Nothing Special

Summer is still continuing on here with sunny and warm weather. Most of my time is spend paddling and preparing for the trip to Australia. And picking blackberries.
I finished up our training plan for the next 5.5 weeks till "take-off". It's going to be hard. After 2hrs in a K1 yesterday we had a morning and afternoon practise in K1 again today. And my shoulders are still sore from the 3 x 30+ push-ups on Saturday. Tomorrow morning is again K1 time and in the evening we will race our double surfski in Deep Cove. At least tomorrow will end with pizza and beer at the pub - also part of the "masters" training program.
We finalized all our flights and car rentals for Downunder as well. We will get to Sydney on Oct 2nd and stay there for a week or so. I am looking forward to see our new-found Aussie friend Rob (see below) competing in the surf rowing event. We'll be heading out to Penrith - Olympic race course - some time around Oct 9 or 10 and stay there in a cabin with some Aussie friends (John, Gary & Darren - we met in 2005 at the World Masters Games in Edmonton, AB, Canada) as well as Alex & Leah from Revelstoke Canada. Apparently the Canadians are the second biggest group after the Australians to compete in the games. Our races are scheduled for Oct 13 & 14 (marathon K1 and K2 - 21km each) and Oct 16-18 (sprints K1, K2, K4 - 1000, 500 & 200m ). We team up with Mike & Fiona from Regina, Canada for the K4. After 1 day of recovery we are going to start our adventure by flying to Perth and renting a 4WD to see as much or as little of the West Coast as possible in 22 days. From Perth we fly to Brisbane - a city I have mixed memories of (cool Koala Sanctuary, too little time in Lamington NP and food poisoning - the later I intend not to repeat). We'll be renting a car and drive up to Cairns - another 18 days to enjoy the rain forest and the great barrier reef once again (first time for Jeff). From Cairns we fly back to Sydney and then Vancouver to be back in Canada on Dec 2nd - MAYBE.

Aug 16 - Small Boat Race in Sidney

Jeff and I went to Sidney on Vancouver Island yesterday for the CORA Small Boat Championship. The weather is back to sunny and warm after a couple weeks of coldish and rainy days. The race was 12.8km long around Forrest Island part of the southern Gulf Islands. Really nice area for paddling and for sure Orca territory but we did not see any - sigh (I did bring my waterproof camera with me on the boat just in case - but don't tell Jeff I would have stopped racing for whales). Our main competition were a couple single skis - Ian Mackenzie, member of the Canadian marathon national team and Gareth Tudor-Jones, South-African expert tree climber who grew up in surf skis and must have salt water in his veins instead of blood - as well as a men's double from Australia - Rob & Jason. The race was quite hard - currents to battle against, big wave to catch and hot - but we managed to finish second a minute behind Ian just nudging out Gareth by some 30secs. The Australians came in 4th having to paddle a boat that although it looks like ours weighs about twice as much. And they claimed that they are actually surf rowers and not kayakers - although their technique looked quite competent and this was definitely not the first time in a ski. We helped them washing down the defeat with a "couple" beers last night at the pub. Looks like we'll be trying surf rowing when in Sydney Australia in less than 2 month!!!!

For race results and report check out sufski BC's website at http://surfskibc.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/race-results-august-16-at-sidney/

The double teams before the start

Ian and Gareth after the race

Jeff and I (sorry for the bad picture quality the lens obviously had some water on it)

Jason & Rob

Beginning of August - the heat is over

Finally the heat wave is over and we are back to our usual overcast, low 20C summer. Actually it feels almost too cold :-) But it helps the training during the week and I even spent some time planning my next career move. So not too much excitement except for the weekends. On the other hand it's ONLY 8 more weeks before we go to Australia though and I still haven't figured out what we are going to do about car and accommodation!!!

August 1/2 weekend: Sprint Regatta on Shumway Lake near Kamloops - BC Champs. As expected it was HOT. Especially when we arrived there on Friday night. First off all we thought we'll never get there at all. The truck was making all sorts of noises during the drive. Couldn't turn on the headlights and finally lost all our gages (no speed, no RPM). Luckily we were only 15min aways from the lake which is off course in the middle of nowhere. And it wasn't too dark yet to see where we are going. The tent never cooled down that night - the thermometer in the truck showed 32C at 9m still. But somehow we did fall asleep eventually. The regatta itself was a lot of fun and I had the best 1000m race so far this year (even if my time didn't show it - it felt good). The usual winds for which this lake is famous for also stayed away. The Saturday night was a bit cooler ad we got about 10hrs of sleep after we went for a nice refreshing dip in the lake :-).

Tenting at Shamway - with the HWY and big tuck going by all night right behind that fence

Best thing about the regatta - going for a swim to cool off between races!!! Shown above are Kristin, Kiran and a couple girls from another club.

We managed to change a fuse in the truck and luckily it started up fine on Sunday for the drive home. Gages were working again and the noises mostly gone. But the drive home had another surprise for us. About 45min past Merrit we saw a big smoke cloud next to the highway. Wild fire - still on the other side of the mountain but the smoke was billowing into the sky and you could see the flames being reflected in the clouds turning them bright orange. We were still quite far away from it but it was nonetheless a spooky sight. You could see the smoke cloud all the way into Chilliwack (about 80km southwest). Looking it up on the Internet afterwards we found out that it started sometime on Saturday and was close to a small town called Brookmere - and it was quite big. Luckily by Wednesday they had it 80% contain - something you can't say for most of the other 700 wild fires in BC (for more info check out http://bcwildfire.ca/hprScripts/WildfireNews/Fires.asp)!!!

View out of our truck on the Coquihalla HWY

Another angle of the smoke cloud taken from a plane

And it was burning hot - all the dead trees due to the pine beetles make good fuel

Smoke cloud view from Chilliwack

August 8: Jericho Oceanman 2009 - a Westcoast multi-sport event consistent of a 1km open water swim, a 6km paddle and a 8km run and some fun events in between. The weather was a bit on the cool side to start with but it warmed up throughout the day (at least no rain like last year). I teamed up with Jodi and Rea as a women's relay team. Jodi did the swim in a highly competitive field. I then teamed up with her in a double surfski and we caught up to a lot of paddlers in their singles - which was a lot of fun. After the paddle I had to do a quick loop on a stand-up paddle board as a fun event. Rea was our runner and her leg also contain some orienteering. We ended up coming first in our division although there weren't many teams in that particular one. For results and more info go here http://www.oceanman.ca/raceinfo.asp.

Start of the race!!

Jodi after the swim has to run across a log

Jodi and I race off in the double surfski - Jodi still trying to settle in

AH - and they did make me run up the beach and back down to get onto the paddle board

Stand up paddle board - it's not as easy as it looks :-)

Our runner Rea at the transition point from run to orienteering.