My little sister did the bouldering competition again this year, and some family friends qualified for the bouldering World Cup event, so my entire family was in Vail this past weekend. I was there Thursday afternoon through Sunday, so I got to see almost all of the kayaking events. My only real regret is that I didn’t get to see the creek race.
(Image from Jackson Kayak)
Some highlights:
- Eric Jackson’s totally awesome qualifying rides on Friday.
- Stephen Wright, Mr. Big Air, is always fun to watch.
- Jason Craig. It’s great to see this kid in action, mostly because (a) he’s an awesome freestyle kayaker and (b) he has this huge, excited grin on his face when he’s out there.
- Men’s freestyle finals on Saturday. It was go big or go home, and they went big. Awesome.
- The 8-ball kayak sprints are always entertaining. If you didn’t see the finish of the men’s final race, you missed out: the 8-balls’ ace-in-the-hole was a raft — in the hole. (Hee!) As the lead kayakers swept under the footbridge, the rafter dropped in and started surfing; then this seething tangle of kayaks and arms and paddles plowed right into it. Easily one of the looniest things I saw all weekend.
Other things I enjoyed:
- World Cup bouldering finals. It’s a fun feeling to go to such a big event and be able to say “Hey, I know him and her and her and him and…”
- Picked up tons of snack-size Larabars, a sweet Teva Mountain Games hat, and other freebies
- Stayed up late watching Iron Chef and South Park on TV
- Was part of the small crowd of passers-by that stopped to watch Tao Berman set a silly record of 42 chin-ups (and by “silly” I mean “holy cow”) at the GNC tent on Saturday.
And speaking of Tao Berman, I finally got around to watching Twitch V. Some of the runs looked pretty gnarly, and some looked flat-out fun. But that careening slip-n-slide down Lacey Falls, with the rocks at the bottom — the big dent in the bottom of his kayak after that one made me cringe, thinking about spinal injuries. Dude, were you crazy?
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