Everything I used to bore people on newsgroups and mailing lists with, now in one inconvenient place.
This time I was the camera man filming Dan and Stephen. I kept the camera at the front of my cockpit, which enabled me to reposition it as needed, but it also meant that my paddle and arm sometimes occlude the image. It’s a trade-off.
There was a fourth person along for the paddle whom you may glimpse once in a while, but he may or may not have been playing hooky from work so we won’t mention him.
[youtube KQMskReo2Yo]
Yesterday I went with Dan and Stephen to Baycreek so that Stephen could try out the new Epic V12 that just came in. It’s one of the specially decorated ones that was provided to the Dutch team in the US versus Holland challenge in last weekend’s Mayors Cup kayak race. Baycreek also got the one that Greg Barton himself paddled for the US team, but that one is already spoken for. I noticed with some amusement that Greg, who is one of the two designers for Epic Kayaks, gave himself a weed guard on his rudder but didn’t give one to the Dutch rival.
Because we were on the bay instead of on a canal or river, I wasn’t so concerned about picking up leaves so I was able to get back into my wonderful Thunderbolt. I also brought the video camera and put it on Dan’s boat. In the following video, I shot a couple of minutes of Dan from the front, and a bunch more where we turned the camera sideways to shoot myself and Stephen. I have to say, I’m really pleased with how good my technique looks. Everybody on the team has been telling me my technique is good, but it’s really cool to see it from another perspective.
[youtube r-R59nOJKSI]
My colo server crashed last night. Nothing in the logs, no indication of why, it just hung up. A power cycle fixed it, but that’s the first time it’s crashed in so long I can’t remember how long it’s been. The last note about downtime I can find on my blog, from March 2007, wasn’t the fault of my box, it was a general problem with the hosting facility.
I hope the hardware isn’t crapping out after years of faithful service.
I was at the Huggers Ski Club “PaddlePower” end of season party, and a couple of us were discussing a person in the club who has absolutely *horrible* technique, and yet because she’s so awesomely fit, she manages to be the fastest woman paddler in the group at the Wednesday night time trials. I told the people I was talking to that this other person is way fitter than me, but she’s six minutes or more slower than me because she just horses herself along using her arms with no body rotation or core muscle involvement at all, and if she learned some technique she’d be scary fast. The people I was with scoffed and said it was all because I’m in a much faster boat. I couldn’t seem to make them understand that it was only the fact that I’ve spend literally tens if not hundreds of hours working on my technique with a coach or a video camera or just doing technique drills alone that I’m even able to keep a boat like that upright, never mind make it move efficiently through the water. And lets not forget that between the last time trail last season and the first time trial this season, I managed to improve my time by nearly three minutes, without changing boats.
I think next time trial season, I’m going to challenge them – the first one of them that manages to get into my Thunderbolt and paddle it around the time trail course without dumping gets $5, but if they dump they owe me $5. If they manage to better my best time in the Looksha, I’ll give them $25. I think I could get rich on that bet if anybody would take me up on it.
Evidently putting a kayak into storage for a month and a half turns a fast tippy boat into a slow stable heavy barge. At least that seems to be what’s happened to my Looksha II while I was paddling my Thunderbolt. I got out the Looksha because for I went out on Wednesday in the Thunderbolt and spent way too much time trying to clear leaves off the bow and rudder. The Looksha has a gently curved bow that doesn’t pick up leaves the way the Thunderbolt does, and the kick up rudder is very easy to clear of leaves when it picks some up. Unfortunately it’s about 0.5 mph slower than the Thunderbolt. I’m also slamming my paddle into the sides a lot because it’s a whole 2 inches wider, and I’m not getting such good rotation because the seat is a tighter fit and not as slick. Oh well, at least I’m not spending all my time clearing leaves off.
The weather has also not been anything to write home about. Today it was in the low 40s, most of the time it was drizzling, but for a few minutes we were getting hailed on instead. It was grim. Not my favourite conditions to paddle in, but it beats sitting around getting fat.