TEAM CANADA PHOTOS

#THUN TEAM CANADA we remember FRAZ, THANKS SALUS MARINE WEAR

Not only did Salus come through to outfit our 2007 team but also outfitted the 2009 Canadian Freestyle Team.

The Jackets are everything a kayaker could want and more.

The comfort has surpassed all other paddling vests making the Jazz the best vests on the river. And pimped out with the team logo, paddler's name and For Fraz embroidered on the back,  the Jazz vest a one-of-a-kind keeper.

Salus is a small business in kitchener that makes premium quality stuff in canada in house by Canadians.

ON THE BACK.

Many times I have been very happy to answer the question.  "WHO IS FRAZ"?  On the back of every team jacket it is written, "for Fraz".  What I say to people who ask this is;  "Fraser Champion was his name.  He was a paddler a friend, a guide and a son and a brother.   He had a soul mate and paddler named Rosy who was and is like us.  I go on and tell them  they were a huge part of the freestyle scene back in the day.  We lost our dear friend Fraz in an paddling accident and we never forget our friends."

The entire Canadian Freestyle Team wishes to express our thanks to SALUS, Steve Wagner and the ladies that put the jackets together thanks.  Each jacket our individual names on each one and will be kept forever.

TEAM CANADA

Mission: #thun/:Thump in the night, a knocked up cat and Swiss training.

Mission:  #thun/:Thump in the night, a knocked up cat and Swiss training.

 

Worlds opening are on today, we all march around town with our flags and outfits on, and it will be fun.  But the wave has everyone on edge, when the wave is there the rides are AWSOME.  Moves galore, when its not you can’t surf it and all things in-between.  Very much a crapshoot, the cut to 30 should be ok.  But after that, it’s a roll of the dice.  It’s tough to stick to a routine, unless the wave is wicked.  This morning there were 30 people in line at 530 am, all lined up in the dark clanking around in the scaffolding protruding out of the water.  Indistinct faces from other countries holding on to cold bars in the dark.  Watching intently at the wave looking for a change, all holding doubt and worry in our hearts about what the wave will be like for us when we are surfing… 

Simon, the organizer has been non-stop tweaking, helping getting the GOV involved with the wave and water levels.  Doing everything he can.  In the end if it snows on the ski hill half way though the event there is nothing you can do.  Water like snow and most things ma nature is in charge of is unpredictable.  Sometimes the wave is perfect; sometimes it’s not at all… 

However Nick, Kelsey, Guillaume, Ruth, Carly, myself and the Canadians including Miss’s Troutman, who’s now half Canadian were all Killing it.  Canada’s team is intimidating as all hell when we are on the water. 

Problems of the home:

The thumping from upstairs went on for a while, thought that there was some heavy loving going on at first.  I was scared to find out it might be the old people…. But I figured after an hour or so it needed to come to an end.  11pm still awake.  At first I thought is was Kelsey on a fly hunt.  He rolls up a newspaper and is infatuated with killing all the flies in the house.  There are no screens on any of the windows so he’s been our “SWAT” team, sniping all the flies.

  Even at night. I searched the house to find the source of the thumping; there are 5 apartments in this big house on the side of the mountain.  One of them held the noisy perp.  My hair, is huge fluffy bouffant that gets even wilder as the night goes on.  I knocked on the door of the people upstairs (the perps).  Looked her square in the eye, big fluffy hair, wearing nothing but shorts and started in on her in English.  I guess a half naked man, with big hair in the night making thumping and angry faces got the point across even if it was in a different language.  I guess they were chopping up chickens with meat cleavers or something it was pretty out of hand…. 

I come down stairs just get settled in to sleep and (Boozen-Granny) my mother in law, starts yelling…  Carly pops up out of sleep and starts yelling back some incoherent sentences and flapping about in bed.  Pish-in-fasha, you guessed was in the toilet again starts yelling as well.  I guess Boozen-granny rolled over and a A big cross-eyed cat, who is really knocked up, had jumped in through the window on to the bed and lay down.  Thus the yelling….  Dam cowbells going off the entire time.  Bells, on every cow….  You can’t imagine what that sounds like till you hear 5 different herds of cows killing grass around your house.

On a Mission

Billy Harris

Mission: Monkey steals the peach, boats arrive & “German words for 500 Alex.”

Mission:  Monkey steals the peach, boats arrive & “German words for 500 Alex.”

We have our own language here.  I have tried my very best to get a grip on the German Swiss language.  So when in doubt, guess your way though it and that has been a lot of fun…  My mother in law is now my “boozen-granny” we get into the wine each night a bit.  My father in law is my pish-in-fau-shaa.  He’s got a balder the size of a walnut.  My wife is “food-in-killa” and pretty much anything I can think up that degrades my buddy Kelsey Thompson on the spot is a winner. 

Kelsey told me a wicked story, which won him my company for the day. (Lucky Kelsey)  In some ninja book there is a ninja move called “monkey steals the peach”.  Mid fight, you drop to one knee grab your opponent by the “nads”, cock your wrist away from you and your opponent dies, bleeding out of the main vein so to speak.  Needless to say, with info like that I was going to spend the rest of my day with him….

We decide to do the tourist thing again today; turn number one on our drive kicks off the backseat drivers.  There are 5 people and five different directions to go right away.  Of course none of them are right and all of them end up being that “I told you”, right at the end.  Whatever the case the guy on the steering wheel (me) gets the brunt of it and gets the “relax buddy its not that important” at the end of the trip.  Which is easy to say when you are NOT driving on roads 2 narrow, with angry Swiss people honking and directions from 4 people who only know the way at the last moment. 

We made it to Bern, but I couldn’t get out of the car fast enough.  Lucky for my “pish-in-fau-shaa” needed to go for a bathroom, and took his camera and his wife “boozen-granny” with him. 

So we all decided to meet up in the “parken-fortunn”, translated:  parking lot.  It costs about 10 to 15$ an hour to park.  So we decide to meet in the lot at the end of the day and quickly depart ASAP.  “food-in-killa” (my wife), wanted to go food shopping and compare prices between Canada and Switzerland. The normal touristy thing to do I would say.  Boozen-granny and pish-in-fau-shaa walked to some bear pit at the other end of town and found out upon arrival that all the Bears in the Bear pit had died in April.  So much for the mascot of BERN.

 Kelsey and I decided to check out the old architecture, shoot pictures and video.   We got lost right away.  The big clock with lumberjacks, dancers and all that popping out of the co-co clock was not working.  The other GIANT clock was out of commission but all in all it was pretty cool cruising around town.  Kelsey and I got bikes for about 5 min and decided that we would die if we didn’t get off of them.  We met “Food-en-Scarfin” at the end of the day; she managed to find all kinds of different foods for her to eat mostly tofu and seitan.  Whatever that stuff is.  So we all pile back into the car and reminisce about pretty cool caves that we visited the day before and decide that we needed to do something cool again today.  “Boozing-Granny” came up with cowbells.  “Lets get em before we hate them and tour the factory that will be fun”. At night all we can hear is cowbells, millions of them all feeding on grass all around our mountain lodge.  We are way up in the mountains.  So we get the bell factory, 5 seconds in, I was over the cowbells.  4 people all testing the sounds of 300 different types of bells.  Imagine for a moment what that would sound like at the end of a long day,  Pish-in-Fau-Shaa says, “listen to this one Laur” (boozing granny) “RING RING RING RING RING RING RING RING that being said.  I both tested and bought 2, the dutiful little tourist I am. 

We roll back into Thun, I am trying not to kill cyclists while taking orders from 4 backseat drivers and we see a giant pile of Jackson boats on the main drag and EJ wearing the worst hockey jersey I have ever seen.  EJ,  “We got a jersey fo you too billy”.  My first thought…..”oh no”  My second thought,  “I’ll cut it off and make an 80’s belly shirt out of it”……  And the smile returned to my face.  “Sweet  Eric” I reply.  At Jackson we all use words like, “NIIIIIICCCCE” or “Cooooool” or SWEEEEEET with a head nod and of course above all others the Trump word. “AWESOME”.  Its important to us, give us all a sense of oneness with the Big Deaf Boss named “ENRIQUE” (Eric)  Lucky for me he never reads my stuff.

All in all it’s pretty fun.  Eric (his wife) and more than likely Carman and Seth at the factory got our boats right on time.  The JK team never paid for a penny to get em over.  The JK crew is giving all the boats to the local dealers to sell when we are done so we don’t flood the market with new boats.    It was pretty wicked getting a brand new boat down town Thun beside the wave. 

Billy Harris  aka “Shtoopid-apple”  as my mother in law would say.

MISSION: Thanks CDB raffle, a kiss off from CREW CLUB

I don't want anyone to think I am getting soft. Cause I am not. I don't miss my house, my dog, my family or the people at home who cheer me on but it was pretty darn nice getting support. I got a sweet card from the CREW CLUB, check the photo. Pretty sure, the same person signed most of them in different color pens but I love it. Thanks. all of you even its only 2.....

I got this email from the CDB club. they raised 450 bones to get me paid for over here. Between the 450 from CDB Raffle, 500 from H20 Paddles, 3000 from Salus. (I love you steve) I been getting all kinds of support for worlds:

The raffle went very well with around 45 tickets sold:

Dom picked up the H2O,
Shaun picked up the Salus Jazz.
George, our newest member - from Toronto - got the L6 drytop.
Sylvain Goudreault won a day with billy on the water.

Thanks EVERYONE. Billy and Carly

Mission: SWITZERLAND or Bust, Training darkness, the Ashville distinction?

I sit in New York waiting to fly to Switzerland with my wife’s parents and with straight up good luck, my parents, in an act of god couldn’t come as well. The old (my dad) boy is in rehab at long last, but not for what he should be in there for. The old boy got a new knee and couldn’t come on the trip to Switzerland with us. Which is kind of good, I cane barely hang on with the LAW family. My wife’s mother is making up for his absence, her constant burping and Chucks (my father in law) hourly visits to the washroom eliciting a stream of abuse from me with no ending in sight. We got to the Toronto airport at the MIL’s urging all right…. Arriving 3 hours before the flight each bag checked about 8 times for dimensions and weight by my neurotic mother in law before getting to the car.

That will end with 2 gravol and a glass of wine, something I won’t mind paying for at all when the plane leaves the tarmac…. The old duck actually photocopied the travel guide for Switzerland in a bid to save a couple bucks, but planed baggage space to spend several hundred on Swiss chocolate for the trip home…. Traveling with them has actually been fun despite my disparaging comments. Carly won’t respond to my immature face’s or my dark comments on the state of humanity which sucks, but the gasps and the “oh my’s” and finger pointing from the “MIL”, just keep coming.

Training for worlds has been so much fun, its hard to call it work when you can’t wait to paddle every morning and evening but its taken its toll on my body and mind. Running 45 seconds of moves through my head over and over step by step again and again. I know all the moves, can stomp all over them but it’s the monster within my own head preaching disaster and failure I struggle with. Combine that with competitive powerhouses like Peter Czonka, Nick (the midget) Troutman, Eric Jackson and others. These guys just live on a different plane, a place where moves flow from one to another with little or no thought. All of us however, carefully teetering on air and on a slight incline, while defending our zone psychological calm. Outside that circle/zone, all around a sea of dark thoughts and doubt, lurking behind every positive mantra.


There has been talk of real soul in magazines and on line. I often wonder what people are thinking when the distinction between different people and different sports comes up. Kelly Slater or Laird Hamilton, I wonder who has real soul. River Running or Play boating who’s got the real soul. Black people or white people, who I wonder who has the real soul. Silly conversations in my opinion, we all have our own fights, our own battles do we not. To say one person’s sport is better or worse than another is pretty weak in my opinion. Correct me if I am wrong, didn’t the death of apartheid in South Africa teach us all not to treat someone different because of their differences. Should we not include sports or do I have to make that distinction for people? It’s a sad state of human nature when people feel the need to place a higher value on something that I am doing vs what someone else is doing.

“Ashville I am talking to you.”

Flights Called…. Gotta bounce.