It gets better every year! The weather, the people, the boating, the food and especially the beer! The “Fest” starts Friday night at Slickers Pub in Old Forge, NY. You better get there early to get a table, a great burger, and a pitcher of beer at a great price. The place is packed by 10pm with boaters from all over the east coast and everyone is all fired up about paddling!

The Moose River has three sections to choose from: The Middle (class II/III), the Lower (class III/IV), and the Bottom (class IV/V). There's a section for every paddling ability! If you missed it this year you gotta come next year. The “Fest” is usually the third weekend in October so put it on your calendar NOW! There are plenty of hotels, motels, and B&B's to choose from as well as myriad camping, but beware: it can get pretty cold in Old Forge in mid-October! Saturday night is the actual “Fest”. This year it was at Slicker's. They closed off the side parking lot and had vendor booths set up. Jeff and I didn't last long Saturday night. We hit it hard Friday night (especially Jeff) and I had an extremely long day on the river. We were in bed by 10pm.

I had a great weekend paddling the Bottom Moose with my brother Mark and a great crew of boaters all from the Boston area (except Craig. he's from Pennsyltucky). Almost everyone in our group had great lines and there was almost no carnage! We did witness lot's of carnage, especially the sneak line at Knife's Edge. People think it's a sneak line and then realize “Yikes! This is an actual rapid with a hole at the entrance, rocks and a small drop at the end!”. Mark styled every drop and I styled the waaaaaaaaaaaaaay river right line of Crystal. I wasn't in the mood to possibly screw up my line and go over the falls backwards or upside down, do I'm saving Crystal for next year. I did run Magilla on the right side which is soooooooooo sweet! You just fly off the falls (though you want to stay right so you don't get pushed into the cave).

For paddlers in the Northeast, the Moose “Fest” is a great end to a great season of kayaking. Winter is coming and all we can hope for is few more rain storms before the snow hits. I hope you'll join us next year at the Moose “Fest”!

Thanks for taking the video Mark!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_G9YW8MSIE

Photo: Lee Eudy

Take Care,

Elaine Campbell

Though I took 15^th, you all took absolute, uncontested first place. The support I received from my family and friends was nothing short of incredible, and the other athletes are in awe of the great fans I have at home, which they should be. I’d like to send a special thanks out to Lynda (mother-in-law) and Marcy (sister-in-law) who flew over to buy me cheese and chocolates and cheer through sun and rain. Thanks to Phil, Allison, Mom, Dad and everyone who helped with the fundraiser and made the whole episode financially feasible. Thanks to Meg for keeping the other side of the pond informed on the goings-on in Thun. Thanks to everyone at the Harbors End Marina for their un-ending support and for keeping the boat bailed. Thanks to Craig for taking care of Brook and Laya, who I missed very much! Thanks to Jeremy, Brian, Mark and the rest of the squirt crowd for setting me up and giving me a chance at a new discipline. Thanks to Annie for being a great team manager and a tireless cheerleader (you too, Coral!). Thanks to T-Faux and Ruth for all the help with my paddling and the friendship. Thanks to my sponsors, Bryan and all the folks at Wave Sport for getting me a boat over here. Thanks to the academy, my producer, Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior, everyone at Atlantic records, the front office folks,….sorry, wrong speech.

Thanks to all!

Now, for a quick recap:

Prelims were Thursday. I was in the second heat. Four 45 second rides, best two combined count. The wave was decent, though I believe it improved through the day. My strategy was to play small-ball until I had 10 seconds remaining on the clock, then go for a Helix. I had stuck a decent Helix that morning in practice so I felt pretty good about it. I think nearly I hit them on both rides but failed to stick on the wave on either, so no points. My small-point moves were enough to get me through to quarter-finals, barely.

In QF on Friday, we (Jeff and I) decided to small-ball until 15 seconds remained, in order to leave more time to setup the Helix, since I felt I could have stuck them with a little more setup time. We also decided to go for bigger amplitude on the smaller moves, potentially increasing their point value (and risk of flushing). Unfortunately, I had a case of the flushies through the whole round. I completely missed the wave for one ride (QF’s is three rides, best two combined count) and flushed while setting up for a Helix on both my other rides. So instead of 135 seconds, I was probably on the wave a total of around 60 seconds or less. Still, I was able to improve my standing from 20^th where I entered QF’s to 15^th overall. So I feel like I was paddling very competitively, I just got some bad breaks and didn't paddle my best. I did manage to beat a former world champ and some other very formidable paddlers who have been competing at the Worlds for many years. So although I certainly would have liked to have hit those Helix’s and moved on to Semi’s, I am mostly happy with how I performed, outside of occasional moments where I want to break my paddle over Jeff’s head and feed my boat through a shredder.

I entered the squirt competition because there was a senior woman that couldn’t make it to the competition and the field would have been too short for the results to be official. This would have been devastating to the women that had been training for so long for this competition. I had sat in a squirt boat before but had never paddled one. Picture a fiberglass kayak that gets shrunk-wrapped around your legs, literally. They are designed to allow paddlers to “squirt” the ends underwater and also to get “downtime”, where you enter the current in such a way that you and the entire boat go completely under water for as long as possible, what’s known as a “Mystery Move”, because it’s a mystery why anyone would want to spend an undetermined amount of time underwater with a large sheet of fiberglass shrunk-wrapped to their legs. I borrowed Jeremy’s squirt boat, and I had to smear butter all over my legs just to squeeze them in (Jeremy has little chicken legs). Although I was technically new to squirting, I am a fairly skilled flatwater paddler and already knew how to do some of the moves (cartwheels/splitwheels/bow stalls/stern stalls/back rolls/etc) so it was not completely foreign to me, though I was accustomed to being able to feel below my waist when doing these tricks in my plastic boat. This is not allowed in a squirt competition, you must be numb from the bottom of your rib-cage down. In fact, when you finished your ride and got out of your boat, a Swiss woman named Edith would strike you on the toe with a ball-peen hammer to insure you were completely numb. If you flinched, you were disqualified. I ended up 6^th out of 10, just below the cut for finals. My prelim score would have been good for 5^th in the finals so I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing, from the waist up at least. I stuck to the squirt moves and didn’t really go for a mystery move since there was an extremely large swan in the water that seemed to get annoyed by them. Someone made the mistake of trying to scare the swan away from the entry stairs by smacking his boat on the water. Instead of scaring that swan away, two more rushed over from the opposite side of the river to see what was up, and the three swans proceeded to hiss and lick the butter off of the paddlers legs.

A few notes on Thun, Switzerland:

1. They don’t put cheese on their sandwiches here. This is not mentioned in any of the guide books, which is stupid. I asked for a Ham and Cheese sandwich, they brought me a Ham sandwich and a Cheese Sandwich. I managed.

2. AusFahrt means “exit”

3. The only way to get the check after eating in a restaurant is to get up and start walking out. Or running out.

4. Cancer does not exist here, and everyone over the age of six is legally obligated to smoke cigarettes in the face of an American (Canadians are also acceptable, though not French-Canadians, since they also smoke).

5. Swiss-German people eat very slowly, then make up the lost time while driving.

Otherwise, I would have to say that this must be one of the most beautiful places on Earth, no exaggeration. The Alps and the Lakes together make for breathtaking scenery. We’ve been staying at a condo in Lauterbrunnen, which is about 30 minutes from Thun by car. If you come to Switzerland, make sure you come to Lauterbrunnen, it’s amazing. The town sits on a glacier surrounded by impossibly huge granite walls from which spotlit waterfalls cascade continuously. The town is literally in the shadow of the Jungfrau, Switzerland's highest peak and what’s known as the “Top of Europe”. Every day hundreds of tourists come up by car bus and train just to see what sits outside our bedroom window. Incredible!

The Swiss people have been embarrassingly hospitable, almost all seem to speak near-perfect English which is good because the only German word I’ve learned Is “Exit”. The City of Thun is clean, well maintained and feels very safe, at least the sections I’ve frequented. The public transportation is a model for the world and the City of Thun is a great place to walk in or to sit and have coffee with incredible views all around.

Again, great thanks to all, and wish me luck in next worlds, which will be in Germany in 2011. I’ll have to tryout for the team again, only the winner of the Worlds gets a bye onto the next team.

View from our rental apt. in Lauternbrunen

Photos by: Jeff Campbell

Take Care,

Elaine Campbell

We left VT after a couple days of relaxing at home and headed to our cottage in Henderson, NY. The Black River was at an ideal level and Rt.3 Wave was perfect. The weather was great, my nephew John came with us to spend the week and good friends Nicole and Jeff (yes another Jeff) came to visit. We went to the wave for a few days and we paddled and John fished. We even brought the Aire inflatable duo and surfed the wave with it. Surfing the inflatable was crazy fun! I was laughing so I hard I all most peed myself!

Rt. 3 Wave is great for all levels of ability. My friend Nicole was working on her spins and Jeff is a newbie and worked on catching the wave and establishing a front surf which he did a few times. I was working on my left clean blunt and left flip turn which both moves are getting better. I had a couple of clean roundhouses so I'm getting close.

It rained a bunch so Rt. 3 washed out so I've been paddling at Hole Brothers which has been a wave. The levels are dropping so Rt.3 should be back in soon. As of now I'll keep paddling at Hole Brothers and it's the Black River Fest this weekend so I'm getting ready for the big party tomorrow night at Hudson River Rafting. If you are in the area or have nothing to do you should come to the Black Fest. The river run is awesome class III/IV with a waterfall called Glen Park Falls and upstream of the run is a park and huck that's pretty stout.

Photos by: Jeff Marchand

Take Care,

Elaine Campbell

Lets start with the numbers:

5 paddlers

11 boats

8 different paddles used

8 hour drive became 12 hours

no sunscreen

Potomac fest was an awesome event despite pushing the physical limits of driving through the night and waking up in the morning with barely enough time to get to the event and register. We had a solid Team Z crew for this event which added to our enthusiasm to push each other to our potential. Tino had solid prelim race and easily made finals for the falls event. Jim won the rodeo with a ridiculous points total and Tino attained second. Hillary achieved second in the womens class rodeo event, her first competitive event for rodeo and a boater-cross race. Mike Porter made the finals of the boater-cross and had a strong finish. Dennis stepped up to some big lines, and was a feisty competitor in each event.