June 7, 2004
In the last week, I have been in Washington,
DC, Rock Island, and now Vail. I went to Vail for the American
Whitewater 50th Anniversary Gala and to paddle with the staff,
board of directors, and major supporters. It also happened
to be the Teva Mountain Games, in which, I have never gone
to. The week started off with me getting my 4 Fun demo, a
Fun demo, Fun 1 demo, and 2 Fun demo. I can finally let people
try boats. Marty Cronin came by also and we got to hang out
a little bit and talk about Jackson Kayak and other fun stuff.
I got to train in the hole one time before the competition
with the barriers that created it. Jeff from Hood River is
the man. He took a little, shallow, no retentive hole on Gore
Creek, which is the competition hole, and turned it into a
much deeper, more retentive, fun hole. He used street barriers
that are made of plastic and filled them with water. The moves
in the hole that were good ones were the McNasty, Loops, Backloops,
Space Godzillas, Phonics Monkey, Lunar Orbit, and all cartwheel
moves. I am a very proud creator of the McNasty this weekend
because Dustin Urban and Jessie Murphy can now do it too and
the move is starting to take off one year after I created
it. Dustin did some sick ones.
Both Emily and Dane got to compete since
it was an open competition. The competition was still far
from ideal, however, due to a scoring system that nobody understood,
and forced you to do very non related things that nobody would
do if they were not competing. The idea was that you could
get 20 points for doing moves, 20 points for time awareness,
crowd awareness, using different features (even during the
hole competition) and difficulty of moves. You could get 10
points for style and some other factors that were subjective.
The first run was a freestyle through a rapid. There were
two good rock spins, and two rocks that had deep enough corners
for tricky woos and cartwheels. Alex Hoetz did a cool kickflip
off the side of a rock, which was the coolest thing I saw.
For the competition- Emily got 12th out
of the 20 women missing the cut for semi-finals but still
doing quite well and having fun. Dane competed right after
me in the lineup. I had the only perfect score of the competition,
a 50, but I wasn’t sure just how I got it. It was a
nice ride, getting all of the hard moves and doing my obligatory
rock splat and stern stall under the bridge, but still room
for improvement.
The end result was that Dustin won, Jessie
was second, Andrew Holcomb was third, I was fourth, and Jay
Kincaid was 5th. There was a big crowd and everybody was having
a good time. It just got weird from time to time. Like when
we were cutting from 10 to 3. Dustin, Jessie, and I made the
cut. Then they announced that they would add a 4th person
(after the cut was made). Then they announced that it was
a tie from 4th to 5th so they added a 5th person. I went from
being guaranteed a top 3 finish to getting 4th in the end.
Oh well, this event is about seeing everybody, checking out
the other cool events, and hanging out in Vail for a few days,
not competing in a normal freestyle event.
Ever see kayakers in tuxedos? Me neither.
Well, on this night, there was a bunch of them. The Jackson
family got decked out, with the girls in fancy dresses, and
the boys in rentals. I wore a white jacket and black shirt
and white tie. The only other people to wear that were Dan
Cambell and Steve Fisher. We were the three musketeers a few
years ago on the rodeo tour and it was a fun reunion here.
It was totally random that we wore the same thing, and it
was a reminder that somewhere in our brains, we still think
a lot alike. There was a cocktail hour, a salmon dinner, and
then a keynote speaker. I couldn’t hear the speaker
so I went outside only to find Dan and Steve there too.
On Sunday I took a group of the board members
and staff of the AW crew down the Eagle River. They paddled
great and it was a really fun run. At the take out Mike Phelan
got word that his wife was in labor and having their child
at that moment. Mike got a ride to the airport and we still
haven’t heard anything. Lotus Designs sponsored the
paddle with cool T-Shirts for everybody and the Jackson family
got to dinner last night with Christie Dobson and Clay Wright
to finish it up.
Today is our last day in Vail. I am doing
a clinic for Alpine Kayak. They got their shipment of Fun
and 4 Fun demo boats last week for this clinic and I have
seen them out on the water already. Tomorrow will be a different
day- Six Flags in Denver! Then it is off to Salida, CO.
EJ
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