Galway

Well, the trip has been a whirlwind so far. Bergen was amazing - big enough to have plenty to do, but still has a very small town, laid-back feel. Plus, it's absolutely beautiful with a harbor on the fjord and mountains that run right into the city. The weird part is that before 11am on a Sunday the place is a total ghost town. There's not a light on, not a door open, and not a person on the street. Very strange, but gave us a peaceful time to walk around. We toured around, took a bunch of pictures, and rode the funicular up the mountain. From the top we had a spectacular view of everything, followed by a hike down through the forest. It was beautiful and Bergen is becoming one of my favorite cities yet.

From there, we took the train back to Oslo and spent the night, then did the Vikingship museum and the Folk museum in Oslo before catching our flight to Ireland.

Last night we arrived in Dublin and headed to Temple Bar so Kim could have her first real Guinness. it was a Monday, so the pubs were pretty quiet, but it was still nice to be down there. Today we toured the Guiness Storehouse and then headed out of town. We drove all the way across the Island (4.5 hours) to Galway on the West Coast. We're staying here tonight, then heading to the Cliffs of Mohr tomorrow before driving to Blarney (i.e. blarney stone) and then spending tomorrow night in Cork.

The only hitch so far has been navigating the car around in the cities. I had forgotten how stressful it is. It took an hour or to before I got used to driving on the Left side again, but that was nothing compared to trying to Navigate in Galway where there are no street signs. No kidding. We drove around for almost 45 minutes and only saw 3 the entire time. In the end, we found ourselves on a map by landmarks and made our way to our hostel. Sure do miss the awesome public transport system in Norway.

Till next time....

Bergen!

Well, Kim and I are here in Norway! The trip's been fun so far, even if we're still a bit sleep deprived. Oslo was cool, with a city center that's full of things to do and cool little sidewalk cafes. There's also great transportation with a bus, tram, and subway system. The only catch is that it's pretty cold, with highs just above freezing. That, and the fact that prices are a bit higher here. A medium pizza is almost $30 and a beer is over $10. The food is good, but at an average of over $20 per person per meal it's definitely got us taking the thrifty route whenever possible.

People have been really friendly, always willing to explain stuff or give directions. Thankfully everybody speaks English, so that makes just about everything easy. We've had more daylight than I was expecting, with daylight breaking around 8am and lasting until after 4pm. What's different about it is the angle of the sun. We're far enough North that the sun never gets very high in the sky, which makes for hour long sunsets and sunrises. Twilight lasts forever. It's pretty cool. I wish that we had some time outside of the city because I hear that the Northern Lights are a fairly commmon sight here...

Yesterday we caught the train across Norway to Bergen, passing by some of the most beautiful scenery I've ever come across. Dozens of waterfalls, including a big-volume, multi-stage one that was over 300 feet and several smaller flow falls between 100 and 400 feet. The Fjords were beautiful, with walls reaching nearly a mile abover the water and picturesque little towns perched on the shores. There were also tons of riverbeds that looked like they'd be great in the spring! Speaking of seasons, I think we went through about 3 of them on the train. When we left Oslo it felt like late fall, then at high altitude in the mountains we had snow, cold, and lots of wind. On our way back down everything melted and we were down to spring. Pretty cool.

Now we're here in Bergen and getting ready to explore. It seems like a beautiful town and we're really looking forward to it. I'll try to post again soon!

We're Off!

Kim and I are off for a Mini-Vacation to Norway and Ireland for a few days. I'll try to update the blog from over there, so stay tuned!

Kettle Day

Great day on the Kettle with Dennis, Nora, Bill, Jade, Brian G, Bobzilla, Stretch, and Monkey Boy. The level was good and the main wave in Blueberry was like surfing silk. Really fun. I tried a couple blunts but couldn't stick 'em. A few people got spins on the wave, and everybody got some good carving in. There's a video of a short surf Dennis had toward the bottom of this page - you can see how smooth the wave is. We also spent some time wheeling (and endering) at Last Chance Ledge. Then, Brian and Jade got to hit their first waterfalls on Wolf Creek. You can see the video of Nora running it at the bottom of the post. Great fall paddling day. I tossed some more videos on my YouTube page, and got the Web album uploaded so that you can download the full size files. Check the links to the Web Albums and YouTube.

Knife and Baby Lester

Here's some more pics. It really was an awesome day. Big thanks to Dennis for taking the pics at the Lester. Both fortunately and unfortunately it was getting a bit dark by then, so some of the shots have a cool blur to them, but some awesome shots got a bit too blurred out. If you haven't done so yet, check the "more to come" post below this one for the video and filmstrip sequences from the Knife. Also, Check Nora's blog for shots from their run. She's got some cool ones of Fish falls from above, as well as some more from the Lester.

**** If you want to see all of the pics I have from that day and be able to download them, I put them in an online album. go to: http://picasaweb.google.com/Faceplant010
The only catch is that the Slideshow function only works with certain browsers (i.e. it doesn't work when I use Netscape, but does when I use Internet Explorer). If the slideshow doesn't work for you, you can click on the large box in the upper right corner where it says "Size" and that will at least give you big thumbnails.

More to Come...

OK, here's the first of the pics from yesterday. Click on the filmstrips to enlarge them - there's one of each of us. It was truly one of the best paddling days I've had. The weather was beautiful and the water was up. We ran the Knife and baby section of the Lester and had a thoroughly great time. It was Caleb, Dennis, Bill, Graeme, and I on the Knife, then we met up with Nora when we went over to the lester. The Knife was amazing, with a little bit of everything - a bit of technical water, a ton of waves, and some great holes to surf. The pics are from Fish Falls, which is the largest drop on the river. Bill, Caleb, and Graeme all made clean runs with huge endings as they rocketed up out of the water. Dennis had a good line, but got sucked back in and beaten pretty thoroughly (see filmstrip #4). To his credit he took it like a man, rolling up twice in the curtain before swimming. Props to Graeme for jumping in his boat to chase Dennis's down a difficult rapid. Also props to Caleb for coming up with the Carabiner-on-a-stick contraption that we used to free Dennis's boat from the rock it was stuck on. After that, we went back to the falls and Bill let me borrow his Burn to run the drop (big thanks). I made it pretty clean, but definitely needed a good stroke or two at the bottom to avoid getting sucked back in. After that, it was cruising through the waves and surfing some holes. Great river. We also did a class II-III section of the Lester as a cool down, which was a bit of splashy fun. I've got loads of great pictures from both rivers, so be patient and I'll get them posted as soon as I can. Check back for updates.

PASSED!

I found out yesterday that I passed the Bar Exam! Woo-Hoo! The good news is that I won't have to go through that again, the bad news is that I now have to charge $3 per minute any time someone calls me and $2 per minute to answer e-mails. OK, maybe not. Hopefully it will lead to some gainful employment, however, which would be very handy. Huge congratulations to Nate G, who also passed. Way to go man! Hopefully the other Mitchell kids did well also.

Clean up!

That's right, this past Sunday was the annual Vermillion River Cleanup. Nora did a great job organizing it and it really went well. Not sure how many people showed up, but I've got to think it was at least 20. What was really nice was that a bunch of the people were High School students from Hastings. Not only did they really pull their own weight and then some, but it's nice to get some local people involved in cleaning up the river. Maybe it will have a bit of a trickle-down to all of the bike-throwing punks that make the cleanup necessary every year.

Like last year, Nora organized the event and managed to snag some sweet swag from a whole bunch of sponsors. I'm pretty sure that everybody that volunteered got something, which is pretty cool. I spent my day in the water with Ivan, Dennis, and three high school seniors dragging bikes, scooters, railroad tracks, a steel staircase, and more over to shore where the dry volunteers carried, roped, and dragged it up the cliffs. Everybody worked hard and I was amazed at how much big heavy stuff they got up to the trash pile. It was a good time, there were good people, and the river is that much cleaner and safer.

Check Nora's blog for the pictures and some more info.

Wac'd

These are some pics from Waconia yesterday. Notice the shot of Tighe on the jetski with a student holding the kite (upside down) on the back. It's a great system that allows you to move back upwind pretty easily. In addition to the pics, I got to meet a bunch of local kiters and got some good beta on everything from launch techniques to kite models. David was kind enough to spend about an hour with me giving me some tips and helping me learn to water launch my kite (I was using one of Tighe's kites last time). The problem was that my ATL reverse-launch somehow got strung incorrectly, so my kite would only turn right once it was up. It took a long time to find the problem, but we eventually got it sorted. Then, Tighe was good enough to drive me out to the middle of the lake on the jetski so that I could practice without worrying about being dragged onto shore or into a dock. Unfortunately, I totally wasted Tighe's time because I failed to notice that one of my kite's wingtips was dragging in water the whole way out. The lines coming off that tip created a tangle like you wouldn't believe. To make matters worse, when I was untangling that knot I dropped my control bar into the lake. I dove in after that while Tighe worked on the original knot. By this time, however, there were more tangles in the lines that I had to try to undo from the bar. All the while, I was keeping Tighe from getting back to the lesson that he was supposed to be teaching. Finally, I just called it, got back on the jetski, and caught a ride to shore so that at least my line issues didn't have to take up any more of Tighe's time. The lines got even more messed up riding back, and it took me about 40 minutes to finally get them straightened out. At that point I just packed it in, took a few pics, and headed out.
Despite all of the line issues, the real problem wasn't with the gear, it was with me. I hate to admit it, but all of these issues were a direct result of the fact that I'm just not comfortable kiting yet. To be painfully honest, I'm scared of my kite. There's no logical reason for it, and I can't even say what I'm scared about, but there was a level of apprehension that was causing me to do everything only 1/2 heartedly. That's how all of the mistakes happened. I've had similar spells kayaking, and I've found that normally what I need to do is just go out and throw myself into what I'm worried about, get thrashed, and roll up. After that, my confidence shoots back up and I can get back to thinking about the things I need to. So, I've decided that my next kiting day will be different. I'm going to head up to Mille Lacs and just work all of the fear and uncertainty out of me. I might not even bring the board - just go out and put the kite and myself through every imaginable scenario until that one part of my brain is finally satisfied and I can actually start devoting my thoughts to what I need to do to kite well instead of what I'm afraid might happen if I don't.