early morning session- Andrew Oxley

We all have this one feeling when we flush from a wave with a long line of people. This feeling, the one when you just hope one day you'll have the wave all for you so you can practice every move you want and surf how long you want. Well this feeling is not very hard to get, you just have to be the first or the last. Being the fist one on the river requires only one small thing, an alarm clock and the time varies with the river you want to go, for example on the Ottawa river to be first you'll have to be on the river at around 7am. Being the last requires patients because you'll have to wait all day and go at around 5 or 7 pm depending the river.

How to do a Competition Ride- Zack Michaels

The important things to remember when entering a competition are that the small points make the difference. If you can lay down a spin or two that you know you can get every time, you will have ten or twenty extra points. If some other competitor decides to throw one huge air blunt or airscrew, and then flush off of the feature, they have a lot of points, but nothing that is impossible to achieve with smaller point amounts. If  you can get two spins down and then both roundhouses, and other easy tricks that you get 100% you can easily surpass people who just throw one big trick. Basically what it comes down to is that you should start off your ride with the highest point amount that you nail 100% and then move towards your bigger tricks that you don't get every time and end with your "hail mary" moves that you probably won't get but have big point amounts attached.

Another Great Week on the Ottawa

Hey readers, back again at the end of my second week at Keeners.

        After another week has past I continue to improve my paddling skills and building relationships with my fellow Keeners. With my shoulder back to 100% and getting lots of time to rest on the weekend I was reading to tackle week 2. The highlights began on race day when we had a relay race through the Mcoys rapids. But the exchange between our second and third racer went bad and all hope of winning the race had been diminished. Further down river at the Lauren we had yet another race yet this time the race was timed one after another my team and I ran the pipeline touching a coaches boat on the right shore then ferrying across to the moby dick rock and touching another coaches boat. Story of my life out of 5 teams my team and I came last yet again with a time of 4mins 22secs. As the winning team achieved a time of 3mins 53secs.

         Big water bacon beatdown Thursday sucked for me missing both of my lines and simply floating downstream with no resistance both times!! Things picked up for me again on Friday with competition day after about 15 surfs in morning practice I was beginning to get get tired of the same thing over and over. So my coach Steve-o and I devised the plan that I would hand surf into pushbutton and while on the wave I would throw Steve-o a throw rope while he sits in an eddy up stream. After three failures in succession i decided to give up on the idea, especially after Steve-o said "you have not yet developed the level of tom foolery needed". After the episode of failure was over I still decided to spend the rest of the morning session hand surfing achieving more and more failure. This wrapped up the week and perpared me for antother weekend of rest.

Till next time, Aidan

            

Competition Day!!! -Ben Sandeman

Hey guys its Ben here. Yesterday was competition day since it was Friday. We had 2 choices of where we would like to do our 2 competition rides which only one of them would be counted, Garberator and push button. Most people went to garb because they would be able to get more air on tricks, its bigger and the water is moving much faster than push button. A select few decided to go to pushbutton because it is more of a hole/wave type thing instead of a giant wave, therefore its better to do hole tricks on such as loop, space godzillas etc.. I decided that I could probably get more points on pushbutton than on garb so I practiced and competed on push button. Most people had awesome practice runs that would have scored lots of points in a competition and then completely flopped on their competition rides. For example yesterday before the 2 rides that counted for the competition I landed my first roundhouse and then did it again next ride, and doing a few spins and shuvits beforehand, then on my rides that counted I only got 4 points for catching the wave and doing a 180 and on my second ride I only got 1 point for catching the wave. This shows that most people will not have as good competition rides as practice rides. The reason we do competitions at keeners is to learn how to compete to get the most amount of points, to do this we learn how to deal with the pressure of competing. This will help us later in our kayaking lives by already having a decent amount of experience in a competition environment while this may be new to many people and they will most likely not do their best during the competition because the pressure will put them off. So overall not only is competition day alot of fun but we also learn alot of important skills from it without even knowing.

at push button!

Race Wednesday - Leeland Gentry

Hallo everybody, its Leeland again with another blog post, A few days ago was race Wednesday witch is a day for Keeners to experience a different way of kayak, by making the river even more challenging, and getting us use to races, if we decide to attend a race in the future. The races at keeners are spread out throughout the day, up to three in one day. This Wednesday was a four-legged relay race at McCoy’s raped; starting at the top of Sattlers raped, ferrying across to an eddy below Phills whole, to the next person, who ferries to the other side of the river and back touching a rock on either side, then goes to the next person in football eddy, where I was waiting. At this point of the race my team is in second place, with Andrew charging out of the current above horseshoe raped toward me, once he passes the baton I race into an upstream ferry trying as hard as I can to get into the middle of the current to catch the tongue of the horseshoe raped, but at this point Conner, the third leg of the opposing team has a head start on me, but out of the corner of my eye I see him flip in horseshoe raped and his baton stuck in the whole, and as soon as I passed him, I charged into the eddy right of baby face wave to pass the baton. The forth led of the race was Emma, She ended up taking first place along with the rest of our team, and winning the race, and taking the first victory of the day.           

Anticipation by Rose Menominee

With the river's roar in my ears and the cold sting of rain on my face,  I watch the smooth water bubble and boil on the eddy  line. My grip on my paddle tightens and  I feel a familiar twisting in my stomach; that kind of nervous excitement that has your heart racing and your blood pumping. I paddle right to the edge of the eddy and lift my paddle high in the air and wait. Someone in a green boat down stream does the same and all at once  I  loose my nerve. Suddenly the river is huge and my boat is so small, the roar of the river is deafening and the current is so strong. For a moment I freeze, watching the green water, so smooth it's like a sheet of glass, shatter into a foaming maze of whitewater. Someone  in the eddy shouts, I don't hear what they say, but at least I remember how to paddle. One stroke at a time I make my way left of the marker wave. It's not hard to miss, it's the tallest wave before Phil's hole. I clip the left edge of marker wave and for a moment all I can see is Phil's hole, two towers of thrashing whitewater on either side of a green tongue. I start to slide down the slope and I can feel the smile on my face. 

Running The Right Side Sneak at Phils

So yesterday was another beat down Thursday, it was cold, it was raining, and I swam right off the bat. If I had been anywhere else I would have been utterly miserable, but I was at Keeners and almost everyone had a smile on their face. Despite the weather, everything was "Rosie". 

A New Change by Jack Carroll

          Hey readers it's Jack Carroll, blogging to you from Keenerville. Today I am here to tell you about one of the most eye opening experiences of my keener session. This amazing experience was the experience of demoing one of the new 2014 Jackson Rockstar smalls.

          For the past four years I have been paddling a 2010 Jackson Star, this has been by far by best boat. It has taken me down every river I have paddled. Throughout the beginning of this season I have begun to realize that I might be pushing the Star's weight limit. I have given the 2013 Jackson Star a test run on some small waves. I found this boat to be better than my current boat but mostly due to its larger size, and its ability to go bigger with loops, and blunts. however, I found no new amazing abilities of this new boat and I have been looking for a boat that is better and faster, but I have had no luck, until today...

Jack Carroll throwing a huge Air Blunt on Garb.

          Today as we were getting back on the water Claire O'hara suggested I try her boat for the second half of the day. I decided to give it a try and outfitted this 2014 Jackson Rockstar small to fit some what. Once on the water and after a few surfs I found it to be speedy, edgy, and very short in the bow. I also found it to spin like a top. This was the boat I was looking for. It had all of the new improvements a new playboat should have, and I would recommend anyone who hasn't demoed it to try it out.

          Thank you for reading, and I hope this can help you with your next playboat decision. Enjoy the water, until next time,

                                 Jack Carroll