Jen and Nick's Adventures

Basel

One of the great advantages of buying an unlimited Eurail pass is being able to just jump on a train for the day and discover a new city. This past week we went to Basel for a few hours. We walked around the historic old town, visited a few churches, ate lunch on the river and did some shopping. It’s a much bigger town then Thun, but still small enough to walk around and see most of the sights of the old area in an afternoon.

SUP White Water Camping Swiss Grand Canyon

Nick, Neil and I took a white water SUP camping trip to the Swiss Grand Canyon for 2 nights. It was July 4^th and Nick remembered everything to help celebrate even if it was in Switzerland and with an Aussie and a Englishman! Earlier in the day he surprised me with a an piece of apple pie and when we got to the campground after a beautiful 3 hour drive through the mountains, he had brought not only ingredients for smores, but also sparklers to celebrate. We set up camp including, Neil’s huge luxury 3 room tent and cooked dinner. These were followed by smores and a few attempts to spell out USA in sparklers. I think it was the 6^th try and we finally got it. I said that we weren’t going to bed until we did it successfully!

Happy July 4th from Switzerland

making s'mores

a beautiful church in the mountains

These cows blocked the road for a while during our drive

In the morning we woke up and drove down to the river to start our paddling adventure. The bottom half was easier and was good to get some practice. These rivers are not deep here unlike the US and prove to be more technical then what I would imagine on others. Add to it the lack of rain and the water levels were quite shallow with plenty of rocks popping up. I think my thoughts were just don’t get hurt and it will be a success. The scenery around was amazing and the coolest part about it was around 3 hours later after having paddled and surfed a few stationary waves we got out walked up to the train station which lines the river and took it back to where we began in about 5 minutes. We took a break and had a great lunch by the river and then did another run in the afternoon. A combination of having a little more confidence and switching to Neils 12’6 river runner board made the 2^nd go much easier for me.

on a standing wave

Nick powering through the rapids

I made it through as well!

The next morning we set off to do the top part of the river, harder with more rapids, but unfortunately still low level waters. Neil brought along a riverbug and I opted to take this down the river instead of killing myself on the stand up board. If there was more water, I think I would’ve been fine, but since I hurt my finger last year (that was even minor) and it hurt for 7 months after, I thought I’d be the photographer and take the safer way down. The boys were more hardcore and did a great job getting down the river without any major injuries. Going down a few rapids I even flipped over in my riverbug and had to pull the quick release handle to get out, so even doing this wasn’t a piece of cake. At one point one of the guys who went with us, a kayak guide down the river, did an awesome run on the SUP on what looked to be a pretty dangerous part.

Me in a riverbug

This is where experience and probably being a bit crazy help you to easily get through difficult areas. Not only did he make it through once, but he did it two more times after picking the right line and going for it. It was very impressive, but not something I would ever attempt to do. Again give me two big rocks, a drop off and a deep river on the other side and I would be fine, but a continuous stretch of rapids with rocks centimeters below and it would’ve ended in disaster for me! Everyone made it safely to the end and we had a couple great days on the river before the storms set in.

after the first day, us 3 waiting for the train

that's the river we paddled down below

Wake Up in Gunten

We helped Neil with a C4 isup demo at a wakeboard event nearby on Lake Thun. Lots of people tried out paddleboards and even had a small race that my race partner, Maru and I won. We scored new belts that had the event logo on it, which were made by a company Street Belts (www.streetbelt.ch) and pretty cool looking. These belts seem to be quite popular here. They originally started by using old fire hydrants and taking the numbers, which look like buckles and putting them on belts. In addition to paddling, Nick also did some wakeboarding for the first time. The skies were clear for the weekend and perfect scenery with the snowcapped mountains in the background.

Nick racing

and he's up wakeboarding!

what a view!

International Surfing Day: Rolle, Switzerland

We got off the plane in Geneva and jumped on a train to Rolle, where Neil had arranged us to stay with a fellow paddler, Pascal, until we met the next day in Rolle for the International Surfing Day SUP event. Pascal was organizing the event and we were put straight to work. Well, sort of. The first stop was to the local winery where the grapes on their property are made into wine. We traveled up from the lake in to the vineyards to do some wine tasting at 10 in the morning! What a great way to start our trip, this place is beautiful. The rest of the day was spent helping set up for the event and organize things from the event ‘base’ which was Pascal’s mom’s house. It was a beautiful house overlooking their vineyards and Lake Geneva. In the evening we visited a small village with Pascal and had some delicious perch straight from the lake and local wine.

The next day we spent at the event helping out Neil and Rita, who are the distributors for the brand C4, teach people to SUP on their boards. There were 6 other brands present and was a big test day with lots of people trying out SUP in front of the Rolle Castle. What a backdrop and even despite the clouds and colder temps over 150 people got out on the water. I even did a couple 20 minute SUP Fit classes for people to join in.

Lake Geneva

exercises on the SUP

Nick doing a demo

C4 Switzerland set up

SUP Fit in front of the Castle

Our summer in Switzerland begins!

out on our friend Steve's boat

Last year we met Neil and Rita who live in Thun, Swtizerland through a guide in France that used to work with Neil. We were looking for a place to SUP while in Switzerland and he had told us to get in touch with him. Well we did and we are thankful we did because that’s how we’ve ended back in Switzerland for the summer! We had told Neil last year that if there was a chance that we could come back next summer and help him out with SUP or tubing (he has a tubing business as well), then we’d come back in a heartbeat. Throughout the year we’d stayed in touch and in March we made it official that we’d come back. He found us room to rent in an apartment just across from Lake Thun and we were super excited to experience Switzerland as well as travel Europe again for another summer.

While Neil had said that we were less then 100 meters to the lake from our new home in Switzerland on Lake Thun, I don’t think we believed or realized how close that was. When we showed up, we were stoked, our room even has lake and mountain views. The apartment belongs to Masa and Sabrina and Sabrina works for Neil during the summer. Masa runs the local lake pool that is directly across the street and besides the 2 cats that they have (Nick's allergic), it’s a absolutely perfect location. They have let us use their shopping bikes for the summer and it takes only about 10 minute ride along the lake to get to the town. Here are a few pics from our new lake house!

view from our apartment and a storm coming

lake jump event at the local lake pool

out on a the lake

beautiful!

jumping in the clouds

wake surfing

wake sup'ing

Cable Park in Abu Dhabi

A couple months ago a wakeboarding cable park opened in Abu Dhabi adding a bit more excitement to ‘things to do’ in Abu Dhabi. I got a chance to check this out with some friends and spent a couple hours wakeboarding.

Paddle for the Planet

At the beginning of June, I helped organize the 1^st Paddle for the Planet in Abu Dhabi with the ADOW surf ski club and despite the unusual windy weather plenty of paddlers of all kinds showed up to take part. This included SUPs, surfskis, kayaks and dragon boaters. Paddle for the Planet is a worldwide initiative that started in Dubai and in cooperation with World Environment Day helping to raise awareness about our oceans and protecting them. This year, money will go to support a marine wildlife reserve in Indonesia. There were around 50 people in Abu Dhabi paddling and at least twice as many in Dubai, together a great showing for the UAE.

Nothing but P4P for Clint and Em

Dibba Adventure

Dibba Sunrise

We headed for Dibba for the weekend for a dhow adventure with our friend Clint and some others. We had been up to Dibba in Oman a few times camping, but this was a first time sleeping on a dhow. Despite the dhow that we got ended up being much smaller then the one we reserved, we made the most of the weekend swimming, snorkeling, stand up paddling and climbing. We brought our inflatable C4 iSUPs with us and everyone enjoyed paddling in the coves and following the fish ,turtles and stingrayss around down below. We even found out they were perfect platforms for climbing the cliffs. Clint, Nick and I brought out rock climbing shoes and got a few chances to do some DWS, which was fantastic. In the morning we woke up at sea to a beautiful sunrise each mornings and moored in a bay off the Oman coast. It was beautiful, only thing I would change was time of year we did this cruise. The end of May is pushing it weather wise with no relief from the heat, even the breeze at night was extremely hot! Nonetheless we had a great time and definitely will do this again next year!