East to West 2013

Chasing Haley during the SUP Cross

Two weeks ago, I got to travel to Richmond, Va for the Richmond Dominion River Rocks festival. I signed up for three events, the Boater Cross, SUP Cross, and the freestyle event. This event is super cool because we are in the middle of downtown Richmond the whole time and there are all sorts of other events going on at the same time. It is like the east coast version of what used to be the Teva Mountain Games, now called the Go-Pro Mountain Games in Vail, Colorado. 

Crossbow!!

 The boater cross was awesome and it ended up being three heats of going really hard for 2 minutes at a time. I won the event and all of the other girls were super stoked. We headed to the SUP Cross shortly after that and it was the same set up. We did a time trial, then on to the SUP Cross race. Three races again and we had three gates to go through. Haley Mills (my Partner in Crime) is a super good SUPer and she "missed a gate" so I ended up winning,  even though I fell over, head first, into the water during the race. 

Right before the head plant. 

 The next day we did a freestyle event but it was a downriver freestyle because there was no feature to surf. It was pretty interesting and we all did as well as we could, I think I won because I did an awesome rock spin :-) All in all, the Dominion event was awesome and I came home with some money in my pocket. I will most definitely be back there next year!

Courtney and I taking first and second in the SUP Cross.

Right after the Dominion event, I headed back to Greenville for a day just to re-pack my car and drive to Colorado, solo. I made it all the way to Salina KS and stopped for four hours, only to wake up next to Clay Wright's rig!! I finished the drive and was stoked to make it to Buena Vista, Colorado in good time. We have better water here than last year and the event went off without a hitch. Blog on that to come soon.  

Freestyle winners!

A small bag of 5 foot candy

There are a lot of things that I want to share with the kayaking world about the travels of the "Colorado Tour" because everyone thinks that it is this glorious lifestyle but it's really not. The tour is full of good times and hard times. Every day is not as easy as it looks.

Our days are full of selling gear, doing blogs, competing, and having fun. That sounds easy right? On the side, there are always other things going on; family problems, travel drama, where to shower, what to eat, not doing well in competition, and watching other people do really well.

I will share more of this later. I want to personally thank Jeff Turner and Matt Porter at Kokatat for housing me and taking very good care of me over the weekend during BV Paddlefest. I have been embraced by the Kokatat family and I feel really loved by them. So, thank you, Kokatat for all that you for me and the kayaking community.