Norway

-Photo credits - Dan, Josh Neilson, Sam Sutton, Michele Ramazza and Ian Garcia -

So I've been pretty lame with the blog lately. I just got back from Norway 2 weeks ago and have been working hard on the river for Love it Live it since then. All is good and nice to be enjoying the Nile and learning some new tricks - I decided to learn clean blunts, Helixes and Pistol Flips last week and all efforts are going pretty well!!

So it's all good and fun times all round. If you want a more in depth report of Norway have a look at www.fluid-junction.com or www.whitewater-koa.blogspot.com , where I've posted more and Josh has also written a bunch of stuff and posted more photos.

I'm currently sat in Kampala waiting to pick up my new work permit and waiting for our second LiLi group to arrive from the airport. The first week was sweet - great people and great times.

Take it easy.

Will.

Voss Extreme week...

The last two weeks I've been in Norway getting into some creeking and also competing at Voss Extreme week. Extreme Week brings together the best Kayakers, BASE jumpers, Skydivers, Paragliders, Moutain Bikers, Skiiers and Snowboarders in a week long extreme sports and music festival...

I came out here as a bit of a last minute decision and hoooked up with Josh Neilson and a bunch of the Kiwi boys...

The kayaking involved 3 different competitions. The first was the time trial held on the race section of the Brandseth River, a super cool 2min (or less) run with big slides cool tight and technical drops and a nice 5m waterfall to test everybody's skills.

I had a quick practice the day before down the section, but come race day I hit a couple of eddies and lost time and didn't make the cut for the final runs. In the end Michele Ramazza won on the combined 2 run's and went away with the top prize - Sam Sutton came a close second with the fastest single run in the final.

After a bit of lunch came the Team race.; This was run on the upper Brandseth - a fairly full on section of white water. With temperatures hitting 30 degrees and snow melting fast the water levels came up to a super high level - and some of the womens teams opted out of the race. Having only run the section once before I was sticking close behind Josh and tring to remember the lines as best I could. Our team was me Josh Neilson and Jamie Sutton, and we ended up placing 4th out of the 12 teams competing.

At the end of the team race everybody was pretty stoked - there was a lot of carnage and a few cuts and bruises - every single team had at least a small beat down or mishap. It was an awesome race section and super fun to be paddling full on into all those slides and drops!!

We had a few days off until the next competition on the saturday which was the head to head race. This was on a mellower section of river and a pretty short section. I got drawn up against Tyler Curtis and Michele Ramazza and with only the winner of each heat going through I didn't make the final. In the end the Final was an all Kiwi affair with Sam and Jamie Sutton racing Mikey Abbot, Sam came powering through and won with Mikey second and Jamie third.

During the week there were lots of pretty wild parties and a lot of great boating elsewhere. For photos of the extreme week check out Ekstremsportveko

I'm currently sat in Mikey's house baking in 40 degrees of heat, I've got 2 more days of paddling here in Norway then I'm heading back out to Uganda, I think I have a 13 hour stopover in Dubai, so I'll sort out the photo's and get some more posts up then.