Kite & Kayak

I finally got to take out some of my favorite toys this weekend. On Friday I drove down to Lake Pepin to take out my big kite and see what water kiting is like. Nora was kind enough to show me a perfect kiting spot, as well as to stand in waste deep water (and a mushy clay bottom) for an hour helping me try to get the kite airborne. As usual, the wind was perfect when we were setting up the kite, but then shifted and died once we were ready to go. We did get the kite up a few times and got some practice with body drags, but it was never steady enough to actually get on the board. Next time. Huge thanks to Nora for showing me the spot, helping with the kite, and taking the pictures.

Saturday Graeme and I drove out to Jim Falls for some kayaking. The city of Jim Falls, WI has several recreational water releases for whitewater paddlers each year. The water was mostly class II with one tougher drop, but no play. It was great to get on the water though, and it's always fun kayaking with Graeme.

Sunday was my first time this year out at Wausau, and it was worth the wait. The whitewater course was redone this year to make it both more playable and more friendly. Hats off to the designers because every feature on the river is now a fun spot. Not only are the features better, but because there's more of them the crowds are more spread out. It's great! Despite a very rusty morning, I had a great time in the afternoon hitting a few cartwheels and a loop. Bill, Bob, and Brian J all drove out for the afternoon and it was great to see them again. The only problem is that it seems like those guys have been improving all summer and I've been regressing. Still, it was fun watching Bill hit his loop and Brian trying loops and wheels. Those guys are really ripping it up this year. Definitely good times.

Finally!

Done with the Bar Exam! No idea if I passed or not, but at least I don't have to worry about it for a while. In the meantime, a few friends helped me enjoy my first free weekend after the test up at the cabin. Also, happy birthday to Meaghan! Thanks to everybody for helping out with the chores this weekend (especially Kim), and thanks to the Flis girls for the ride home. Also, thanks to Kressen for doing a great job getting pics of people behind the boat - great job! Hope everybody had fun - I know I did. The pics are myself walking on water, Beecher and Nicole on the kneeboard and Nick on the tube. Thanks everybody for coming out and making it such a fun time.

Babies!

Meet the latest addition to the family! My new niece
Kaitlyn was born shortly after 11pm last night. She's 7lbs and 14oz and
just over 20" long. She's got some peach fuzz for hair and pretty big
feet for such a tiny thing. She and her mom had a bit of rough night
with some complications during birth, buteverything's great now and mom and baby are both happy and healthy. Congratulations to Craig and Sarah.

Congratulations are also in order for Zach and Steph,
whose baby boy Lucas was born just a couple days earlier. He is their
first baby and though I haven't been able to meet him yet I hear he is
a handsome and healthy boy. Congratulations toSteph and Zach.

Last,
prospective congrats to Jason and Alyssa, who are due on Monday. Best
of luck to you guys and I hope everything goes well!

4th of July

Well, the 4th proved to be a great study break. I was up at my cabin from Tuesday evening until Saturday night and managed to spend almost all of that time on the water. Kim was up from Wednesday till Friday and wound up doing almost as many activities as I did. She learned to kneeboard, hit the rope swing, cruised on the jetski, went sailing, and more. Nate and Emily were up for a couple days as well and it was great to get them out to the lake for some fun (though I have to apologize again for the sailing debacle). That night Kim, Nate, Emily, and I all went to the Whistling Bird for a nice cajun dinner, Gilbert style. My nephews and a bunch of their friends were also up there and I got to spend quite a bit of time beating them up on the tube.

Now, however, its back to reality and cramming for the Bar. Sorry to everybody who I've been out of touch with lately. I swear, just two more weeks and I'll be a real person again. Please don't take the lack of contact as anything other than just an extreme need to study.

In the meantime, I threw a video of the kids on a tube and one of me crashing on the kneeboard onto YouTube. Check them out if you get a chance: http://www.youtube.com/user/faceplant010.

Hopefully I'll be able to see everybody soon, and wish me luck to get me through my exam!

YouTube!

Since I won't be doing much paddling until after the bar, I figured I'd have to go through the archives to find some cool blog stuff. I remembered that I have a bunch of little clips from kayaking trips, so I decided to open a youtube account. Over the next week or so I'll be posting a whole bunch of cool stuff. For now, I've got footage of me, Nate and Dennis running Big Smokey falls. I've got lots more footage of other people doing other things that I'll post in the next few days. Check it out at: http://www.youtube.com/user/faceplant010

Lake Superior Scuba

On Sunday Zach, Sam, Adam, Jason and I all went up to the North Shore to dive the shipwreck Madeira. The madeira was an old or freighter that went down after crashing into the cliff below split-rock lighthouse (thus inspiring the state to install the lighthouse). The wreck is now in two sections. The bow is standing in 40-50 feet of water pointing vertically toward the surface. It sits right at the base of the slope of boulders that have tumbled off the cliff. 110' farther offshore sits the wheelhouse and part of the midsection of the ship. This section of the wreck starts in 60' of water and slopes down to nearly 100'. The dive would be simple, except that the water temp is in the 30's and you have to snorkel about 100 yards from shore to get there.

On our first dive, we split into two groups. Zach and I went to the bow while Sam, Adam, and Jason went for the Wheelhouse. Zach and I had a good dive, making a complete circle around the bow and checking it out thoroughly. When we had finished poking around, we headed back towards the beach. We were slowly rising with the bottom contours when my BC decided to malfunction and wouldn't release any air. As a result, I found myself floating towards the surface against my will. I wound up making a semi-bouyant ascent but nothing bad came from it.

Meanwhile, the other guys were fighting their own bad luck out on the other section. First, Adam had problems equalizing his ears and didn't get past 30'. Then, Sam's regulator froze and began to free flow shortly after he made it to the wreck. Jason was still on his way down and surfaced with Sam.

We made a second attempt to see the wreck, but between underwater navigation issues and another free flow, it wasn't much more successful than the first. Zach and I logged about 25 minutes of bottom time from the day, Sam and Jason logged a whopping 16 minutes, and Adam was somewhere in between.

In short, the day was fun and interesting, but luck was definitely not on our side. I guess the Madeira just wasn't in the mood for visitors that day.

Big thanks to Zach for the pics, especially since my camera met a wet and untimely demise.

Lovin' the Lower....

Yesterday Dennis, Dan, Aaron, Arthur, Andy, Swails, Dave, and Myself all ran the lower St. Louis. For most of us it was either the first time on that section or the first time to run the whole thing. We made a fast trip through the tongue, the 210 bridge, the ledges, Twisted Sister, and second Sister all without stopping to scout. All went well, with a bit of a heart stopper when Dan flipped upon entering Twisted Sister and ran it upside down. Much to everyone's relief, however, he rolled up in the eddy afterward not too much worse for the experience. To his credit, he just shook it off and continued downstream. We did get out at Octopus, which was looking even more gnarly than the last time I saw it. Swails and Andy both ran the beak twice and both spent their share of time upside down in it on each run. Swails took the cake, however, by getting the bow of his creek boat sucked down into a perfect ender, then doing a 1/4 rotation before flopping over forwards. I think Arthur got it on video, and it would be really cool to watch.

The Lower 1/2 of Octopus also had its share of drama with Dan getting hung up on the Rock above the last pitch, getting flipped, going over the slide upside down, rolling up and getting stuck in the hole at the bottom. While he was alternating between fighting to get out and rolling back up from repeated flips, Aaron came down (unaware that Dan was still in the hole), flipped in the same spot Dan did, ran the slide upside down, somehow managed to miss Dan being recirculated in the hole, and made it into the eddy where he was able to roll up. After a couple minutes in the hole, Dan made it out and we were on our way again.

The Swinging Bridge Drop was my favorite of the day. It starts with a 25' long, three foot wide chute that the river gets channeled into. It's a steep, splashy ride that's too narrow to use your paddle in. It was crazy fun to go through and spits you out into a hanging pool. To get out of the pool we took a seven foot high "slide" into a narrow eddy. The only problem was that at this level, the "slide" was a vertical falls with a sticky seam at the bottom. I didn't know this, so I went over the horizon line quite leisurely, only to go perfectly vertical into the seam, pop right back out the way I came, and wound up in a side surf with the bottom of my boat on the curtain of the falls. I was able to get out before anyone else came over the falls, but it was a nervous moment. I think Arthur also got that on video, and I'd give anything to see the look on my face.

We all made it over Snakebite without issue and took out at the swinging bridge. Andy, Swails, and Arthur went on to Finn Falls, but the rest of us called it a day. It was a really fun trip and I'm glad to say that I've finally run the lower louey!

The only problem was that I didn't get any pictures from the trip. The pics I have posted here I stole from Nora's blog from a trip she made a couple days prior, or from other places on the web. The paddlers are different, but the rapids are the same.

News... (and the lower Louey)

Well, this weekend is proving to be quite memorable. Today I will graduate from law school, which is something I really wasn't that sure would happen for a while. While it does feel great to have achieved that milestone, the fun is tempered by the bar review classes that start this week.

Second, today is the day that Laura is leaving to experience life outside the Midwest. She's been an awesome neighbor, a great friend, and even a good paddler! I failed to post about this, but Laura made a very successful descent of the upper St. Louis, proving how quickly a beginner can become a solid paddler. Laura - if you get to read this, thanks for making 998 such a fun place, and I wish you nothing but the best in CA.

Third, yesterday was my dad's 67th birthday. He's definitely the coolest old guy around. Happy Birthday, dad.

Last is the thing that probably makes the best blog material. I finally ran (part of) the Lower St. Louis. Dennis, Caleb, and I made the run from the tongue above the 210 bridge down through the Second Sister. The weather was freezing cold (cold enough that the water was steaming), but the paddling was awesome. Our plans to paddle with some Lower Louey veterans fell through when they were all shivering after having already spent several hours on it that morning. So, we got a couple of tips from Scotty (which we tried, but largely failed to, remember) and headed out on our own. The area above the 210 bridge was my favorite, with a variety of features that were all different and packed fairly close together. Our Creek boats (mine was rented) made pretty short work of them, however, and down we went. 210 was followed by a couple of splashy rapids that wouldn't require scouting, though we did look at the second one for fear it was Twisted Sister. We blew through those easily and were having a great time. We hit the first Sister and everybody had a slightly different line off the little rooster tail that forms. Caleb takes the cake, however, by landing in water that was so aerated that he just sunk right through it, completely submerging. He hit his line totally clean, then he just disappeared. Very cool to watch. Second Sister was, as Dennis put it, "God's own low head dam," making a very stick hole at the bottom. We chose a safe route, boofing over a small seam of a hole. Not sure, but I'm guessing that was the chicken route.

That was the end of our paddling, though I was seriously considering a line in Octopus. Warnings about hidden rocks and inability to get a view of the last hole helped me to decide to play it safe, but I would like to give it a try if I run it with someone who can give me some good info about it.

On the whole, it was a great day. Caleb and Dennis were total rock stars and not one of us got flipped throughout the run (exclusive of Caleb's submarine impersonation). It was a great time and finally getting on the Lower after looking at it for so long helps tick off one more memorable moment from this weekend.

Chameleon Weekend

This past weekend was long planned as a weekend for Kim and I to get away. Originally, we were going to head to the Black Hills and Badlands of SD. That fell through, so we decided to make a weekend in NE Minnesota, with one night camping on the North Shore. Thanks to the 30mph winds, chilly temps and scattered storms, that became one night at my cabin, followed by a day in Two Harbors and Duluth (I guess that make Three Harbors?). It was fun, though. We stopped by the Duluth IMAX and the Aquarium, both of which were well worth the admission. Sunday we were back in the cities and I convinced Kim to come fly the trainer kite at the park. She did really well in gusty 20mph winds and seemed to just be getting the hang of it when a gust yanked her off her feet and sent her flying super-man style into the dirt. She wound up a bit dirty, but otherwise OK. Hopefully my decision to take her out in hurricane winds won't scare her off for too long. The rest of the pics are just random things that we saw on the trip.

Famous!

Dan "Monkey Boy" Monskey is putting together some video on outdoor sports in MN, and WCCO TV decided they wanted in on the paddling segment. So Dan, Dennis, Graeme, Rich and I went down to the Verm to do some filming. Nora and Lanny were also there for the beginning, but left early due to other committments. Kim (paddling guy Kim, not my girlfriend Kim) met us late down at donut. While I'm sure that when the editing is finalized everyone but Dan will be little more than a blur in the background, we did our best to put on a show for the cameras. Dennis, Graeme, Rich, and I got in some great party surfing on Donut and we also ran the slide below the falls at the top. This time however, we were able to climb up the river right bank and get a good, full-length slide in right from the curtain of the falls. Really fun. Supposedly the video will be shown on "Out and About" on Channel four at 10:30pm on May 19th, if anyone is interested and has nothing better to do on a saturday night (or has TiVo). In the meantime, I stole a shot that Nora took to put on here. She has more on her blog, so check out the link to it on the right side of this page!