The Last Thursday By: West Burge

           We did a multitude of things that scared or challenged me on the this Thursday. The day started just as a normal Thursday should start, with a good hardy breakfast. I continued my trend of experimenting with different pancake and waffle types. For breakfast we had chocolate strawberry waffles and fried eggs. I cooked for most of the morning and then squeezed in a little bit of time to eat and clean at the end. All the Keeners met in the thunder dome to have a morning meeting before we kayaked. We talked about how to stay stoked for the last few days of paddling. Stevo put it this way, "When you go home you will spend all of your time thinking about the Ottawa River. You will miss it, you will wish to be playing happily in it. Then you will think about how you wasted the last three days of Keeners sitting on the side of the river watching other people doing fun things. Then you will wish you had done the fun things that the other Keeners had done". On that note we headed up to Phill's hole to start off thursday. There were some pretty epic beatdowns. After that we headed down to lunch and then to Braindoosh. Once we had played there for a little while, we headed down stream to Coliseum for a quick swim. I was really scared of this at first, but eventually I got over my fear and sent it. This was probably one of the coolest things that I have done in my life. It was pretty awesome. My point of this article is to make the most out of the days you have at Keeners. Somebody had to work really hard to send you there, and you better make the most of that $999 dollars a week.

 The first session of Keeners has been a lot of fun so far. Last week we focused primarily on the development of our freestyle skills on waves and in the flat water, with the exception of Wednesday which was the weekly race. The race was boater cross style and it took place on both the Norman's and Coliseum rapids. I finished the first tier of the race well, placing first in my heat and advancing to the finals of the next round. I had a significant lead for the first half of the race but then I flipped a couple times near the gate and ended up placing 3rd.

Aside from the race, the majority of the week was spent surfing Corner Wave, Baby Face, and Garberator. All three of these waves are a lot of fun and I had a chance to work on a variety of tricks and skills. This week, I'm sure, will be as much fun as last and I hope that I can continue to progress as a kayaker under the instruction of Ben Marr, Rush Sturges, Tino Specht, Joel Kowlaski, and Tyler Curtis, all of whom are icons in the freestyle kayaking industry. It is a pleasure getting to know the coaches and hear their stories about different trips and events that they've been part of.

Helping to cook burgers at Lunch

Thanks to all the coaches for the on-water instruction and inspiration, and to Anna and Tino for supervising all of us off the water and taking care of us throughout the week and over the weekends.

Thanks,
Miles