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.