Plattling: Week 1

I am currently here in beautiful Plattling, Germany. In German, the word Plattling means flat, which pretty much describes this town perfectly. Not to say that it is a bad thing in this, somewhat small German town. In fact it makes it quite a lot easier to get around and see where your going. The main town of Plattling is along a short section of a busy 2 lane road running through a small canyon of 3 story high buildings. Much like most American towns main streets, except for the fact that everything is written in German. With pretty wide cobble sidewalk/ parking areas on either side of the road with an occasional little flower garden and a statue or fountain. The main part of town ends with a bridge that crosses the river the hole is on. Take a left before the bridge and drive through some nice looking houses, down a curvy little road and under some very busy train tracks, up a little hill and down the other side and your at the feature. Between two large grass fields lies a river with, what appears to be a small, low head dam, though is actually a pretty sweet hole, at least on the river left side. The rest of the dam has a few fun surfing spots, a few flushy green tongs and a few steep little holes, all of which is quite shallow except at high water.

The World Championships Feature is a sweet hole which is only about 20 feet wide, with, at the current water level, a flushy tong on the surfers left side, a very shallow rock in the middle and a deep spot just to the left of the rock. Though even with the flushy left side and the rock in the middle, when one finds the right spot it serves up some pretty huge loops, space godzillas, mcnasties and every other trick in the book. I have been working on a pretty solid routine, which if I can get every trick, will hopefully put me in the top five for C-1. My loop, left space godzilla and left mcnasty are all pretty solid at this spot, I have been working pretty hard trying to train up my right mcnasty, phonix monkey, backloop, and orbits here and have some of those moves starting to stick really well at this spot. I have been here for about 10 days and still have 9 days until the competition starts. Hopefully I can get some more training in, and get some of my less consistent tricks to come through better by the time competition starts. Lines are already getting bigger as the majority of the US, Canadian, British, Russian, German, Japanese, and several other countries teams are already here. It is definitely awesome to be able to meet all these spectacular paddlers from all over the world and have the opportunity to paddle with them.

Pics-

https://picasaweb.google.com/THEPoffenburgler/Germany?authkey=Gv1sRgCPbY1-XE9NGgag

Thanks again to my sponsors, Liquid Logic Kayaks and Potomac Paddlesports.

Jordan P

Ps- will try to get more pics up soon

Liquid Logic Kayaks Boat Raffle

On May 26^th at the end of the Maryland Chute-out on the Potomac River we drew a raffle ticket for a liquid logic kayak of some lucky person's choice. Thanks to Liquid Logic we managed to raise $1300 dollars, out of which 1/4^th would go directly to the United States Freestyle Kayak Association, which will help fund the 2011 US Freestyle team at World Championships in Plattling, Germany. The rest of which will help me personally to pay for my plane ticket to Germany. The tickets were sold at $10 dollars a piece or $25 dollars for 3. Between my family, Potomac Paddlesports, and the help of Risa Shimoda we managed to sell 120 raffle tickets.

The Winner of a Liquid Logic boat of her choice was April George from Portland, Oregon-Now all we have to do is figure out how to get the boat to her.

A Huge thanks to my sponsors Potomac Paddlesports, for helping us sell some tickets. And an Especially huge thanks to Liquid Logic Kayaks for putting up a boat to help the Myself and the US Freestyle Team at the ICF Freestyle World Championships in Plattling, Germany.

Jordan P