Good to ponder

Alabama Historical Rapids

I am looking for photos of the rapids underneath the lakes and dams of Alabama's rivers.
Examples:  Devil's Staircase on the Coosa River near Wetumpka, the Falls of  Tuscaloosa on the Black Warrior River, and the double falls underneath Smith Lake.  If you have access to photos of these or other rapids, or information on where to find them, please let me know!

This ROCKS

Jeff West Memorial Fund

We all owe Jeff a huge thank you.  Please consider making a donation to help bring Jeff home from British Columbia and to remember him at the Memorial Party.  Any excess funds will be used for the continued operation of Ace Kayak School.  Thank you.

Please post this link on Facebook, Twitter, etc:  http://www.gofundme.com/1752o4 

Cool Song

Found this one sort of accidentally; it's the sort of thing I *would* find out from The Underground Garage, very cool:

our Champion

From Boatertalk: 
We have lost our Champion
A true gentleman, a great hero admired by all 
for his generosity and courtesy 
Always willing to help 
A civilized man in an age of vulgarity/crudeness 
the soul and spirit of the Ocoee 
although I cannot paddle like him/ I will 
try to follow Jeff's behavior on the River

An article about Jeff and what happened last weekend:

http://paddlinglife.net/article.php?id=864

Jeff West

One of my instructors, Jeff West, passed away on the Grand Canyon of the Stikine River this past weekend.
I am heartbroken with grief and cannot believe it is true.  The kayaking community has lost the best of us.
I can't write about Jeff right now but those of you who knew him know what a wonderful person he was.

Here is a link to an article Jeff wrote about his 2010 trip down the Stikine:

http://jacksonkayak.com/blog/2010/09/27/jeff-west-takes-a-villain-to-stikine-in-a-day/

LRC Chairlift Rapid Diagrams

Last fall I made some diagrams of the lines through the two harder rapids on the Chairlift Section of Little River Canyon.   If you click on the photos they show a larger version.  Here they are:

Eddy Hop on LRC Chairlift.
 I think AW's page calls this rapid Blue Hole Memorial.

Entrance to Bottleneck on LRC Chairlift

Bottleneck on LRC

                                   

well I didn't expect it

but here it is in a nutshell:

Very Cool Website

Dear Friends.  I hope your September is wonderful so far.  I am going to make it a tiny bit more wonderful by providing a link to a cool website I just found:

http://www.eattheweeds.com/

Take care dears,

JUDY

wise words

A good leg will fall; a straight back will stoop; a
black beard will turn white; a curled pate will grow
bald; a fair face will wither; a full eye will wax
hollow: but a good heart, Kate, is the sun and the
moon; or, rather, the sun, and not the moon; for it
shines bright and never changes, but keeps his
course truly.

Ocoee River Playboat Race 2012

I love it.

My Guitar Hero

"The Descent" is the first single off of Bob Mould's new album Silver Age.  This is the best album I've bought in recent memory; the song "Keep Believing" is just. damn. awesome.   I lack proper superlatives this morning.  Just... get it.

Mind-Blowing

For those of you who took my recommendation and read The Emperor of All Maladies, you will really appreciate how mind-blowing this article is: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/science/far-from-junk-dna-dark-matter-proves-crucial-to-health.html?pagewanted=all
From the article:"The human genome is packed with at least four million gene switches that reside in bits of DNA that once were dismissed as “junk” but that turn out to play critical roles in controlling how cells, organs and other tissues behave. The discovery, considered a major medical and scientific breakthrough, has enormous implications for human health because many complex diseases appear to be caused by tiny changes in hundreds of gene switches."

And:

 "Human DNA is such a long strand — about 10 feet of DNA stuffed into a microscopic nucleus of a cell — that it fits only because it is tightly wound and coiled around itself. When they looked at the three-dimensional structure — the hairball — Encode researchers discovered that small segments of dark-matter DNA are often quite close to genes they control. In the past, when they analyzed only the uncoiled length of DNA, those controlling regions appeared to be far from the genes they affect."

This is an example of something I wish more engineers could get their paws on - 3d models of the way DNA is coiled into the nucleus of a cell...  

Thank you Government Sponsored Research btw.  

The music makes it wonderful

The big chroma-key eyeglasses and 1971 pant-suits etc. help make it wonderful too!  

Ha ha haaaaaa

this is great!!!!!