canada

Wow!
Finally I found some time to update this little site...
right now i´m sitting somewhere in ottawa in the trunk of my car, using some shops wifi. thank you whoever you are.
the last month has been pretty busy, i think i took like four days off from kayaking within a whole month. now everyone´s gone back to germany and i found some time for myself. while trying to get my hands on my working permit i´ve been camping on some walmart parking lot in ottawa city. now i know what i have to do next and that is to go to the states! right after this update i´ll stuff my boats into my van and go to the rouge and hook up with foerster, then montreal again and then off to boston next week. pretty excited about that, first time i'll see the atlantic from the other side. guess i should take a bath or something.

i don´t want to get in the details too much but here are some pics of my random adventures in eastern canada after the worlds. the event was great, though i didn´t finish too well, sweet to watch everyone tear apart minibus. got no pictures, my cam broke down and i had my rides so early in the morning nobody was awake to shoot pictures. bad luck! thanks a lot to Ansgar Linder, Remi Wegmann, Simon Strohmeier and Stephan "Maus" Haderer for all the other nice shots!
i just can´t remember who shot what and when, so these go without chronological order.

this is how we do it!
my lovely aerostar was absolutely overloaded, it was fun though!
at some times we were six people, all the stuff everybody needed during his stay in canada and seven boats! the weather served us well though, so we could sleep under open skies almost every night.

Lachine!
those rapids are crazy if you don´t know them!
one time i tried to catch a wave above the normal rapids and got stuck in a whirlpool for quite a while, being sucked down sitting in my boat several times. the result was that i missed the usual waves had do a nasty ferry to shore and then walk back up again. it took me an hour!
as the water was to hig we were mostly surfing pyramid wave, which is not too big but steep, green, pretty fast and almost absolutely symmetric. helix. i love the astro!

Upper Petawawa!
these three pics show what this run was all about.
1. ninety kilometers dirt road
2. 1 1/2 hours walking up
3. paddling back down
the day was really worth it, sun, water, some small carnage, playsessions. sweet.
it was actually bigger volume than that pic, this was just some sneaking.

Ottawa!
this will be my home for the next months, though it won´t look anything like this again probably.
moonshine at wilderness. langzeitbelichtung!
and one stoked look on coliseum, main channel with big water.

oh, there were days without sunshine.
rouge river, high water, curler wave just before the take out.
i still hate myself for not having surfed it more often, but we already had one broken paddle and a popped skirt on that river so i was a bit scared.

Gatineau River
we got there with no idea what the run was all about nor where to put in or take out.
we got three words before though: bonnet rouge and isabelle.
it worked out fine, though there was a LOT of flatwater on the run it was pretty funny.
the drop was a small side channel, no pics from the actual run, was nothing spectactular. but it had nice beach at the takeout and the sun was strong enough to enjoy it.
maus and i chilling.
if you ever get there: bonnet rouge and isabelle is all you need to know. oh and perhaps maniwaki...

last but not least: ottawa city.

i´m out, sven