Via Ferrata des Demoiselles du Castagnet from Susanita on Vimeo

I'm back from my vacation to the French Alps with Rob. The trip was primarily to do the via ferratas in the French Alps but we did as much hiking and castle touring. Every day was an adventure. And the whole trip was amazingly inexpensive. Airfare was $510 a person round trip from Dulles to Geneva. We camped 7 out of 11 nights at a cost of about 13 Euros per night. We bought food at the grocery and made our own coffee at camp. I brought a supply of tuna, noodles and power bars from home that we used for lunch snacks on the trail. And the via ferratas were either free or charged a nominal fee of 3 Euros per person.

Rob took the best photos with the Lumix wide angle camera. My Olympus just didn't compare so I mostly took video with the Flip HD Mino.

More trip reports and photos to come ...

~ Susanita

Bicycle Magazine Video Contest from Susanita on Vimeo

Bicycling Magazine had a contest which ends in May to win "Any New Bike" reviewed in their magazine. The deadline for submissions is over but all you had to do was create a 60 second video showing why you, above all others, need a new bike. We attached the GoPro Hero cam to the side of my bike and did a stop motion video taking a photo every few seconds. Then we created the sound track in Garage Band. Here is our submission.

I thought it was pretty good but apparently the editors of Bicycling Magazine didn't think so ... we didn't make the top 10 which are up for votes now. The one characteristic I see in the semi-finalist videos which was missing from our video was a clear argument for why we needed the tandem. We were appealing more on the cute factor than the logical factor. Here are the 10 semi-finalists. You be the judge.

~Susanita

This is the boathouse at the Washington Canoe Club on the Potomac River, upstream from our club on the Anacostia River. In mid April they host the first outrigger canoe race in the DC area, the Kumu'ohu Challenge. Rob and I took the plunge and raced the 9 mile course in our club's "banana boat" ... the yellow Hyper canoe. This after only having practiced in the boat twice. For our first time out I think we did really well. We finished in 1:34:26. The full results are HERE.

Some lessons we learned from our first race:

• The Hyper Canoe is a little slow on flat water. It's a high volume boat designed for the big waters in Hawaii. A better canoe for our flat water races would be the Huki V2-Z.
• We need to warm up on the water for at least a few minutes before the race. Because our club has only one OC2 we were sharing with two women who were racing in the early morning women's race. They finished their race a few minutes before the start of our race. So for the first few minutes into our race we were both feeling "off."
• We need to work up to a higher stroke rate ... or rather I need to work on it. Rob likes a high stroke rate but I felt more comfortable with the slower more powerful strokes. This will come with time on the water.
• We'll never be the fastest when the competition is good ... but we're not the slowest either. Wooo Hooo!!!
• It's all for fun any way. Outrigger races are always fun because there's always a party afterwards!

So ... everyone in our club did really well. On to the next race ...

~Susanita

Driving to music from Susanita on Vimeo

More fun with the GoPro Hero Cam. Rob attached the Hero to the hood of the car pointed back and the driver seat and set it to take a photo every few seconds. Played back as a video it compresses a 40 minute drive into a 2.28 minute video.

Last weekend the National Capitol Area Women's Paddling Association (NCAWPA) had their first annual Dragon Boat/ Outrigger Canoe training weekend. Usually there is a training camp in Florida that a lot of members attend but due to cost and other obligations (we want to keep our jobs) most decided to punt the Florida training camp. So we had our own training camp on the lovely, but polluted, Anacostia River. Nothing gets your heart rate up like paddling through toxic water.

~Susanita

We did the Shenandoah Staircase run recently. We joined my friend Peter and a group of about 13 other paddlers. The above photo is me running Bull Falls ... the only class III run on that section. It was Rob’s first real river run aside paddling down the Potomac at Angler’s and doing easy paddles at Violet’s Lock. And it was my first whitewater run in a few years ... many years. I was a lot more nervous than I expected. Bull Run Falls is the second rapid on the river and is a good class III rapid. We scouted the rapid both from river left and river right. Rob said the anticipation was worse than actually running the rapid. We both made good runs and the rest of the river was very comfortable class I and class II with some nice surfing spots for Rob.


Kayaking the Staircase Run with Hero Cam from Susanita on Vimeo

Rob attached the GoPro Hero Cam to the front of his kayak and experimented with taking video while paddling. Note the concerned look on his face leading into Bull Falls. And the look of pure joy as he realized how easy it was after the run. There are several ways to run this rapid but the classic route is the three- to four-foot Class III drop immediately to the left of a large, low scouting ledge. After considering an easier Class II route Peter convinced us to do the Class III route because there were so many paddlers already waiting for us in the pool below who needed experience picking up the carnage if we should flip and have to wet exit.




The best route is to keep close to the scouting rock on the right to prevent being carried too far left by the current. At the drop there is a barely exposed rock or rooster tail at higher water levels about five feet from the scouting ledge. You want to turn hard right to avoid the rock and run straight down the tongue. There is also a submerged rock in the channel if you should go too far left.



The water is a bit bubbly below the drop and a hydraulic forms in lower levels which can flip boats that enter sideways. One of the paddlers on the trip flipped in the hydraulic and got to practice three combat rolls in rapid succession. But she made them all ...



Special thanks to Peter for most of the photos from this trip.

~Susanita