Last weekend (as you may have gathered from various other blogs) was the National Student Rodeo. Every year it grows, every year it gets betterer and betterer! Thursday afternoon was spent helping out with some of the set up, and grabbing a quick run down the course in my squirt. It was ridiculously chilly, and high levels meant that none of the squirt spots were going very well however. A “quiet one” on Thursday night ended up in a trip to Nottingham’s Rock City and a bit of emo handstand bashing, before trying to ride a horsie. Ooops.
Friday dawned far too early, if a little windy. Most of the day was taken up with carting about enormous speaker stacks for the boys at Extreme Events who provided top notch tunes all weekend. I also discovered that while I’m no DJ, I can tape XLR cable to the floor and put up banners…
Every year we all say “We’ll just have a quiet one” on Friday, and this was no exeption. I spent some time convincing people to try and sleep on the roof of the Pyranha bus (sorry sammy!)….
Saturday dawned even earlier, and even windier than Friday, but not dispirrited the million or so entrants began endless runs down the extreme slalom course. Personally I decided that as it was a Pirate theme, that a galleon was the only logical choice.
The entry to squirt this year was enormous, with 40 odd people entering, and a fair few shreds being bought out and dusted off. The standard was also loads better than last year. Good to see the Perception Minge out on the water again. Ben White, Claire O, and Emma ran some awesome coaching on the lake at the top, and I finally got my head round totally vertical stern stalls. Then 20 or so of us were invited to head down to the Pyramid Pool for the heats. I had a couple of pretty good runs, though the heliwashout eluded me this time, and was chuffed to have made the final. The rest of the afternoon was spent judging men’s novice heats… expect an “Explains” on the “Fresher”, a badass new move for this year sometime soon…
Saturday night was the premiere of Sam Ward’s short film on the section of the White Nile that is going to be lost with the new dam. Max has it on his blog. It’s very good. After that we gotvery merry to some random band who were a bit pants, followed by Paddy from Palm mixing it up before Dave and Al from E-E took us through to the wee small ones, before we headed off to find place/vans to kip in.
Sunday was even earlier! The squirt final was a knockout affair, which I really enjoyed. The magic roundabout serving up some tip top downtime. After an (unlucky?) splat based error I washed out of the eddy and spent most of my time fighting my way back into it. Ooops. 5th for me, and once again Dave F took home the bacon. Nice one Dave!
There are loads of stories and jokes from the weekend, that will come out in due course I’m sure. My photographs should be online in the next few days, so look forward to a bumper photo edition soon.
All that remains is to thank everyone who made the event so amazing again, Nick, Tim, LUUCC, Extreme Events, the sponsors, Ben, Emma and the squirty massive, Emily, Claire and the judging crew, the runners, the hog roasters, River Legacy, and everyone else! 
(Pics by Paul Wilkinson - more at the NSARRRR site )
