I've been in Europe for a little more than 2 weeks now. My first was spent in Portugal at the Nelo training facility at the beautiful Montebelo Aguieira.  It's a great dammed lake very much like the waterways of Lake Lanier in Gainesville, Georgia.  Lots of great paddling and trail running there, I recommend it to anyone as a training site. Well, to canoers and kayakers in training but I doubt if downhill ski racers or ice climbers or astronauts, deepsea divers, big-game hunters or those engaged in high wizardry training would enjoy the facility as much as we did. But it's good for paddlers. 

My second week was in Poznan, racing the 1st of 3 World Cup competitions, on little Lake Malta.  I only raced the 1000m K1 event, and as you can see in the picture above, I placed third in my finale. Congrats to Rene (kind of looks like Shrek in this picture, growl) (DEN) and Eirik (why are you wearing a scarf?) (NOR) and all the guys on a good race. Cheers to Balint for the always high quality photographic excellence. Thank you Poznan for the very pretty flowers.  Owing to my Dutchness, I love me some tulips.

After the race we all made our way to Duisburg, Germany.  Duisburg is a pleasantly familiar place for me to be in May, as I've raced here many times over the decade-plus I've been paddling my boat for Canada. The city Zentrum has improved so much over the past 10 years, it has really developed into a wonderfully vibrant and culturally thriving town.  It's a multicultural working class city close to Dusseldorf, with one of the nicest and most functional pedestrian-only promenades of any European city I've visited. The public art, restored architecture and bountiful fountains are of a truly capital city pedigree. I spend my afternoons with a book and an espresso at a street-side cafe, or on the grass of their new raised green space right beside the Mercatorhalle, Duisburg's new mixed-use cultural hotspot.  Mark Oldershaw and I attended the symphony last night, and enjoyed some Tchaikovsky and Schostakowitsch from the Duisburger Philharmonisches. Vladimir Spivakov conducted for a diverse full house, and enjoyed some 7 rounds of applause, treating us to a lively and familiar encore which everyone recognized, but whose name was lost on us jocks. Mark said we shoulda "Shazaamed it".  Whatever the heck that's supposed to mean.

Racing commences tomorrow at the Regattabahn in Sportpark Wedau, easily my favourite of all the international canoe-kayak venues I've raced.  I am again only concentrating on the 1000m K1, and I'll leave the 500m to my longtime clubmate and up-and-comer, Brady Reardon.

Following the Duisburg World Cup, on Monday Mark O, Bernard "the internationale leader of teams" Irvin and I are off to Moscow for World Cup 3 and hopefully a little sightseeing, as I have never been to Russia before.

Good luck to everyone racing front-ways here in Duisburg, good luck to the Canadian Rowers racing back-ways in Lucerne... Go Canada Go!

Stoked as always... talk to you soon.

Katimavik

By: Adam van Koeverden

April 10^th 2012

My parents attended Guelph University over the same four year period in the 1970s. They drank beer in the same campus bars, attended Guelph Gryphons football games; they might have even taken an elective together, who knows.  But they didn’t meet there. They made the same decision upon graduating from Guelph, to go work as group leaders with this new youth initiative called Katimavik.  In its very first year, 1977, my parents attended a Katimavik orientation in Lac St. Joseph, Quebec.  They met briefly, and my mom went off to Baie-Comeau, Quebec and then to Yellowknife, and my dad went to work in the small town of Arundel, Quebec, close to Mt. Tremblant.  Over the next year my parents worked independently, a whole country apart, while driven by a shared commitment: to contribute to the youth of Canada.

They worked for Katimavik on and off for 5 years, in that time they also got married and had me, their first of two sons.  I’m told that makes me a “Katimababy”.  By 1982, the year of my birth, my dad was working for Katimavik full time in Toronto, as the financial manager for Katimavik’s Ontario operations.

My mom used to wear an old white Katimavik sweat shirt while she gardened.  I remember asking her when I was very young, what the orange circle with the green line under it meant. She told me that Katimavik means “meeting place” in Inuktitut, and that she worked there, with kids, way up north after University.  So my mom and dad met at “meeting place”.  The serendipity was lost on me at the time; I was six and probably covered in mud and poison ivy at the time.  I owe Katimavik my life in the sense that it brought my parents together, but they didn’t only find each other in Lac St. Joseph, they started on a journey to find themselves, too.

I read last week that as government funded youth initiatives go, Katimavik is too costly and that it’s not worth saving.  That actually it was a really easy decision to scrap it.  I spent a few hours on the phone with my parents, as they recounted their experiences there.  My mom remembered the short Yellowknife days, and how she felt safer with a 12 year old Inuit boy in the woods while playing a survival game, than she could ever imagine feeling with any adult from the city in the same situation. She feels that she learned as much from those kids as she taught them.  She studied horticulture at Guelph, and talks about the differences in the plant culture in the far north as if she spent her entire childhood living in the Northwest Territories.  My mom has spent the last 20 years or so working as a community co-ordinator in the non-profit housing industry. My dad remembered being thrown headfirst into a leadership role in Arundel, accepting that responsibility and realizing his potential as a leader and manager straight away.  My dad has had a variety of careers since Katimavik; teaching management at Ryerson and George Brown, in Aboriginal business development in Ontario and with the Saskatchewan Gaming Corporation, and as the manager of Ontario’s Tourism Education Council.  To suggest that Katimavik was formative for my parents, that Katimavik guided them towards their careers based on their respective passions, interests and strengths, might be understating the case a little.

Like many young Canadians, there was a time when I felt totally directionless.  I didn’t know where to spend my energy and I was unaware of any inherent skills lying dormant in my bones.  In 1995 I found a sport, which has become my job, and I’m really happy it did.  But what if I didn’t have a Canoe club in my town to literally wander into 17 years ago?  A lot of kids don’t, so those questions go unanswered for them. 

Young people today are facing a crisis of relevance.  It’s not obvious to every kid where they’ll fit and what they have to offer society.  It’s these types of experiences; empowering work, structured and meaningful educational activities, that have provided over 30,000 Canadians with the understanding that fulfillment doesn’t come from what we “want to have”, but from what we “have to give”.

There over 1000 Canadian kids, whose questions were going to be answered this summer.  They had already signed up to work with Katimavik, and were slated to leave this July.  More than 50 Canadian communities, some desperate for this kind of help, already had 35 hours/week work plans laid out for them.  Katimavik wasn’t phased out, it was cancelled abruptly at the expense of Canadian youth and the communities they were preparing to serve.

The dual-value of this kind of community service cannot be overstated; simply put it is purposefully engaged youth, serving our communities.  That seems like well-spent taxpayer money to me.  I’m not an expert on government budgets and the inner financial workings of our nation.  Thankfully, Canada has some of those experts, and over the course of 2009-10 some of them did a very thorough study on Katimavik.  The study found that “the federal government’s financial involvement in this type of initiative is [therefore] deemed to be justified.” Additionally, it stated that “the objectives of the Katimavik program support and mirror the government’s priorities” and that “Katimavik is a good fit with the Government of Canada’s youth programming.”

As any good study should, it has some suggestions for a strategy to increase efficiency and to continue to decrease the cost per participant, since that cost had a descending trend throughout the period of the study.  Katimavik’s reviews were pretty glowing. It never once suggested that it was worth scrapping.

I recycle, and I think that when something good and functional is a little broken, you should fix it.  That’s what the study was for, and that’s what it found, just a little room for improvement, here and there.

I believe that the first priority of a good government should be the same as Katimavik’s first priority; service.  It seems to me that the decision to toss Katimavik down the drain had nothing to do with service.  In fact, that decision represents a neglect of its duty to serve our communities, the youth who live there, and the young people anxious to travel to them to work, learn and serve. 

The decision to scrap Katimavik was an entirely politically motivated decision.  So when will politics in this country be devoted to service, instead of just, well, politics?

Randy was more of a writer than a photographer. This was taken in September last year in Algonquin, in my little boat on Tea Lake. Photo by Randy Risling.

He encouraged me to write more when I told him I really enjoyed tapping away on the keyboard. He read our little athlete blogs religiously, and we, the athlete community, never missed one of his articles. I'll often pick up the Star just to flip to the middle of the sports section to see what he was on about. He was our fan, our colleague and our friend. My hands are shaking and there are tears streaming down my face, but I feel like the best and only way for me to say "Thank You Randy", for your over 25 year commitment to us, is to write about it.

We've lost a dear friend, Randy was truly like family to so many of us.  My thoughts and condolences are with the Starkman family, his wife Mary and daughter Ella.

Thank You Randy. You will be so dearly missed by everyone. 

I don't have your email, address, mobile number or twitter handle. We aren't friends on facebook. So I hope you read my blog. First off, this isn't an apology. It's an explanation. You can take it as a warning if you want, of what is to come, but I feel that it's only right that I keep you informed on my plans. You probably thought I was getting tired. Maybe you thought you were winning. Last week you got a little break, your wounds began to heal over and for the first time in weeks you felt like you were recovering from the twice-daily rounds of punishment I inflicted upon your salty blue fundament.  I was not being neglectful of my training, I didn't forget about you.  In fact, I grew more and more anxious and enthusiastic about our regular encounters with every hour I spent away from you. I longed for the heat that my muscles produce as I punish you, bludgeon you into near submission with thousands of strikes per hour. I spent afternoons lamenting the sensation that my heart might break through my sternum, that my lungs could burst like a balloon filled with one burning breath too many. I slept less soundly having not devoted hours of my day to your torment. I have a job to do, and it is at your expense. So, this letter is to inform you that I'm not just "back". I'm not only just here, again, as I was over the past weeks. This week, and the week after will be different.  It will be harder for you. You are going to bleed, you'll feel like giving up, giving in to the anguish, the repetitive and unrelenting nature of the torture. I'm not giving up on you, and I hope you don't give up either.  I need you to take all the punishment I can dispense.  There will come a final blow, and then it will be calm. You can look forward to that, if you must. There will come a day when I won't be here anymore, bringing you so close to death that you almost pine for it. It might be difficult to imagine now, river beast, but I think you'll miss me when I'm gone. Here's to a few more good weeks.  Sleep well. 

Cool picture, eh? Anders took it with his camera. That's me in my boat out there. The water was nice and flat that day. It hardly fought back. 

Training has been awesome this week, the salty beast has taken a severe beating from my dual-bladed battle axe.  I thrash upon its blue hide repeatedly morning and night, until I am all but completely exhausted.  After its morning battering I provide it a short reprise for a few hours while I eat, go to the gym, go swimming or go for a jog.  In the afternoon it welcomes more blunt force trauma from my implement. It's difficult to see who is winning. Beating a river brute into daily submission is rewarding, but it is not without it's repercussions. I admit, I am tired.  My back and shoulders are sore, my hands ache, and 9 hours of sleep hardly feels adequate. But as I rinse the encrusted salt from my skin after every battle I feel that my muscles are stronger than they were the day before, my blisters have colloused and the skin on my hands is harder. As the onslaught continues I feel that I can administer it a more thorough daily trouncing. I don't know how much the river can take, it has shown few if any signs of weakness, perhaps it's capacity for abuse is boundless. But of one thing, I am certain: it isn't getting any tougher, and I am.     

So now that General Mills and I have solved all of your problems, you can participate in a totally unecessary and fun survey.  In the comments section of this blog entry or on facebook please indicate whether you prefer the "Milk before Cereal" or "Cereal before Milk" method of preparation.  If you prefer a different kind of milk, beverage or fluid in your cereal, please indicate that as well.  If you want top points, then include your favourite General Mills cereal.  Write it like this:

I'm Adam and I prefer Cereal before milk and I use Almond milk because I am not a baby cow (or a baby almond but whatever, you know what I mean?), and my favourite cereal is Cheerios (Gold-Multigrain, Silver-Regular yellow box, Bronze-Honey Nut).

(I know my bed is unmade and I'm a slob, but I don't care because I was busy  DESIGNING AND BUILDING A WHOLE GRAIN WALL OF CEREAL TODAY...)

Behold, the great wall of Cereal.  Legend has it that this wall was constructed over a painstaking 7minute period by Adam himself and it is held together by gravity, maple syrup and the Power of Love. Now do yourself a favour and click that link.

Well spring training camp has been ticking along nicely.  Plenty of high quality kilometers have passed under my butt.  My legs and torso and shoulders and back and arms have been getting stronger and more resilient to this kind of abuse, my paddle is starting to feel like the familiar tool I remember from 2011, my boat is reacting more swiftly to every strong stroke I execute, and every stroke seems to be just a little better than the one I took just a moment prior.  I haven't been worrying myself with times and speeds and specifics. My focus has been very simple: perfect paddling, lots of it.  I don't worry as much about my work in the gym now that I'm a 1000m-only paddler.  At least I'm not as concerned with pushing huge weights around anymore, not that the weights I ever pushed were terribly huge by any stretch of the imagination.  This is all to say that I am satisfied where my strength is currently at.  I am starting to run more, and I'm excited about that. 

I needed a refresher this weekend.  I felt that I should hit the road with my kayak on the roof of my car and paddle somewhere else for a change.  And there was a comic in Miami that I really wanted to see. His name was, and continues to be, Rob Delaney. On Friday, after a good morning session on the water and tough gym workout I threw my boat on the roof of my Mazda and hit the I-95 for a road trip.  The drive was quick, I went straight to Miami Beach Rowing Club. My boat and I were engaged in a kind of amazing-race style 24hr adventure.  Dodging the stares of some running-shoe-clad high school rowing champions I borrowed the MBRC dock for a split second, pushed off in any direction and punished their waterways for an hour.  I thrashed on it's salty hide with everything I had for 60 minutes.  It fought back with waves and surface tension.  I pushed my boat through the Miami intercostals for 30minutes, close to 7kms in any direction, the sun dropped below the horizon with an equatorial haste, I turned my skinny craft 180 degrees, and retraced my strokes in the dark.  The waters provided me with what I required, and I took very little in return.  I found myself back at the MBRC dock, I used their hose to wash the salt from my boat, paddle, hair and body, dried off and changed in the parking lot beside my car.  I mounted the boat, and drove directly to the Fillmore Theatre to catch the show.  

Rob was very funny, he's filthy, foul-mouthed, human and kind.  His conscience and compassion somehow pervade his perversion.  I left the show and got some really good Mexican food.  I checked into a fine Hotel that my sponsor, Roots, was generous enough to book for me.  The Soho Beach House proved to be a fine host, with a very comfortable bed.  There are few things in life that I appreciate more than a really good hotel breakfast.  The Soho knocked it out of the park.  Once I was full of fruit, coffee and croissant I grabbed my car and hit up the MBRC, once again in renegade style. I get some strange satisfaction from entering a moderately familiar city, using their facilities as if they were my own, pummelling their water into submission and leaving without anyone really noticing.  It's like espionage-exercise, I feel like an international agent athlete. Back on the water I felt a small sense of renewal.  I had some tough work to do in the hot morning Miami sun.  I welcomed every hard-gripping stroke with the same curious novelty I paid the refreshing, but deteriorating art-deco landscape before me.  Sometimes, a change is as good as a break. 

Adios South Beach... windows down and Rock n Roll loud, I drove north for 3hrs to Melbourne, my southern home every spring since 1997.  I'm mentally and physically prepared for another few weeks of work here.  I just hope the water can handle it.