3,000 KM on the rental car since Friday.

Link to pictures

2007 Vacation - Day 05

Day 05 – 25-Sep-2007

I ended up getting up at 6am. I knew the girls wanted to hit the trail early. I fired up the jet engine stove and boiled water for drinks and then put the toaster on the stove for waffles. I even heated up the syrup containers in the water. I told the girls I would make them breakfast since they paid for the camping. Beth was out of the tent first as Lauretta is apparently not a morning person. The girls said it was the best breakfast that they had had so far on their trip. We packed up camp after breakfast was done. For me it was easy. Open the car and throw everything in.

I told the girls I wanted to take a picture of them with their packs on for my blog report. Beth asked me for my email and blog address. We hope to keep in touch. I told them to give me a call if they ever come out Toronto way. I also told them the next time I go paddling in South Bend, Indiana I would take a couple of extra days and head over to Chicago to visit.

I went back up to Paradise to take some more pictures of the mountain and other places I noticed from my trip up yesterday. I spent almost two hours but I think it was worth it with the shots I managed to get.

I plotted out my route for my trip to the coast. I tried not to stop too many times as I wanted to be at Kalaloch State Park there for sunset on the beach. I did make a stop just before Pacific Beach. You were allowed to drive up and down the beach. I actually put my feet into the Pacific Ocean for a few minutes but realized afterwards I forgot to take my picture. I was also amused at tsunami warning signs as I have never seen them before.

I made it up to Kalaloch in plenty of time. I managed to have a nap and make some grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. I managed to get some nice shots of the beach and trees as the sun was going down. I was quite happy with the pictures.

The plan was to drive up to the state campground near Forks. I decided to forgo the drive in the early morning fog by driving all the way to Port Gamble which would only be about 10 minutes at the most from catching the Kingston to Edmonds ferry in the morning. I managed to pull into port gamble around midnight. I found a free wireless signal and uploaded my day four blog and pictures. After that I caught a few hours sleep in the car along with all the other people that were pulling with the same idea.

Link to some pictures Link to pictures

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

2007 Vacation - Day 04

Day 04 – 24-Sep-2007

I slept in until 7am. I had the fresh waffles for breakfast at the buffet. I managed to scam some extra packages of syrup and cream cheese for future meals. I decided I was not going to take the major interstates as I would not see much. I got out the trusty map program on my laptop and plotted a back road trip. I left Spokane around 9ish. I am quite amazed that eastern part of Washington State is similar to the rolling hills of the prairies in Southern Alberta. For the most part the crops appeared to be different types of grains, onions, etc.

I took lots of pictures as I went. Some of them are of some really bizarre stuff. Just east of Othello, I found what appears to be an abandoned old wooden granary beside a railway line. About five minutes on the other side of Othello, I came across apple orchards and grape vineyards for as far as I could see and then they disappeared. It was pretty bizarre to see these orchards in the prairie landscape. I always thought they would be in plush areas. The irrigation systems used in the area was amazing. The landscape was dotted with green circle crops rings that had the automated wheel watering systems. The place looked like the aftermath of an alien invasion (yes I am a believer).

I was quite surprised that in the middle of BFN I came across the former site of the B Reactor at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. This reactor was part of the Manhattan Project from the early 1940’s and the plutonium for the first atomic bomb was made there including the famous Nagasaki bomb.

I noticed that there seemed to be miles and mile of scorched earth. I am not sure if it was a deliberate fire in order to cultivate the land. There are orchards in between all these burnt areas.

I found a house I like just outside of Moxee City. I still have to phone the real estate office to see how much it is. It comes complete with a guest house, shed, two cars (complete with bullet holes), and some farming equipment. The house is a bit of a fixer upper but I think it would be well worth it. It sits on approximately 500 acres of land which backs onto this humungous hill witch is the perfect spot to build the shooting and archery range. It is also close the vineyards which are about five minutes away.

It was getting late and I had to quit stopping for pictures after my last stop at Oak Creek. I wanted to get to Mount Rainier before sunset in order to take pictures there. I managed to get to the park in time after taking a detour down a forestry road as the main road through the park was closed due to road repair from last winters storm.

I headed right up to the top at Paradise and started taking pictures once I was closer. The view was amazing. The light was almost gone and it was time to head down the mountain to find a campsite. There were only a couple of cars still in the parking lot when I was about to leave.

I came across these two hikers that were looking for the Paradise campground only to be disappointed that it wasn’t either open or somewhere else. They were just dropped off at Paradise by someone else who had offered them a ride up. I asked them if they wanted a ride down to Cougar. I introduced myself to Beth and Lauretta. They were both from the Chicago area and looked really tired. We headed down to the campground. It turns out the girls were on day eight of a nine day hiking trip. I rearrange the crap in the car to make room for them and their gear.

We ended up sharing a campsite in Cougar. It was twelve bucks for the night and the girls offered to pay. We started setting up our tents as we were losing daylight. We had dinner. I made noodles and the girls made up their dehydrated spaghetti concoction which was actually quite edible. Shortly after dinner I started the fire and offloaded my pictures onto the laptop. I showed the girls the pictures I had been taking on my trip. They were quite impressed. We all ended up crashing around 10ish.

Link to some pictures

Monday, September 24, 2007

2007 Vacation - Day 03

Day 03 – 23-Sep-2007

Today did not go as planned. It rained all night and was sleet by the time I got up at 7am. I had a fairly good sleep considering I went to bed at 8pm and only had to get up twice to go to the bathroom (old age). It was fairly cold last night but I was toasty warm in my British military sleeping bag and poncho liner.

I packed up the car with my sleeping bag and thermarest. I dragged my tent over to the cooking shelter and disassemble it there. I shook it out as much as possible and just shoved it all into the big rubbermade container I bought for that specific purpose. I had a nice hot breakfast and decided to head up to Cameron Lake. It started to snow a lot on my way there. I did not expect to take any great pictures as there were really low lying clouds blocking out most of the view.

I met a guy from Montana at Cameron Lake. He told me that the Road to the Sun route was just closed for the winter a month early due to a big snow storm and road damage just a couple days back. There goes my plan A as I was going to spend the entire day there taking pictures. I thought about driving to Yellowstone but it was 1200KM in the wrong direction. I decided that Plan B was to drive to Portland, Oregon or Seattle, Washington. It just all depended on how much time I had before going to Skook tidal rapids on Thursday. Going to Seattle meant I would have to see my Granma in Princeton on my way out of Vancouver instead of on the way to Vancouver from the Road to the Sun trip.

I headed off the the US border at Chief Mountain. The customs guy was freezing his a$$ off in this little shack with no heat working in it. He must have been real lonely as he asked me every possible question you could think of. I guess he doesn’t get many customers going through there in a fricking snow storm. The last thing he said to me was watch out for the cows. He wasn’t kidding. It is bad enough driving up and down snow covered hills and not being able to see and then have to deal with the added fun of dodging big black cows standing in the middle of the road. Talking about playing chicken. I saw some recent evidence of people sliding into the ditch. I don’t think I made it over 40 KPH until I was out of the snow belt.

I phoned my friend Nancy back home to let her know my travel plans had changed as I was now heading to the pacific coast instead of the Road to the Sun and Princeton plan. I decided at that point to take the tent and fly out of the rubbermade container and dry it out in the car as I had the heat on.

Montana is really beautiful. It is amazing how much the landscape changes from the east side to the west side. I stopped along the way to take pictures but did not get as many as I had hoped floor compared to what would have been Plan A but I was happy.

I stopped for a Peanut Parfait thing at DQ in Columbia Falls, Montana. They have free wireless internet there for the customers. I caught up on some emails and posted up my TR/pictures from day 02. I also found out what was causing the random line on some of my pictures. I found a small barely visible fluff on the CCD of my camera. At first I thought it was on my lenses or filters but they were totally clean. I found a setting on the camera to flip the mirror up for cleaning. It took me 15 minutes with a flashlight and tilting the camera various angles to find it. The people at DQ probably thought I was an idiot.

I continued my journey westward. Darkness was setting in and the rain was starting which is a driving combination I really hate. It is amazing how on a four mile six percent grade hill that people are still driving the posted speed limit of 120KM. I was barely doing 80KM as I did not want to slide off the road.

I finally made it to the Idaho border at 21:17 MST which then meant 20:17 PST as soon as I crossed the line. I did not see much of Idaho driving through the dark.

I could not stop to take a picture of the Washington border sign as it was in the middle of the road and I did not feel like getting run over by transport trucks doing 130 KM. I made it to Spokane, Washington which was almost 700KM from Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta. I decided to treat myself and grabbed a room for the night with a really comfy kingsize bed for 79 bucks which includes wireless internet and a huge breakfast buffet.

I will decide in the morning on where I am going. I would like to see Mount Ranier again and then head up the west coast to do the Mount Olympia loop and head over to Seattle and up to Vancouver from there. It all depends on how much time and what I want to see before Skook.

Here are some pictures

Sunday, September 23, 2007

2007 Vacation - Day 02

Day 02 - 22-Sep-2007

I left Marieke’s at 07:30. I had to sneak out quietly as everyone was still sleeping. I filled the car up with gas and headed south to the Crowsnest Pass area.

I stopped at the Frank Slide for about an hour and a half. It is quite amazing how all that rock came down the mountainside into the village. I took some pictures of the boulder field why taking the self guided walk tour. I left Marieke a message ob her voicemail to thank her for letting me stay at her and her sister Anke’s place. I guess they were still sleeping.

I headed over to the Croswnest Pass and took some more pictures. I phoned Nancy to let her know I was still alive.

I drove over to the BC border to take a couple of pictures before heading back east towards Pinchers Creek. It is a really neat place to see. The farm fields are as gold as can be. They also have this huge wind power generating farm there. I could not believe how big each of the wind turbine units were and hall tall they were. I made a half hour stop at the brand new Walmart to finish off my grocery list. It is amazing how this store is in the middle of BFN.

After that I headed down to Waterton Lake National Park. It is real windy and cold here. I am glad I brought all my fleece and gortex. I bought my yearly park pass and went to find a tent site in town. The deer are everywhere in town. I had three of them come up to me when I was setting up my tent. I took a couple of pictures of them and this guy from Montreal comes as takes a picture of me and the deer with my camera and I returned the favour of him and the deer with his.

I wanted to head over to Red Rock Canyon before the sunlight disappeared. I managed to take some pictures of this young black bear on the way to the canyon. I spent a couple of hours at the canyon area taking pictures. I was trying to take most of them on manual settings in order to get a feel for what my camera can actually do.

It was getting late and it was now way past dinner time (body is still on Ontario time). I headed back to camp and made dinner on my new MSR Dragonfly stove. I had noodles, buns, cheese, and hot chocolate. It was kind of a bizarre combination but I was snacking while the noodles were cooking.

I then offloaded the pics off the camera and started typing up this part of my trip report in the dark. Hopefully I will be able to get day 03 done in daylight. Well it is frigging cold and I am going to bed. I hope the wind is c=gone in the morning in order to take some nice reflection shots. I also want to head up to Cameron Lake to see the Continental Divide and take some nice pictures.

Here are some selective pictures

Links to pictures

Saturday, September 22, 2007

2007 vacation has started

Well I flew to Calgary friday morning after only two hours sleep. I ended up packing until 1am friday morning.

The flight to Calgary was fine. The flight crew are definitely different and more entertaining than other airlines.

After getting a free upgrade on my car I headed off to Costco and MEC for some last minute shopping.

After that is was a 350km road trip around the Kananaski trail for picture taking before heading back to Calgary.

Marieke, Anke, some of their friends, and I had dinner at the Olive Garden before heading back to their place in residence. We managed to do a sneak a run over to Walmart as we had a one hour wait before dinner.

Link to some pictures I took today

I am off to Waterton Lakes National park and going through Montana and Idaho before heading over to Princeton to see gramma Vicki.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

My trip is planned and work at home is complete

I have been busting my butt the last week to get the house ready for winter ... yes winter.

I have decided to go on a road trip out west starting in Calgary.

I have geared my trip to photography. Mostly like 5,000km of driving and 10,000 pictures. You have to love the digital age.

My trip will take me through Alberta, Montana, Idaho, Washington State, and British Columbia. I will be stopping a couple of times to visit some of the relatives but other thatn that I will be camping in the national parks.

My friend Jenny crashed here last night as she has just left. She is on her way to paddle in West Virginia for two weeks. I wished I could have gone there and out west but do not have enough time to do both.

I will try and post updates / pics as I go.

2007 Gull River Open Canoe Slalom Race

08/09 Sep-2007

I would like to thank Mark Scriver and his family for organizing this years race.

The same goes to all the sponsors and volunteers that contribute each year.

I headed up there early friday morning. We had the course set up in about two hours with all the people that showed up to help.

One of my goals this year was to actually enter and compete in the race and actually reach the finish line. I decided to enter in the Mens Solo on sunday.

I did a few practice runs on friday and saturday.

I took lots of pictures saturday afternoon and sunday morning.

I spoke to Scott MacGregor from RapidMedia and he asked me to submit what I thought was my best 25 shots. I will be spending the next week or so going through my pictures.

After that, I will try and make all the pictures I took less the 25 available online. I will post a link up on BW once I have them all uploaded. I will make the other 25 available after I here back from RapidMedia.

I came dead last in Mens Solo class. I was the only one in the tandem boat solo wearing a pirate costume class and still came last.

My first run wasn't too bad. I only missed two gates and had nine touch penalties (190 second in total) for a combined time of just over eight minutes. I missed catching the eddy at gate four and had to work my a$$ off to get back up but I did it. I was very happy with that and the rest of my run.

My second run was definitely entertaining to say the least. I ended up swimming at gate three. I have had lots of practice with self rescue and swimming with my boat. As soon as I came up for air I yelled out "don't touch my boat". I emptied it out and got back in it.

I missed the eddy for gate five and caught the river right one instead and paddled back up the side and ferried over to the middle eddy below it. I squeezed my big a$$ boat through it but I had a touch penalty.

I screwed up by trying to get gate eight and did a mystery move. I swam with my boat into the eddy of gate nine and emptied it out. I was totally exhausted by this point by carrying on. I ferried over to gate ten and made it through with another touch. I think I managed gate eleven ok.

I missed twelve and almost caught the eddy behind the pinning rock from the right side. I was hoping to get thirteen by paddling up to it and sliding backwords but I was just too far down to get back up there.

I went onto the next gate ok but missed the one on river right after the otter slide. I was totally wiped and just carried on to the last two gates to the finish line. My time after 320 seconds in penalties was almost twelve minutes.

Did I have fun ... yes ... will I be back next year ... yep ... will I actually train for the race ... who knows!

It was really nice to actually talk to the other competitors that I have only taken pictures of in the past and get to know them better.

On a personal note, this will be my last TR and paddling day for a while. I have some personal health issues I need to get looked at and will not be paddling until I get cleared to do so. I managed to get 55 days in on the river this year which is great for me considering I do not work in the paddle industry.

Soon I will be going on a 22 day photograpy road trip out west starting by flying into/back from Calgary. I will post up some pictures when I get back.

My personal goals for next year are:

1. try to better my race time and come second last.

2. try and reach my goal of getting 90 days of paddling in.

3. be able to surf Garberator on the Ottawa, River in my boat.

Monday, September 3, 2007

Ottawa River

Thursday 30-Aug-2007:

I picked Chelsea up at the subway station in Toronto. We headed back to my place which looked like a tornado went through it. I hadn’t had a chance to re-pack all the paddling/camping gear since coming back on Monday. I started to re-pack the gear but had to go to my phyiso appointment for my shoulder. My physio guy says my shoulder is now fine compared to what it was when I had to go back a few months ago. He now has to look at my lower back. We had a late dinner and I finished packing up the car. It was my turn to pick for movie night and we watched National Treasure. Afterwards I took some nice pictures of Chelsea lit by candlelight. See selected pictures here.

I went to bed sometime after 11pm as I was really tired.

Friday 31-Aug-2007 Water level -2 3/8

We finally got on the road around 07:30ish. I drove up to just before Orillia and Chelsea drove the rest of the way to River Run. We pulled into the campground around 12:30 and setup our tents and got our paddling gear sorted out. We headed up to the putin at 1pm. We were supposed to meet some people there but that didn’t materialize. We waited until 2:30 and were going to head down river. I figured I could always beg for a ride back up to get the car later. I spoke to group of five from England. They gladly offered to setup a shuttle for us and follwed me back to River Run where I left my car at the bottom.

Chelsea and I headed off to McKoy’s. It was really weird not to be paddling in our normal big group but the rest of them all wimped out due to other social commitments. Chelsea opted to walk McKoy’s. I missed my line on the tongue of Phil’s by about 1.5 feet to the right. I went holy $h1t and threw all my body weight forward but ended up get sucked back in, windowed shaded a few times, and ultimately sucked out of my boat and swam. Hartley you should have been there buddy.

My swim through center Horseshoe was a epic swim for distance. I went under a kayak in BabyFace who turned out to be Travis. He wasn’t sure if he had felt something or not but looked back to see my helmet floating down with me attached to it. He gave me a tow back to shore. My boat decided to stay up in Football eddy. By the time I got back to the small island at Leftside Horseshoe my boat was sitting on the rocks. Thanks guys.

The rest of our run down the middle channel was fine with no problems. I told Chelsea that she was leading down all the rapids first without scouting. This is the lowest I have paddled the river. Iron Ring was a float through with boils. The upper corner turn to Sbend was kind of a creek run. I had fun on Sbend hole front, side, and back surfing.

Butterfly was still fun. Chelsea caught the first eddy on the right. I did the same but did not get it as high up as she did. We stopped at Elevator Shaft for a break and some more pictures. We both could not believe the difference in water flowing over it from a few weeks back.

Upper NoName was fun. I spent a while catching lots of eddys on the way down. Chelsea had to get out of her boat above Lower NoName as her leg was hurting. Turns out she got bit by a bug that rolled up and fell back into her boat. Never found the bug. Chelsea took the left creek line. I caught the first eddy on the right and then the wet juicy line down the right hand side.

Black Velvet was still fun. I managed to catch the first upper eddy on the right. I was happy as I never caught that one before. After that we stopped for some rock collecting on the last bend before the takeout. I got some for me and my step-mom garden. Chelsea got enough to build a small InukShuk.

We headed down to the takeout at RiveRun. Shortly after hitting the beach someone says to me are you Colin. Yep. I am Peter’s wife Anna. Anna does not paddle but decided to come out for a road trip with Peter and Stephen who were out paddling on the main then. I carried my paddling crap up top and jokingly said to Chelsea can you carry my boat up for me. I was totally shocked when I came back and saw Anna and her carrying the boat up onto the grass. Thanks gals. Peter and Stephen were just getting off the river and greetings were exchanged.

We headed back to the campground for dinner. We had PC Butter Chicken sauce with extra raisins on rice. It was yummy. John and Scott B. managed to track us down in the campground. They actually noticed my old kayak on my car first than my open boat laying on the ground. Not sure how they did that but go figure. We headed over to the Tours for the opening ceremonies for the Canada Cup and to check our email. It was nice to see and catch up with a whole bunch of people that I have met over the years. I managed to track down the Magg’s family back at RiverRun afterwards and then it was sleep time.

Saturday 01-Sep-2007: Water level lower than yesterday

Well this would be my day of embarrassing myself more than normal.

We started out the day with making hot chocolate and waffles for breakfast. We weren’t quite sure of the game plan yet. My plan was for me to run the main so I could watch the Canada Cup competition. Chelsea was going to run the middle with Peter. We headed shuttled our two boats to the putin and headed up to their campground area.

We ran into Martin and Mike from the Barrie club. The others were apparently on their way up. Chelsea and I piled into Peter’s van. Anna was playing shuttle bunny. Chelsea and Peter opted to put at Little Picky. Stephen and I head over to McKoy’s. Stephen made a clean run through Satlers. I tried to do the thread the needle thing but forgot about the right to left line thing and ended swimming in Phils ( 4 swims out of 23 ) with my pirate outfit on. Luckily me and the boat ended up in football eddy. I had to grab it on its second time going around in the eddy. I emptied out the boat and tried about 4 or 5 times to ferry across from football eddy to the river right side. Just wasn’t happening and ended up doing the bump and grind around the island. I ran into Geoof and Yuri at Corner Wave. I also missed taking pics of the Magg’s family when they were at Corner Wave (next time).

Chelsea and Peter headed down river. Stephen was playing on Babyface for a bit before we headed down river to Garb. Stephen headed over to the shore and got out above Garb. I lined up with the rafts and we were in a holding pattern due to the competition being on and then we got the go signal. I could hear Corey Volt on the speakers and he said here come the rafts … no wait we see a canoer … hey we know him it is Colin Moneypenny. I biggest fear today was swimming at Garb in front of the huge crowd. I had never swam Garb yet this year and I was wearing my pirate outfit and Canadian tie. I started my run down Garb and was a bit to much left when I hit the wave. The boat spun left and I was really close to the Moby Dick wall and ended up swimming. I am pretty sure there was a lot of finger point and laughing going on. John managed to get it on video. I swam with the boat down to the bottom and emptied it out. I was surprised to see my spare paddled had been ripped out of my boat (never found it).



Photo Credit: John B.

I was determined not to let that swim bother me. I wanted to redeem myself. I paddled back up in the big pond on the other side of the river left island. I sat in my boat with the high sign up waiting for another run. I was the only one in line and then I heard Cory say come on down Colin. I started my run and clipped the right side of Garb. Cory’s comment on the loud speaker was I will give you a .5 for that run. I peeled in behind Moby Dick for a quick rest and then Cory said come on out and do a Dick Spin on the wave. I shook my head no and this went back and forth a few times before he said do it for the crowd. I shook my head yes but you must realize I have never ever pulled out in front of Moby Dick to peel out or try and get on Garb. I was really nervous and figured the worse that could happen is another swim. I paddled up the eddy to the top. I took a few looks at the front diagonal wave and Garb behind me. As I started my run Cory commented on how this would be some cool carnage. Not this time. I managed to get my most extreme quickest Jet Ferry ever across the river. I ended up bumping into the river right wall sideways and had to push off. I got some cheers from the crowd. I headed down river and pulled out. I walked back up to have snacks and take pics of the crowd and the competitors. I talked to a lot of my friends I have met over the years. They were all quite surprised of the jet ferry as they all thought I was going to end up in Garb sideways and swim.

After a couple of hours Stephen and I head off to PushButton. I did not have too much success there. I had some great surfs on the wave below the extreme river right chute. I left Stephen and PushButton and head down river with some open boaters from the Portageur group from Montreal. It was nice to catch up with Wendy as I had not seen her in a year. My run through Butchers Knife was clean. I had a great run at the Normans. I caught the first river right eddy again after boofing the ledge. I had a great dry run at Coliseum by taking the center and then left line. I headed down Dogs Leg and Farmer blacks and on to the takeout. I was hungry and getting tired.

I stopped to talk to Katie who is the weekend takeout/beach person at RiverRun on my way up the hill. She is a sweetheart. I carried my paddling crap up to the campground and then walked up to get my car from Peter’s area. I found a note on my dashboard from Chelsea. She was down at Garb watching the competition and her run down the river. I changed into some dry clothes and headed down to pick her up. I almost ran over Nick Troutman when he was jogging up the road to get his moms van from the top. I ran into more people at the parking lot I had not seen in a while. I saw the funniest bumper sticker on a boat that said “Paddle faster I here banjo music”. I walked up to find Chelsea. I ran into Emily Jackson and gang in the upper parking lot. They had a slight problem. Van with no roof racks and boats to shuttle. I told Nick and EmJ that I would take the boats on my car as I had room. Just think my boat with EmJ’s pink kayak beside it. Talk about colour clash. I told Paula I would see them at their house. Matt Troutman hopped in with Chelsea and I. Matt did great in the competion as it was his first one. He placed 8th out of 24 competitors in the junior men’s class. We got to Matt’s house and offloaded the boats. The others showed up a little while later. We told them we would see them at the Tours later for closing ceremonies.

We headed back to our camp. Stephen finally showed up as he was having dinner with us. Peter took Anna on a world wind tour of the valley and were having dinner at the Wilno. We had pasta with roasted red pepper sauce, toast, and jello for dinner. Peter and Anna came back after we had finished dinner. I asked them if it was ok for Stephen to come to the Tours with us and we were off. I met up with John to get the video footage. I gave Paula a DVD with the days pics on it. She will share it with the BeachBurg locals. I also gave one to Yappa. I watched the closing ceremonies while Chelsea was catching up on emails. I talked to everyone I knew and said goodbyes until next season. I managed to score a Level Six hat from Sharky. I was up on stage when he was throwing them into the crowd and yelled at him “trade you a dvd of pics for the hat” and the deal was done.

After that it was back to camp for some sleep time.

Here are selected pictures from Saturday at the Canada Cup

Sunday 02-Sep-2007:

I dragged my butt out of bed around 06:30. I emptied out the car and re-packed it for commuting mode instead of throw crap in the car storage mode. I dropped our boats off at the top of the Lorne at 7am. The sunrise at the Lorne was gorgeous with the mist burning off. I managed to take a few pictures of it.

I headed back to camp. Chelsea was up and relaxing on the picnic table. It was time for breakfast of oatmeal cereal and toast with PB. We headed up to Peter’s site to she what the scoop on paddling was. Initially we were going to all run the main. Carol was going to join us. After some discussions plans changed. Chelsea and Peter were going to run the Middle Channel again. Stephen was opting out waiting to go play at Push Button later on in the afternoon. This left Carol and I to run the Main.

Everyone departed ways. Carol and I headed of to the Garb putin. Our run through Garb was fine. I clipped the right side of the wave and peeled in behind Moby Dick. I hopped out and started taking pictures of Yuri and Bobbie. After about a half hour I decided to see if I could peel out above Moby Dick better than the day before. I headed straight up and peeled out just clipping the right side of the wave where I normally do on my run down through Garb. I was very happy with that. I think my goal for next summer will be to practice peeling out at the top of Moby Dick to see if I can actually surf Garb in my boat.

Carol and I headed off to Push Button. I tried to get a couple of surfs in but they sucked. I ended up swimming on my attempt at a side surf due to too much lean on the upstream side. I took some pictures of Mark and Jessica as they were part of Yuri and Bobbie’s crew.

All of us headed down river. This included Carol, Yuri. Bobbie, Mark and Jessica. My run through Butchers Knife was fine. I ran the left line and eddied in behind the rock on river right for safety in case of swimmers. Yuri and Bobbie ran the big wet line. The others ran the left line. Everyone had lots of fun in Brain Douche whirlpools.

After that is was off to the Normans. Bobbie said he never saw me paddle the big stuff before and said I should lead. I took the center to right line and caught the first eddy up real high after running the ledge/hole. Bobbie came in with me. Yuri and the others ran the middle line. I ferried way out and tried to avoid the boils. Mark got flipped twice. I got spun around a few times myself. Not sure about the others as they were already down.

Mark asked me if I had ever run the right technical line on Coliseum. I had never ran it and decided what the hell and I followed him. It was definitely more of a wet line then my normal center line and deek to the left run. I had a blast.

After that we headed towards Dogsleg. Yuri and Bobbie were going to run Center Slot. I asked what it was like at this level and they advised that I should not run it. I watched them run it from above. I saw that Yuri only dropped down about 1.5 feet or so on their run. I decided to run it and took the right line and made the drop. Bobbie and Yuri were surprised to see me do it. I was very happy on that run. The others ran Dogsleg.

Farmer Blacks was interesting. I caught the river left eddy real high as I dropped over the rock. I tried a couple of surfs that did not amount to much. One of them resulted in a swim across the bay. I emptied out my boat and took a munchy break. I walked along the shoreline collecting some really neat looking rocks to add to my collection of souvenirs.

Carol and I headed down to the takeout. I left my boat at the beach and headed up to talk to Katie for a bit before going up to the camp site. After that I headed off to Peter’s site to change and get my car. I had to do a quick run into Forrester Falls for gas as I was running low. I managed to burn Bobbie and Yuri a copy of the days pictures onto a DVD on the way there and back. I did a slow drive by and flung it out the window at them. They said no way … are they the pics … yep.

I picked Carol up and ran her back down to Garb putin to get her car. I ran into some of my friends and said goodbye to them as I would most likely not be back up this season. I went back up to camp site and started taking down my tent a packing up the car. I went down to the beach to see if Chelsea was back yet. Stephen was getting impatient and wanted to paddle. I ran him down to Garb. By the time I got back Chelsea was at camp. We got the rest of the stuff packed into the car and headed off to my dads for the night. After a scrumptious dinner of curry chicken we headed down to the Petawawa river to check out the level. We checked out Lovers and Railroad it was real low compared to spring.

Here are selected pictures from the weekend

Ottawa River

Petawawa River

Monday 03-Sep-2007: Gull River Level 8.15ish lake at bottom was high

We left my dads around 8am and got to the Gull just around 11ish. We ran into Yuri and Bobbie in the parking lot. We had a quick lunch and got in a few hours of paddling. Steve Horvath and his wife (sorry forgot her name) ended up helping Chelsea with her roll later on in the day. Thanks Steve for helping her out and the conversation in the parking lot.

I had a lot of fun paddling today. I spent some time trying to catch as many eddys as I could. I managed to get a surf on the wave back from the Otter Slide. I was very happy with that. I ran into Carol, Jari, and Elain in the parking lot when I was getting changed at the end of the day. It seems everyone who was paddling on the Ottawa had the same idea to use Minden as a pit stop on their way home. We stopped at BoatWerks on the way home as Chelsea want to buy herself a necklace. After that it was Valumart for some snacks and home. Traffic wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. I got off the highway 11 before the 400 merge and went through Barrie.

Once at my place we offloaded the car and had dinner and relaxed watching movies, checking emails, and writing a trip report.