Town Hole

Nothing like a whole bunch of water to bring out that little-kid grin in sleep-deprived kayakers... which is what we were afterleaving Jo'burg at the crack of dawn to go and investigate the Parys "town hole" at 500 cumecs... The wave was basicallychannel-wide, a little on the diagonal side - which meant it was a lot like grinding along a steep hand-rail - but good times nonetheless... (Turns out that the best level for playing is 400 or 1300... in between is not great). There was a sweet glassy bit of wave on river left, conveniently placed just above a bit of a strainer, but where you could sit in a front-surf for as long as you liked.

We spent pretty much the whole day either on the wave or on the bank, with plenty of local onlookers (some with their own chairs) and also some local paddlers every now and then (this made it a little difficult to find a good pee-spot). We took a lunchbreak (at about lunch time) just in time to watch a few large trees and other random debris float through the hole - luckily no one gotpole-axed... After a long day playing, we took a short drive up to check out a rather interesting looking rapid just upstream of the wave... the entry looked a little tricky and the best line we could pick was "aerial loop over the river-wide strainer/bridge, down the main tongue on the right to miss a willow tree strainer the size of tennis court, and then quick jink left to miss the gigantic raft-flipping hole". Good Times.

Good Things:
- Boofing through the very boily eddy line to get to the wave was awesome practice
- Grinding along a diagonal wave is actually quite fun - it forces you to "use it or lose it"
- Front-surfing-as-long-as-you-like
- Right-spin-into-stern-end is a great way to learn to cartwheel
- One-hand-on-the-paddle roll-in-the-hole into front-surf and casual replacement of paddle isn't as hard as it looks...
- Little-kid-on-christmas syndrome
- Ham Rolls
- playing with our makeshift foamy - knobhead - when we were too tired to paddle any more
- being too tired to paddle any more

Bad Things:
- few good pee-spots

Good Things 9, Bad Things 1.

-Daav