In Case you Want to Join the National Team That Sucks at Kayaking

Being the lifelong Spudboater that I am, I have had more than my fair share of times where I sucked at kayaking. In the beginning there were those amazing swims out of Mike's Hole on the Main Payette River. I'd smile into the hole, just like the river sage's would advise, and that Hole just seemed to pull me in like a magnet.

Then there was the Payette Whitewater Roundup where I was happily surfing the Ultimate Play Wave and did the biggest endo of the day, and then I sucked up a proverbial boat load of water when my spray skirt popped off and swam out. I sucked at kayaking.
Then there was the time I got stuck in a ledge hole on the Salt River in Arizona. Spent about a half hour windowshading. No swim, but I sucked at kayaking.
And who could forget the numerous times I ventured into Trash Can on the South Fork Payette River Canyon only to find myself trashed or sending out for lunch and then having a nice icey cold swim. I sucked at kayaking.
I've sucked at kayaking far too numerous of times over the years and probably should have been a charter member of the National Team That Sucks at Kayaking. It's getting late in my life as a quintessential "sucks at kayaking" pro and I was so happy to find out that there is a team out there that proves I'm not the only one who sucks.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu4CXVkLyi4
However, at the risk of sounding a bit egocentric, I really don't suck at kayaking. At least not according to my friend Johnny Montezuma, who I ran the Grand Canyon with many years ago. But if I can't make fun of my own kayaking mishaps; I'll just end up hearing about them from other friends.

Boise State Broncos-No Pedigree, No Problem--Our Mutts Kick Butts

Well, I didn't manage to get tickets to the BSU-Oregon State game last Saturday. It sold out quite a while ago. I foolishly assumed I could pick some up for under $50. Not a chance! So instead I did the next best thing. "Woke up, got out of bed, ran a comb across my head" (with apologies to Paul McCartney). It was 5 a.m. Put my hair in two horse tail type bronco braids with blue and orange bronco football hair clips, put on my Fiesta Bowl Orange Bronco sweatshirts, blue tights and blue shorts and hopped on my cross town cruiser bike to BSU. Joined the line up of 8000 fans standing in line some 6 blocks or more equivalent to the Student Union and waited and sang and talked football with everyone. What were we waiting for? ESPN's College Day Game Show right here in beautiful Boizeee, Idaho. Erin Andrews, Lee Corso and the ESPN gang were here and we were waiting for the gates to open in the dark at 7 a.m to be part of this incredible circus atmosphere.
Well, the boys in the mosh pit in front were about to cream their jeans with admonitions of love and marriage to Erin Andrews when she walked through with her cup of coffee to prep for makeup, I guess. We managed to fill the place with over 13,000 BSU fan fanatics. Everyone when nuts when they introduced Coach Pete who was his usual great deadpan self. Though I'd hoped he'd paint his face blue just to torment the ESPN crew. The team was no where in sight since, well, they had a game to get ready for at 6 p.m.
Lee Corso humbled himself by putting a paper bag on his head for the opening of his "who will Lee Corso pick to win" segment. He'd been dissing BSU forever about how they don't belong in the BSC bowl games. Well, the Broncos and chickens had come home to roost. The paper bag came off, and Buster Bronco went on Lee's head. At least he was humble enough to know he's erred in his ways.

The end of the Story? Well, of course Boise State beat Oregon State. Was there ever any doubt?

More of Slovenia-Part II

The scenery along Lake Bled was actually quite amazing. There were boats, churches, amazing water lilies of all manner and the quiet and peacefulness was awesome. On my way to Slovenia by train I saw a kayak course of slalom gates, along with small rural farms of corn and wine grapes. The most interesting building I saw around the lake had an incredible painted exterior mural of folk art along with an extended wall "turret" of sorts and reminded me of my friend Craig's house in Colorado that was also inspired by this European rural farm architechture he'd seen in Austria and Germany--his heritage.

Slovenia in a Day

Slovenia is a really tiny country that amazingly you can see in a day. I had no idea when I started this would be the case but it is true. I hopped on a train from Zagreb, Croatia knowing it would only take barely two hours to get to Ljulbijana, the Capital of Slovenia. It's a lovely city and I hopped of the train for a couple hours and walked around this fine place. Probaly should have hung out for a few days to get the flavor as the folks were nice and they have a whitewater kayak course there, too.

But, I was really tired of cities and opted to hop back on the train and head to Lake Bled, Slovenia's answer to Sun Valley, Idaho minus the ski hill. This is clearly a palatial spot in the foothills of the Alps with a lake that takes a couple hours to walk around. It's 4 miles give or take. The scenery is stunning, the lake is swimmable though discouraged in many locations. I don't think the Slovenes or tourists paid much attention to that, however. I swam at a couple of isolated spots as I really was in the mode of avoiding many people; having had more than my fair share of human contact in Zagreb for nearly 4 weeks by this time.

Slovenes were not very friendly, actually, with the notabl exception of one woman I met at the touris information center. She spoke perfect English and was actually from somewhere else, though one parent was Slovene, she told me.

The lake was stunning, the castle had it's requisite armor and all the things that castles are supposed to have, though I have no photos because my camera battery decided to die then. Slovenes were not very friendly and I can only guess they were sick of tourists. Though Slovenian and Croatian language are similar they are differnt. But not much different than Spanish and Italian, or Spanish and Portuguese. So I was a bit miffed when Slovenes pretended they didn't understand my Croatian. I know for a fact that I speak clearly. My Croatian skills are limited but they are clear. These Slovenes were just being butt nuggets.

I liked the scenery but clearly I didn't really feel like Slovenia had anything over Croatia in terms of intellect, scenery, culture or Klapa singing. Or any manner of other things. I had expected more and got less. Oh well. It's not that Slovenes are bad. They are just spoiled children of the Austro Hungarian empire and have come to think they are better than anyone else from former Yugoslavia. Well, they better get some better ski racers and soccer players, I guess. Got their butts kicked on both of those counts!

Dalmatian Klapa Singing-Not a Dog

Klapa singing is a tradition very specific to the Dalmatian coastline. Klapa singers are highly esteemed throughout all of Croatia. Croats love to sing and many children grow up singing songs for family and friends at various and sundry events, both private and public. While on the ferry this July 2010 to Korcula Town we discovered a group of Klapa singers were on board. Little did we know they would be singing for us publicly in a few days. They were members of the Croatian Navy. At first I thought it was really crystal clear music being piped onto our deck. I walked downstairs to get a soda and there they were, but had no idea they were naval as they weren't in their naval dress. The sweet harmonies and their friendly demeanor put everyone at ease on a really bumpy, swaying, stomach wrenching nauseating trip for many as the seas were quite choppy for the first hour on the ferry.

So while visiting Korcula Island I was privileged to get to listen to two klapa (a capella as it's known in English) groups on the same stage one evening. The Croatian Naval Klapa group that had been on our ferry and are known as Sveti Juraj were really quite amazing in their harmonies and their tightness in terms of singing together. They sang for one and a half hours along the Korcula waterfront. All the Croats knew many of the songs, and on at least three were invited to sing along. It really was a highlight of my trip and where I felt so much like a local; surrounded by warmth and joy next to the Adriatic Sea on a star filled, full moon lit night.

Grk White Wine-Only from Korcula Island

On the island of Korcula in a small village called Lumbarda that is about 5 miles away from Korcula Town and slightly over an hour walk lies a unique mixture of soil, climate, sea salt and sunshine that produces a very dry white wine known as Grk. I had the pleasure of walking to Lumbarda and spending an entire day tasting wine, swimming at a couple of beaches and talking with a few locals. Unfortunately the walk is along a main road as opposed to through the vinyards and farms. Some good signage along the back trails would have a profound benefit for Lumbarda Agro-tourism and bring the wine drinking public closer to the producers and the scenery.
Grk is not everyones cup of tea or in this case, glass of wine. I particulary liked the Grk that I found from the Bire family--Vesna and Franz. They bottle about 10,000 bottle or maybe it was 10,000 cases. Either way, it's a small operation. I had their 2009 bottling and it was quite good, actually. You may be able to find Grk varietal wines in Boise at the Bosnian market but most wines imported from Croatia to the U.S. are in short supply and relatively expensive for what they really are. Expect to pay $20 a bottle for something that would likely cost $10 to $12 if it were from Chile, Argentina or even California.

Zagreb Airport Security (NOT)!

The last week I was in Croatia (July 24 to July 30, 2010)I had occasion to fly from Zagreb to Split in order to take a ferry to Korcula Island to visit my Croat friends Paulina and Antonio. I had somehow managed to get rid of numerous nice publications I wanted to keep because they weighed down my bag an extra 12 pounds and I wasn't willing to haul that much around.Smirking to my self that I was really smart I decided I'd just check my bag since I had a nice bottle of Grk wine it and knew I wouldn't be able to take it on board.
I arrived at the airport, walked to the counter, and handed the woman my passport and told her I was flying to Split and had a bag to check. Of course, I smiled and spoke in the best Croatian I could muster. She checked me in within 60 seconds. No kidding. So I was only left with my carryon daypack that had my netbook computer, some snacks and all my electronics stuff like cell phone, digi camera,ipod nano and a plethora of chargers and European plug ins so I could use my stuff there.
Even though it was only 9 a.m. I went and grabbed an expensive Karlovacko beer and waited before going to security.
Zagreb is a really small airport for a city of 800,000. Basically it's like Boise's though as you can drive right up front to get dropped off or picked up. It's international but you'd never know it. After the beer I figured I better get to security since with a foreign passport I thought it might take a bit. To my surprise I didn't have to take off shoes,or jewelry or my belt. In fact, I pulled my netbook out of the backpack and was set to take it out of it's netbook bag and they just put it right on the conveyor belt. There was no one in line and at least 6 Croat police officers at Security with little to do. I walked over to go through the "security open doorway" just like we have in our airports and realized my passport and boarding pass were in my backpack on the x-ray conveyor. But did security care? I guess not, because they never even asked to see my passport, let alone a boarding pass to get on a flight. I mean, anyone could have walked through there with bags and whatnot hassle free. Which was actually nice in a way, because American are made to be paranoid fearful freaks of the travelling world by our government and media.
I walked through the body scanner and no beebs, so picked up my stuff and put the netbook back into the backpack and went to sit down. Then I watched to see how they checked everyone else coming through. It was pretty much the same routine. I don't recall them checking passports or boarding passes except on two rather dirtbag looking young punks from who knows where. I never heard them speak so never knew. They weren't to pleased and the police didn't seem too impressed with them either.
Now here's where the funny part is. There are no bathrooms on the other side of security and I really needed to pee because our flight was delayed for two hours. I motioned to one of the security police that I'd like to go out to the bathroom. No problem she indicates and waves me through. I come back and they don't even make me go back through security. She just waves me back through the line and lets me walk around. You can bet that TSA in America would never do that. Ever. You know what else? I have never felt safer than in Croatia. I could be out a 5 a.m. and not be worried. It didn't matter if I was in Zagreb, Dubrovnik, Korcula or Zelena Kut on Mrzenica River. Other than the Serbian mafia in Zagreb, it's a really safe place to be by and large.