CANADA and the LVM Giant Slalom Qualifier!

Silsbee signing in... Recently inspired by my fellow compatriot's blogging action, I decided to update my digital life. My website has a new motto.

'The Flow is the life that we live... It's the air that we breathe, it's the dreams that we sleep, it is the unstoppable force which drives our every action or thought. Kayaking is my weapon to ride the FLOW.'

It's been a great month in my life! Just got back from an epic big-wave surfing trip to Canada where we got more water then you could shake a toilet scrubby at. I'll start from the beginning... Met up with Andy Gates and Alan Young in Asheville, NC... Packed up my crap in a tub... (I had a Rubbermaid tub with several T-shirts, some shorts a nice raincoat, an extra pair of shoes and some cheetos. Too bad I didn't have any cool kayaking t-shirts with me.

We drove straight through to Canada, and after confirming to the border man that the owner of the truck did in fact know we were bringing the truck to Canada, we arrived at the Ottawa river. Blah blah blah, we had lots of fun. After 5 days on mini-bus, we met up with some river-run raft guides named Andy (#2) and Wiley. Cool dudes.

We went to the gatineau river with them and loaded our playboats up with sleeping bags, food, tents and fishing poles. It must have looked like a floating landfill, as all of our gear was wrapped up in black trashbags and strapped onto the outside of our kayaks. We then paddled down to High Tension, my favorite wave in the whole world. I surfed High Tension two years ago, but I'd forgotten how perfect that wave is.




We camped out on the sandy beach and surfed until it got dark. The days that we camped next to High Tension were probably the best playboating days of my life. The Astro was sick on that wave! After 2 nights and 3 days on the river, we left some of our stuff in my tent on the river, and paddled out to get more supplies and meet up with Christopher 'Canadian Bacon' Gragtmans.

Soul surfing (or searching?) on the green glass. (Photo: Chris Gragtmans)


Andy 'the blue dragon' Gates... blunting it up (Photo: Nathan Silsbee)


Alan Pan-am (Photo Andy Gates)


Wiley the backstabber. He likes tea and biscuits. (Photo Andy Gates)


Andy (#2): Helix (Photo: Andy Gates)


Gragginator cleaning it up. (Photo: Nathan Silsbee)


After the Gatineau, we headed to Montreal for a day to say hello to the boys at Riot. (Jeff and Simon). It was cool seeing Santa's factory where those glorious hunks of plastic come from.

After Montreal we headed back to the southeast, just in time for the Giant Slalom Qualifier! What a cool event... John Grace and team set-up gates on the slides below gorilla, making for a very technical and fast-paced race. In addition to the slalom race, there was a timed down-river race from the put-in down to chiefs. Congrats to Graham Cracker for reeling in first place.

The Top 10 overall were as follows:

1. Chris Gragtmans
2. Pat Keller
3. Nathan Silsbee
4. Shane Benedict
5. Tim Bell
6. John Grace
7. Toby Macdermott
8. Caleb Coaplen
9. James Kodaras
10. Fergus Coffee

for the full write-up, visit LVM TV

I will be posting some photos of this event as well as some additional photos from Canada on the new Team Riot website, so stay tuned.