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Billy Harris - Mission : Missing exits, Bremgarten melt down

Ground hog day is a movie about a guy that keeps living the same day over and over again. Well that is us. Paddling, driving, paddling driving. Different places different rivers. We are 2 weeks into a 3 week extravaganza of Europe . It's been wild, Surfing Lyon was amazing, when it is breaking that is. You go there when its not god its hard to catch…. You never here that on the postings but you heard it here first kiddies. Man its good when its good the water is like concrete, the bounces are outstanding. We got hooked up royally by the French C1 Man Marc Giradin. His brother lives right in town and a walk from an Australian bar. Well there was about 100 people standing there and we walked to the front of the line to look in the door. “oi, mate where you from” I said Canada, Matt “great Britain” Pat Australia… He just walked us right in. OUTSTANDING luck on this trip.

I have a real bad memory like gong show bad. We need to be on the E25 toward Zurich or is it the A1. We sit down look at the map and say ok E 25. Got it, or do we. The map closes up and “which one was that again” Part of the cool think about kayakers in general is we can go anywhere at a moments notice it might take longer to get there if we be driving but Ohhh well get there all right. Trips usually consist of a A to B plan, but not us… oh no, we keep the worlds fuel companies happy with the A to Z plan instead deviations.

We are all very relaxed people and have a great time no matter where we end up. However, direction and memory didn't get hard-wired into the net of brain patterns on either one of us. We need a fuel sponsor to pick up the slack for all ziggin when we are supposed to be zaggin. I was sending us to Interlaken when we were headed for Zurich. One is south, way south, one is north east. With signs called manglewillin dusefrunknn, druncinshloper (with 2 dots over one of the letters), like how were we supposed to know where to go? I wanted to follow Marc the frenchy and Pat but I lost him at a toll booth arguing over the classification of our van, not to mention that the toll booth is on the wrong side of the van. We are on the right, everyone is on the left in the toll booths. Which is fine but when you have to turn around and pay the same dam toll again cause you got lost it starts to get a guy down. Not to mention Pats texting us “we're at the border, where are you guys?”. Didn't tell them we were headed in the wrong direction and as I am typing this we just missed the turn off for Bremgarten. We are in a tunnel and we have no idea where we are… Life's an adventure, isn't it? Just missed the second exit.

It's like Ground hog day in here, I keep seeing the same exit I want and we keep missing it. Oh great, we just got another message from Pat, “AT THE BAR SLOW ASSES Hurry up” it should be dumb asses for all the wrong turns we have made today. Going to the bar is the last thing we should do right now. But OH NO, we are headed to the bar. Bremgarten 11 kms and we're coming in hot……

As to the Wave & Wheels Competition: Well, I got cooled off. Harris here scored 9 points. Just 9 points. Sometimes you fall... I crashed. Probably the most humiliating kayaking event of my life. DAM The boat was awesome, the wave was great, it was a beautiful day and I felt fantastic. I just flushed twice and when you flush you flush down so far. So hard on the Ego, got to announce the whole event and it was awesome but I learned a really good lesson. Everyone falls sometimes, I Crashed.

The event itself was amazing. Simon Hirter put together one of the best events I have ever been to. Reno is the only other event that went off like that. The party was so good we stepped into the sun the next day wondering who turned the lights on. Matze's Band Los Burritos was outstanding. Matze is an off the hook kayaker with off the hook band. Never seen anything like it. Skaters, bikers and surfers all going off in one place. Redbull making right sure that everyone was having a great time too.

We are headed to Interlaken. There is a Powerade competition on as well as a video shoot for a Powerade video of some sorts.

--Harris on a Mission

[more photos in the gallery]

PS. Results are here.