Sunday, July 06, 2008

Riot Kayaks at FibArk

My brother Eli and I both made the trip out to Salida, Colorado once again this year to participate in the FibArk Festival on the Arkansas River. This year, who-ever-the-people-are-that-decide-things decided to make the competition here freestyle nationals and the qualifiers for the world cup.

Anyway, Since I turned 19 this January, I had to compete in the Pro class. Eli is 17 and competed in the Junior class.

The competition was a little tough because the water was so high. With all the extra snow Colorado has had this year, the extra flow made the Salida hole a little bit flushy. All the same, more water is never a bad thing. In prelims my first ride was sweet but my second one was a bust. Oh well, I hit a paddle twirl loop after the buzzer. I ended up in 12th at nationals. (I was 14th over all but there were two Canadians in the top 10).

Eli did well in prelims and advanced to semi finals where he secured his place as the 8th best junior freestyle kayaker in the nation.

Despite the best efforts of the freestyle competitors, the Hooligan race (people floating down the river in whatever they can find) still took the spotlight as the most fun event of the festival. My favorite float was a guy riding through the hole on a floating exercise bike. The part where he ran into the bridge was especially sweet...

Anyway, here is a short video and some pictures of the event. All pictures by Karen Van Dusen. There is also a little bit of footage from the Pueblo hitewater park. The park is sweet at all levels and I would encourage anyone who finds themselves in the area to check it out.



David Looping

Eli in the Hole

Eli had some nice spray on that loop.

Thats it for now. Eli and I will be paddling around the NW for a while.

David

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Rusher Photo in Newsweek




OK... so I'm new to the whole blog thing and I'm really good at taking photos on my trips and then letting them sit on my hard drives. I'm going to try to remedy that but just so everyone knows I'm a little behind. Don't worry, ill keep it within the last year or so! The other thing that hinders my posts is the all the writing... I'm a better kayaker and photographer than a writer. So... I'm hoping to stick to the "a picture is worth a thousand words" theory for now and at lest start putting up some small trip reports, session photos and other random Riot related stuff!

with all that said... I had a small photo of me published in Newsweek Magazine. The photo was shot in Laos by Trask McFarland and it accompanied a review on the Vio helmet cam that we used down there (http://www.vio-pov.com/). Its not everyday i can tell my mom to go get a copy of Newsweek and see a photo of me! Supposedly there was a Japanese version we never got our hands on... anyways, kind of cool...

l8
matt