Tomorrow will be World Cup #3, a short Classic on the Lower Upper Mersey Course. It will be the end of our time at Silver Ridge retreat, where we will have been staying for 8 days. It is a great site - the cabins are very comfortable and the setting is idyllic. There is a platypus in the dam next to the site office, and night walks by the owner allow you access to possum and wallaby. Quite a few of the teams are staying here - the Slovenian and Austrian "Family" is next door, the French are up above and Sydney paddlers Sean, Mad Brian and Liz Wilson are down below. The Wilson's hosted us for a true Aussie "Barbie" last night, complete with pavlova for dessert. I was at the end of my antibiotic regime, so I managed to steal one of Brian's beers. Our drive to the river takes about half an hour over a large mountain pass - it is a classic drive and we stopped to get some pics on the way home to remember how stunning it is here.
We were back on the river today, trying to work out the pacing for such a short classic. It is a pretty straightforward course with absolutely no bank access, and a 10 minute paddle out at the bottom. I'm gonna try to stash a camera at the finish to get some shots of folks finishing. The Japanese finally turned up today - that might give me one of two more folks to beat, but I don't ant to speak to soon. It does mean that I will be racing a guy called Yoda - makes me feel like a Sith Lord if I beat him. That will make one of my students who put me on the acknowledgements of his talks as a Sith Lord pretty happy. Hopefully I'll have some good pics tomorrow - in the meantime I posted a lot of pics to my facebook page. I'll also work on getting pics for the "Mum/Dad vs Aussie paddler" competition tomorrow.
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