Recently I was inspired to design this graphic and thought it might make a cool t-shirt.
Thanks, Spencer
{ 1 comment }
Recently I was inspired to design this graphic and thought it might make a cool t-shirt.
Thanks, Spencer
{ 1 comment }
We are now home, but I wanted to document our last couple days in Portugal and summarize the 2009 World Surf Kayak Championships with one last post.
First, we’re selling some apparel to cover the costs of our trip. These are assorted colors, so you have to choose the size, then color will be a surprise. Hey, they’re a bargain, so stop yelling at us.
These are only currently available in large sizes. They tend to run 1 size too small, so XL should fit a LG person.
$15.00
$25.00
Our team, US East, officially placed 8th. Trophies were awarded under a moonlit sky. Most everyone ended up in the pool after or during the awards.
Three of my teammates walked away as World Medalist. Two thirds and a fourth.
After it was all over we were hungry.
On our final day we decided to sightsee a bit. I saw this site and took a picture of it too. This windmill was just outside a tower on one of the Castle Walls of Obidos. This castle, which is very old (enjoy my history lesson here) still stands fully intact and functions as a town, full with restaurants and shops and lodging. It’s a tourist attraction, we were toursist, and we were attracted to it. Job well done.
You can laugh at this if you want. It’s not a complaint, just a record of what happened. We (Joey, myself and other team members) got some kind of cold or flu before we left Portugal and were blessed with clogged sinuses, runny noses and throbbing headaches the whole way home. Lovely I know. The flight was long, around 9 hours and we sat beside some awful couple who kept bickering at one another as well as the flight attendants the entire flight. Nothing they were served was good enough, the seat wasn’t comfortable enough, they wanted our seats (which we took great pleasure in saying “NOPE, we chose aisle seats for a reason”), and the list goes on. There’s more to this experience but the part you need to know is that basically it was miserable. Luckily we can look back on these type of experiences and laugh. I guess that is if you survive. The funny thing is that if one were to dig up any old trip reports which my friends and I may have written about these kayaking trips over the past 8-10 years you would find many similar stories. Thumb through the blog archives of Effort.tv and you may find such stories.
I’d like to give a final thanks to everyone at home who helped us get to Portugal, to the Portuguese and WSKA for a great event, and to all our friends and competitors who visited this site and read about our experiences. We hope to see you all again at another beach or the next World Championships in 2011… wherever that may be. Maybe OBX, Australia or an undisclosed “world class break,” tba…
*Special Thanks mentioned at bottom.
Sincerely,
Spencer Cooke
US East Surf Kayak Team 2009
Special Thanks go to:
Families:
Cooke, Robins, Hall, Lavell, Sherburne, Acuff, Jenkins, Auer, Houck, Davis, Foley, Cooper, Kee
Individuals:
Shari Robins, Mason Cooke, Maria Young, Raymond Cotton, Drew & Eileen Hayes, Margaret Matthews, Jacques Lewin, Chris McMillan, Michael Pesant, Clark Cross, Paul Moreno, Andy Gates, John & Kara Weld, Roger Loughney, Craig Langford, Jonathan Nameth, Adam Motes, Jeff Rivest and Simon Martin. (Sorry if anyone has been forgotten.)
Businesses:
Mike Byer Auto & Truck Repair, Nantahala Outdoor Center, Asheville Pizza Company, Dwellings, Drinkin’ Beanz Coffee House, Highland Door Company, Dirt Girl Design, Tomato Jam Cafe, Trout Lily Market, Troyers, The Fairview Town Crier and more.
Kayaking Sponsors:
Immersion Research, Shred Ready, Astral Buoyancy
Visit http://ESKAsurf.com for more detailed info about our team and organization.
{ 5 comments }
Hello to everyone back home. This may be the final correspondence before we return. The 2009 Surf Kayak World Championship Finals wrapped up yesterday and today with some very notable performances. Conditions this morning were not extremely favorable but ended up providing ample waves to choose the World’s Champions. Swell size dropped in half from yesterday to today giving waist to chest high waves.
My teammates from the US East, Lindsay Usher, Russ Buskirk and Tom May gave noble competition efforts resulting in two 3rd places and one 4th. Each of them definitely have what it takes as surfers to get the gold but all the puzzle pieces didn’t quite fall into place today. I’m very proud of these guys for persevering to the finals and I think they all have feelings of achievement. If not, hopefully they will find the passion and drive to give it another shot at a future World Championship. This type of motivation can sometimes be difficult to conjure up in oneself, but I feel it needs to be one your own terms.
Sand, lots of sand.
More Notes, some strange:
Nathan Eades, Welsh, shredded his way to the short boat finals today. Nathan happily came out of the water with a 3rd place. Yesterday the guy was simply ecstatic to make it to the semi-finals, so I think he hit and exceeded a competition goal with a bronze medal. I’m psyched for both of these guys. Pretty cool for a couple to both do so well in a world level event.
And a final note to my wife and son waiting at home for me.
See ESKAsurf.com for today’s World Final results for the US East Team.
Visit KayakSurf.net‘s News for tons of amazing photos and full World Surf Kayak Championship Results.
Later,
Spencer Cooke
US East Surf Kayak Team 2009
{ 0 comments }