Pamplona 2008

I’d been to Pamplona for the encierro – the running of the bulls – twice before, but it still scares the bejaysus out of me. People keep asking me about it, and the same questions keep coming up. For such a famous festival, there’s a lot of misinformation out there. First of all, here are the answers to the questions frequently asked of me:

• No, it’s got nothing to do with tomatoes. That’s somewhere else and it’s just a bunch of people throwing tomatoes at each other for half an hour. Leave me alone about the tomatoes.
• Yes, it’s incredibly stupid to put yourself in harm’s way like that. What’s your point?
• The bulls run through the streets early in the morning; they die in the evening at the bull fight. It goes on for a week, so it’s a new set of bulls every morning.
• No, bullfighting is not very sporting. Nobody ever said it was.
• No, I don’t know why every New Zealander in Europe under the age of 30 is there. It must be a visa obligation.
• No, it’s not as dangerous as you heard – the last guy to get killed by a bull there was in 1995.

If you go there yourself, it won’t be very long before some local explains to you that only the foreigners get injured in the run. This is nonsense – statistically, Basques are just as likely to get injured as anyone else, despite what they will tell you. Seriously, what? You think because you grew up Basque, you’re genetically better at running away from large animals than I am?

Daithí Power – married man, creekboater

Life’s an incremental process…

…but sometimes you get two increments in the one day.

Congratulations to Daithí and Fiona. Nobody else could hope to keep up with either of them, so they’re a pair that deserve each other.

Long Day on the Inchavore River

Two weeks back we got out to the Inchavore, one of the lesser-run classics of Wicklow boating. It’s a bit of an unknown quantity in terms of water levels and predictability. The put-on is reminiscent of the Source of the Liffey – when you get there, you think someone is winding you up, so narrow is it. It’s true ditch paddling for a good while, again similar to the Source.

Since the put-on is near the Sally Gap on the road to the Glenmacnass you never really get to ‘pass by’ and check it out. Maybe it’ll get run more often now that Warren has put up a river description over on IrishWhiteWater.

We took a chance that it would be running and headed that way when the Dargle was running at one-and-a-half blocks (or ‘bananas’ if you prefer). Another reason the Inchavore isn’t run that much is that the shuttle is perhaps the longest one in the country, with the usual takeout being the bottom of Lough Dan. Yes, you have to paddle the length of the lake after the river.

Summer Boating in Ireland

There’s a fantastic rant by ‘tomas’ over on IrishFreeStyle and if I’m honest, I’m one of the people who are guilty of talking about foreign trips and never posting about Irish boating. Well, it’s a fairly moderate rant, but he’s spot on when you think about it…

What The Fu$% is wrong with this site??

With all the recent rain, surely people have been out paddling?Why are paddlers not talking?This has to be one of the shittist summers on record but a boom for kayaking. So why is this site not buzzing? Whats running? When? Where?What are paddlers experiences?

This weekend alot of rain forecast, why are kayakers not talking?

In recent weeks I have run various rivers purely on gut instinct and Met Eireann forecasts, surely as a supposed kayaking community it should be better than that?

It seems to me we buzz about all the sh1t abroad,and yet fail to talk to each other at home.

He’s right, of course, and we really should make a better effort. In response here’s a quick account of what some of us (well, me) have been up to with all the lovely summer weather we’ve been having…

Selling my Pyranha S6X 185

UPDATE: The boat is sold.

This is not really a post, just an ad…

I’m selling my Pyranha S6X 185 as I don’t need it and I have no clue about playboating. It’s in good nick, with the usual scratches, but with new ratchets too! I’m looking for €350. If you want to try it out, the boat is in Dublin but I can have it in Cork easily too.

 

I’ve put up some pictures; and there are some specs and information on Playak and Eddyflower.

Give me a shout if you’re interested.

Ya Falta Menos – Pamplona Preview

‘Ya falta menos’ is the unofficial slogan of San Fermines, the bull-running festival in the Basque Country’s city of Pamplona. It’s Spanish for ‘there’s not long to go’ and it’s what they say as the count down the months and days left to when the craziness begins again on July 6th. At the time of writing, it’s two days away, and I’m going back again this year. With Norway cancelled for me this year, it doesn’t look like there’ll be any whitewater fun for me for a while, so you have to figure something else to do to keep the heart rate up. And there’s nothing to simulate running hard whitewater like an early morning sprint in front of a herd of 600 kg bulls.

I’ve done this before a number of years back, with mixed results. The picture below is from Diario de Navarre, the local paper, in July 2001. That’s me right there in the middle wearing the completely inappropriate sandals, photographed moments before I become aware of the bull on my shoulder.

Wind River Race

On the Saturday, the big event was the premiere of the new video from local boater Tao Berman. The kayaking talent in and around Hood River is fairly amazing. I think myself and Johno were the only ones in the bar who didn’t have videos on the market. Really must work on ‘pushing the brand’ – maybe mañana.

Sunday was the last day of boating for me – the Wind River Race. I’d run the race section of the Wind River twice during the week, once taking the longest swim of my boating life. Thanks for the rescue Jay; I appreciate that. Stupid swim really, coming off nothing more heinous than a crashing lateral and a failure to roll up. Embarrassing, and it was only a long-distance swim as it took me ages to get to the bank because I was trying to swim the boat and blades with me through decent volume water.

Anyway, let’s never speak of it again…

On race day, Austin opted for a friggin’ sea kayak for the speed, Christie in an old-school T-Canyon.

Tactics discussion…

Canyon Creek

Off to the Canyon Creek they go…

Myself, Austin, and Christie headed to Canyon Creek back towards Portland and then an hour northeast. With just one vehicle we were standing around playing river poker on the shuttle options. Everyone was feeling lazy and inventing reasons why they should be the one to run shuttle and not paddle.

The conversation was verging on ridiculous when Eli and Tony showed up, on a similar one-vehicle mission. Problem sorted, and as always once the laziness was thrown aside, it was another fantastic day on the water. God, I love this sport.

Austin charges off, setting the early pace…

Green Truss

With a bigger group (three…), we went back to the Green Truss section of the White Salmon. It’s not as intense as the Little White Salmon by any means, but a lot of fun nonetheless. It’s an excellent piece of water to have as your default river in this part of the world. This is probably the most-often-run harder river in the Columbia River Gorge.

Austin ran Big Brother, but neither myself nor Johno (New Zealand paddler passing through town – check out his scurrilous blog) were up for it. You have to hit the flake just so or you face ending up in the river-right cave.

Little White Salmon

Up until myself and Austin went out to run the Little White Salmon, my topmost best-favouritest ever creek ever in the world had been the Codi in Corsica. There are a couple of other classics on my list too – the Castro Laborario in Portugal, the Gol Gol in Chile, the Toro in Costa Rica; but Washington’s Little White Salmon is an amazing thing, to put it mildly.

First of all we had to stop off at the AT paddle factory to do a little boat repair. Check out the ’squishing’ tool.

Nice, eh? I’d imagine Simon will be looking for one of those for his birthday this year. What better way to test out a new plastic weld than head to the river? The ‘L Dub’ as they call it.