Training in Wetumpka

This weekend Kristin and I went to Wetumpka to train for our race. We hired a guide and on Saturday we ran the river. It was really easy in our sit-on-top but there were a few places where we needed to know where to go to make sure we didn't miss any of the challenges. It was class II rapids and one class III, moccasin gap. We ran the gap a few times and it is not bad as long as you know where the best line is. Sunday we went mountain biking. Turns out I am really bad at mountain biking. I don't know why I was surprised I was never really good at riding a bike. I guess I just hoped somehow I had gotten better by not doing it for 10 years. I guess life doesn't work that way. So now I am going to have to train twice as hard just to be able to finish the course. You how people always compare stuff to "riding a bike", I hope they are wrong.

Training Day

While Jason is gearing up for Rainier Kristen and I decided to do the Coosa River Challenge. It is a race in Wetumpka that involves 3-6 hours of mountain biking, trail running, river paddling with lots of special tests throughout. Technically it is a sprint not an adventure race but for me it is a challenge so I am going to refer to it as an adventure race. We have started training and have been starting at the launch and doing about an hour of running/walking and an hour of paddling at least once a week. In about two weeks we are going up and hiring a guide to go over the course.

Kayak Surfing

We had our annual May tournament in Orange Beach and Kristin and I decided to take our kayaks down with us. Friday night I had to do a midterm testing and we had tournament all day Saturday. The surf report was not good so we left the sit on top and took the whitewater kayak to practice rolling and the touring kayaks. In the mean time a line of thunderstorms moved in and the surf picked up. There was perfect break right in front of our hotel. We had watched an instructional DVD on rolling Saturday night and after my lesson in Moab I thought I might nail it, but no. It was pretty much a failure. We both have the hip snap and could T rescue but that's about it. I did worse than I did in Moab. So then we took the kayak to the surf and caught a few waves but without a roll it was pretty rough. I got over ended once and had to do a wet exit and drag the kayak back to shore so we just did some body surfing and then it was time to check out. It was sickening to watch that perfect surf and know that you had left the perfect boat at home.

SERA 2009

picture by Kevin Bruff
Last weekend Jason and I went to SERA. We drove up Thursday and stopped at Alabama Outdoors on the way. The Nashville Groto was hosting so when we got there I helped Aimee finish painting the "burning caveman" and we set up camp. They had also volunteered us to lead a trip to Tumbling Rock Saturday and I helped clean the showers on the last day. After hanging out for a while and visiting vendor row we grilled steaks and James, Dave and Carol were practicing for open mike nite so we had an impromptu concert.The next day we went to Flowstone with Kevin. When we went to the meeting area there was this guy with a massive beard hanging out hinting that he would like a ride so I took a chance and picked him up. You never know what you are going to get when you pick up a caver but Will turned out to be pretty cool and since our friends were working the event and he didn't know that many people we ended up hanging out a lot over the weekend. Flowstone was close to Ellison's where we went last year and the hike was just as bad if not worse. Of course, if we were hiking we would say it was a nice hike but since we weren't... Anyway we finally made it and rigged up to a nearby tree. We had 9 people in our group so even though there was no cave to explore it took a long time just to get everybody up and down the rope. It was a 226 foot rappel that started out as a squeeze but after 15 feet opened up to pretty much a free rappel. After it opened up it was maybe 50' across(I'm guessing I really have no idea. With a waterfall that looked like a shower coming down right in the middle into a pool then flowing down the rocks at the bottom. The pictures don't capture how pretty the water running down the rippled rocks was.
This is a rattlesnake we met on the hike in:


Here is the opening. It was smaller than this when they discovered the pit 8 years ago.


Here are some pics from inside the cave. There were several salamanders down there and you can kinda see the waterfall.


Friday night we got back so late from caving we missed most of the festivities. We saw a little of open mike nite and grilled sausage dogs but that was about it. Saturday it was our turn to lead a trip. It was the only horizontal trip for the day so we had a lot op folks. There were 11 cars in the caravan and it took an hour and a half to get there. Gerald told us we just had to get them there and they could do the trip on there own but it was obvious some of them needed a guide. So Jason took lead and I was going to bring up the rear but there was one couple who it became obvious were not going to be able to keep up. I took them and just kind of did a separate trip. It was like being at work helping people with mobility problems :-).I had to physically assist the lady the whole way through. Jason actually had the harder group because he had everything from experienced and fast cavers to ridiculously slow cavers. He had to keep stopping the group and going back to get people so he ended up doing the trip twice. For an easy trip we were both sore the next day. That evening we had a "mardi crawl" parade and a band and were able to enjoy the activities. Sunday we cleaned up a little and headed home.