In great need of some r and r after my Europe experience, I decided to visit my aunt and uncle at their country house near Peterborough, ON. The house is great, and with nothing nearby, all you can do is relax. Ahhhhh… Cool erosion My cousin Caelah, and his girlfriend, Sarah took me caving in the Warsaw caves. It was awesome! We crawled though a hole in the ground and wound up exploring the caves....

This past weekend, I experienced my first ever Junior Worlds and man, was it ever something! Thursday was our last practice on the course. It was a pretty busy block as we were sharing it with quite a few other countries. All their athletes were doing there own thing, as were we, trying to do that offset or practice that upstream one last time. The main idea was to get mentally prepared for the race,...

Wow, the weather in Czech never ceases to amaze me. Right before the opening ceremonies, it starts to pour rain. With the lack of umbrellas and waterproofing of our team uniforms, we got soaked! By some miracle during the opening speeches, we all managed to fit under two umbrellas. The boys got excited when they saw the baton girls in their short skirts and white shirts who accompanied the band. I...

So we’ve been in Roudnice for a couple of days. Training is now down to 1 session a day. So we have quite a bit of time to kill in the day. Today, we went tobogganing. I know what you’re thinking, and this was no ordinary toboggan hill, this one was made of wood platforms and a metal track. Basically a rollercoaster, but you had control. The “toboggans” were metal sheets with a stick that acted...

We have made Roudnice our base as the home stretch towards Junior Worlds creeps nearer. We now only have 1 session a day to fill our energy reserves for the race. It is a good thing we have a day off tomorrow. A lot of our boats are unhappy with us and the bottom drop. The sterns are looking pretty haggard. Tomorrow we repair. Currently, my room is the “sick room” as Katrina is feeling unwell and...

Prague has quite a bit of cultural interest, so in our time off we decided to go do some sightseeing. Downtown was our first stop. We took the tram from Troja (where the course is) into downtown Prague. The streets downtown are very narrow; I can understand why European cars are so small now. There were some very creative parking jobs we saw. After we had had enough of downtown, we went across the...

So after more traveling, we have safely arrived in Prague. Our group of four left Ottawa around 5 in the afternoon and we arrived in Prague at around 2 in the afternoon. Our layover in Frankfurt was relatively painless, other than the apparent shortage of chairs on the airport. The clubhouse or team house or whatever that we are staying is awesome!! Less than a 10 second walk from the course, there...

Happy Canada Day!!! I’d heard that they were patriotic her in Ottawa, but nothing could have prepared me for the festivities that are Canada Day in the nation’s capitol. After training at the pump house and a much needed shower, Rachael and I trekked down to the Parliament buildings. HOLY!! People everywhere!!!! A sea of red and white, it was insane, riot police at the ready. Once it got dark out,...

About a five hour car ride out of Ottawa flows one of the coolest courses in Canada, the Gull River. With awesome whitewater and riverside camping our training camp was quite an experience! We set up the gates with some difficulty, but once they were up, things were good. We just need to let the non racing boaters that there is no need to cut the twine to move the gate. It was quite buggy, so we ended...

Well Team Trials have come and gone. All that excitement and anticipation building up until you finish your 1st run and realize, hey, that wasn’t so bad. Then you remember you have to do 4 more runs and it’s back again. We saw demos on Friday walked the course and then each did our own thing to get prepared for Saturday’s race. My mom and I stayed in Canmore with my dad and he made me dinner....