Another day, another session or 2

C1's were up early today to get ready for a 9am session. It was refreshingly cool when we headed to the river. Unfortunately when we arrived Shaun went looking for his boat and after 2 laps of the boat storage area he concluded it must have been stolen. We reported it to the race directors and could have told the police who were there doing a report because the Polish had been rear ended in a hit and run! Anyway, in the meantime Dale and Ben went with Shaun to look again and just as they entered the compound they asked Shaun if the one boat leaning on the fence all on it's own, right in front of them.....was his....yep!! So, off to the water and the guys did a whole bunch of short runs. Ben and Shaun both had a pretty good session and then we headed home to wake up the juniors who were having a well earned lie in.


Then the juniors had a session in the high heat of the day at 4pm. It was back in the mid 90's by then and in the session before I saw one of the pommie guys just sit out on the grass because he was too hot to paddle. Pretty funny when one of them was having a winge about coming from 12 degrees to this. I told him how the south islanders hearts would bleed for him ;-)

Safety first!!!!

Cole had a flying session, not least because we'd spent half the day polishing up his kayak. Jess came to terms well with the course and was getting the hang of all the holes. Geoff also had an awesome session, nailing the top course really well. Finn obviously got jealous of Cole and came home and polished his boat!!


At the end of our session we overlapped on to the open session. Well, this really is a spectacle. Boats blooming everywhere geezer!!  Our guys waited for their opening and then gunned down on a team run. A couple of times the team became 4 people until the other person realized what they'd gotten in the way of and then they moved aside real fast.

When we returned home we found one of our neighbours kids at 6 years old selling koolade in the street so I treated the team at 25c a cup! The kid is the new Warren Buffet for sure.

Log rolling at lumberjack show

Team photo on top of viewing platform, top of Rib Mountain.

Crowd at the fireworks display that wasn't

Record temperatures today

Hi everyone,
Wausau had a new highest EVER recorded temperature today. My phone said it was 38 degrees!

Unfortunately the 4th July wasn't quite what we'd hoped for. We went to a lumberjack show at 3pm but I don't think I got any marks for taking them there. Then at 830 we went to Marathon park to the fair for the fireworks spectacular.  after an hours wait the poor announcer told the crowd that due to the incoming thunderstorm that we'd all been watching, it was too windy for the show so we went home to bed.
The room I'm sharing with Shaun seems to have been a little hot so I tweaked some of the A/C settings with great results. At 3am I woke up with icicles hanging off my nose! Sorry Shaun!!!!

 If you look at the photo in the post below you'll notice it looks really brown. Part of this is the setting on the instagram I used. However, it is really brown but not in a bad polluted way. It is all from the forestry upstream and the wood tannins apparently. It makes it pretty hard to spot the rocks!!

We had to go to the course for our first session for the C1s at 10am so we set off at 830. When we got there we found that the sessions were all running 30 minutes late. By the time we'd done their session and then the junior one 2 hours later we were more than ready to head back for video review indoors!! The 2 groups videoed each other which made coaching easier as well as speeding up the session. Bravery award goes to Cole. I asked him to pop over to the mall to buy me a spray for my sore throat. An hour later having scoured many many blocks of Wausau he valiantly returned. I awarded him the sole bottle of powerade we had.....only to find out just as he was drinking it ......that the bottle was actually Shaun's secret last stash!! Sorry again Shaun!!!

Anyway, everyone came through the first session unscathed. It's always fun when the last group of 35 haven't left the water and the next 35 start. Mass carnage. Especially when the first feature is a river wide sticky hole!! After 3 runs Ben had 2 very impressive power flips and a bit of a bruise to the forearm. Everyone had close calls at some point with that many people in a 150m metre area of rapids. Jess skirted the top hole looking nervous for a couple of runs but pretty much nailed it by her 4th run down. Finn, Geoff, Cole and Shaun improved all session and we all learned heaps from the video analysis. Geoff's shoulder seemed to hold up pretty well to the session. At one point he looped around a guy getting a rodeo ride in the hole and when the guy got spat out his kayak smacked hard in to Geoff.....fortunately just his buoyancy vest took the impact.

I just watched a TV article about the concrete buckling in the heat. A 4wd hit a section on the freeway and got launched about 1metre in the air at about 80KMH!!

Final bit of news, Dale is the most efficient team manager on site and we are the first team to have completed all the paperwork and pre race registrations. Nice work Dale. I even trusted him to drive the pimp mobile today. The team are all out getting groceries, laptop cables, etc etc. Peace and quiet at last.......

OK, so here are some posts from the paddlers about the trip so far.

Shaun - Little bit warm but having a sweet time. Be good to see what the rivers like tomorrow.

Ben - Pretty hot weather, Different to places I've traveled for Canoeing before, looking forward to getting on the WW tomorrow.

Cole -Yeah having a sick time, loving life. Sweet team, good training, stoking for the white water tomorrow craving a paddle hard out. Getting nervous but amping for the race. Last night we went to Corries and Sophies for a bbq. We all had a sweet time and left with full stomachs after a mean feast. They also filled our room with food when we first arrived to Rib Mountain which saved our hunger after the long day of driving. Thanks so much guys!! :-)

Geoff - Choice weather, sick accommodation, and MLB....Paradise. 

Jessicacacaca - Looking forward to getting on the river tomorrow finally. And loving the warmth and sun compared to the snow! Should be good to start meeting other teams in the next few days.

Finn - got a shiny new kayak today. Cheers Andy! :) Loving it here. Super hot but training is going well on our secret training site, well not so secret after the Czech team discovered us today! white water should be good tomorrow.

Secret training site, Cole in action.

Group photo at BBQ

Wausau.

It is getting hotter and hotter. Today is expected to break all heat records in Wausau and then tomorrow is meant to be 5 degress hotter!!!!!!!

Yesterday we had 2 more sessions on our secret little site but we have been visited by the Czech team now who keep coming back looking for the gates as we leave. We can't leave them up unfortunately as they are really cheap and nasty and break even when we move hem carefully. It was a bit embarrassing after this mornings session as we were taking the last gate down as the girls paddled towards us.

Yesterday evening we went to our friend Corries house and were treated like kings at a great BBQ. The kids played B'ball, rugby and foosball whilst Dale told tall stories. He mentioned something about Wendy being the jinx on last years trip because now everything is going fine. Honest Wendy, Dale said it, not Me ;-)

This morning was stupidly hot. I climbed the hill again at 5am and lost about a KG in sweat.

Of course, today is 4th july, American Independence Day. Dale and I read an article about a local who went to war, his best mate was shot and died next to him. His teeth got blown out by a bomb but he was back on the front line a week later. Kinda puts life all in to perspective that's for sure.

We're having a break off paddling this afternoon and are going to watch a lumberjack show followed by the fair and a huge firework display tonight.

Hi everyone, We heard all the earthquake news over breakfast, hope you're all well.
Wow, also heard the news about the Scott Guy trial......

We were up at 7 and after a quick meal off to set up our secret site again followed by 50 second courses. For the interested parents/coaches I have put up photos with all the times in them. Let me know if you can expand them/read them or if I'm wasting my time posting them for you.
We found the Eastbay shoe store and booked to go back soon. Also dropped in to the hardware store. Cole picked up the shopping cart above and we got glue etc for fixing boats and putting in weights for race day.
Rained hard and good lightning storm overnight so nice and cool this morning but it'll be 100F in the next couple of days.....yay!!

At 5am I had been wide awake for over an hour so I climbed the hill behind out hotel and took in the sunrise. After breakfast at 7 we headed to the course where not much was happening yet so we went up the river to a boat launch area and did a session of 30 second sprints. Dale videoed it all so we watched it back just after lunch. Dale and I popped to the hardware store and then the team spent 15 minutes making 6 gates. We then went to a little place I used to train at and put the gates up in about 15 minutes and had a good little session of short courses.
America is currently sweltering in record temperatures so we almost feel luck that it's only about 35 degrees here.
We're all pretty settled and happy now and looking forward to a good nights sleep and the water being turned on at the course in a couple of days.
I just asked the team for some highlights. Many said this afternoons session was great and it was great to get the gates up. One highlight was watching the poor drunk guys crossing the small walking bridge we were training next to. One crashed his bike straight in to the bridge. Another guy kindly offered to help Ben "I'll help man, I'll jump in, just ask me!!".
I forgot to mention. when we picked up our rental we looked at the nice van we had ordered and it had good racks so we went in a did the paperwork. When we came out it had changed colour and lost the racks. We went back inside to explain the problem and the lady said "You can't put anything on the roof". Anyway, we looked at each other and looked back at her and said that was fine then, we'll just take the 4wd instead and of course we won't put anything on the roof.........

We had great flights all the way to Chicago and no problem with our kayaks. We walked to our hotel and met Ben Gibb and Shaun Higgins our U23 C1 paddlers then quickly went to bed......I'd like to say sleep but at 5am, still wide awake!!

Dale and I shot out to grab a vehicle while the paddlers got brekkie. By the time we returned they had everything ready to go so we set the GPS (it's still ^$*$^*$* useless Wendy!!) and headed for some water.
We stopped at Wisconsin Dells 3 hours later and paddled a flatwater sprints session to help get rid of the jetlag. We followed this up with 30 minutes of speed shopping at the nearby outlet mall.

After this we drove 2 hours to Wausau and checked in to the inn. Thanks so much to Sophie and Corrie who live in Wausau and left us a stack of food in our room.....half is gone already!!

Right, we're off to sleep, see you all soon.
Andy

The junior team has had an incredibly successful trip to get to Wausau.
Below are some photos. We are now in our hotel with ALL our boats and gear ;-)

Auckland airport farewell.

Flying over grand canyon

Zion national park.Our pimped up rideFirst team session completed. Wisconsin Dells.