Kate: Week Two!!!!!

Hi everyone,

It's Kate Rowan here at Keenerville, on the amazing Ottowa river, loving my second week. Since my last blog so much has been going on. A couple of my highlights have been my acsidental surf in Right Side Fills (a really sticky and fast movinmg hole). I also acheived my first spin and shuv it. On competition Friday I tied for 8th with 5 points which was 4 points more than I expected to get! Yahoo! After a terific day playing the log came in a sketchy looking canion called the "Death Slot" (nice name right?), I performed my speach about Big-Water- Bacon-Beat-Down-Thursday and won with the best speach earning me a delicius ice cream sandwhitch. Thank you Stevo!

To add to all the fun I've been having, this weekend all the other first time keeners and I completed our Standard Frst Aid coarse, which though not incredibly stimulating, definatly taught me something and was by far the best and most interesting first aid coarse I have ever taken. To me, learning how to do a loop or a bowstall doesn't really matter. What I want to take away from keeners most, is the ability to go home and feel confidant that I can be safe and independant on the river. Most of my time at keeners I havn't really felt scared at all when going into big waves and holes that most fear with eat them regurgitate them, swallow them again then puke them up in some other random spot down stream. For a while, I was a little put off by my lack of fear. I thought I might not be fully understanding the hazared of the river. However, today we went down the middle channel to play around at "Garvins". As I looked down into the crevas-like-hole draining and filling with pounding water every second, a heavy stone of fear dropped in my stomach. It's funny that feeling fear would be reassuring. In the end I did run part of Garvins and it wasn't quite as intimidating as I expected!

Upon reflection, I have had an amazing past week and a half so I would like to thank and comend first and most importantly my mom and dad for working to give me this expereince! I would also like to thank all of my spectacular coaches: Claire, Stevo, Clay, Tyler and Devon! Finally, a big shout out to our awsome keener mom, Anna!