...VANKAYAK EUROTOUR 09 CONTINUES...

World Cup Racice 09! As previously writen, 1000m was great, podium pic courtesy of Martin Hunter (l2r: Rene "the neonate" Poulsen, Adam "likes to poke fun at the Scandics" van Shorterthan, Anders "I brought my jacket, 'cause I'm 30" Gustafsson). K1 500m was junk cause I had some famous eastern-european-diarrheas that morning which is really gross, and too much information for all (4) of you so I'm sorry for that. K1 5000m was ten times longer than (actually, check my maths!) my usually-best distance, and a lot of turning which made me dizzy, but an awesome race!! I had fun, and I'm stoked for the next one. We kept the mash-up bumper-boating to a minimum, and I'd like to campaign for that to continue... broken boats suck.

Had a chance to check out Prague a little on Sunday night and Monday with Anders, Nuno and Chico-chewbacca from Nelo... walked across that cool bridge, watched those creepy-priest puppets do their thing at the top of the hour at that famous clock, had a nice meal and dodged guys in ASU football jackets through the cobblestone streets. I actually heard one of them say: "Dang this place is cool...". Pretty sure they thought they were on a movie set or at some kind of a 1800's-tyme theme-park.

Now I'm in Jonkoping, (sorry Sweden, blogger won't let me put the dots over the o's), training with Anders. Dang, this place is cool! Sweden is Canada's cousin, I love it here. Cold and Warm at the same time... everything is in the right place, people are nice and friendly (enough that they aren't rude but not so friendly that you're uncomfortable)... the air tastes clean and the water is fresh and cold, like water should be.

The food is insanely good. The meatballs and lingonberry potatoe-pancakes are presently going to work on those invading little Czech microbial corkscrews... Swedish lingonberry > Czech bacterium (check that math, too!).

Okay I made a map of all the places I'll go on this trip, you can click on it, and it'll get big, then you can follow the red line around Europe with your finger!! Use a napkin if you've been eating Lingonberry pancakes first though, or your screen will get all nasty, and you'll want to lick it. The X is either a race-stop or a trainingscamp-stop...

Two more world cup races! Poznan, Poland in two weeks, and Szeged, Hungary two weeks after that. I'm still undecided as to where I should train between Poz-Sze. Options include back to Jonkoping or to Duisburg with the Canadian Team... hmm. Maybe I will do a tally chart for my next post. Check back for an exclusive Jonkoping-photo essay coming soon to vankayak.com, I need to buy a camera...
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