I'm back, Lyon was great and we had a good time!

Yesterday (4.11.05) I arrived at my home at 9 o' clock after a long night of driving with a really cool truck driver. Now, I will try to report a little bit about the "Lyon-Hawaii-Waterless-Kayaking-Trip". First, I needed to drive to David in Konstanz who studies there. So, there was the first problem: How can I come to Konstanz? A) with the train or B) with a truck driver. In the end I decided myself for the trucker because it was cheap and costed no money (cheaper than Hofer or Aldi). If you guess that I would travel with a tucker I don't know very well (to hitchhike, I think^^) you are wrong. The Trucker was a friend of my father who organized this very well for me, thx. Then, the journey started for me on Thursday (27.10.05).
After a long drive with the Truck (8h, normally you need 3h) I arrived in Konstanz. This night I slept in David's student-room and in the morning we drove with his car to Sault Brenaz, a town 30km before Lyon where a whitewaterparc is. I suppose we needed 5 hours. First we bought 30 small bottles of french beer and paddled then on our arrival at the campsite with all the cool dutchies (Raoul, Remi and Martini) on that slalom-course. It was really nice and funny and you could see Remi doing cool clean-blunts. After 2h of paddling we made diner and had a nice party with our dutch-friends and some french I didn't understand very well. Instead of me, Roaul tried to get better french skills and created new words like "5-finger-french" or sth. else...
The next morning Raoul and Co. drove back to the Netherlands. David and I paddled on this whitewaterparc the next few days. To our suprise some german-friends from Saarbrücken (Fred, Axel, Niklas) arrived on sunday morning. It was very cool to paddle with them, too. Especially Fred who tried to be our freestyle-trainer made a lot of noise and a very motivating atmosphere on the river. On monday we drove with Axel to Hawaii in Lyon for recognizing that there was no water ;). The Wave was too green. It didn't hold you, you got always flushed. Therefore we trained a few downriver-moves on it. I was very disappointed, so I stoped paddling on it after I carried my boat for the third time.
This and the next day we spent again a few hours on the course in Sault-Brenaz and drove back to Konstanz on Tuesday midday. There,I hung out two further days in David's student-room. It was very "gechillt". Special thx to David for all the food and beer. Then, on Thursday I drove with the Trucker back again. All in all it was a really crazy, cool trip. The best thing was the weather: we had 25 degrees (most of) all the time.
greetz & hf
Felix

Here are some pictures to enjoy:
(further and better pix will follow because they aren't developed yet)

Raoul after a few beers:


And David after a few beers, too:


The beers we drank:


The next morning:

David on the water:

Fred our trainer ;):

Axel, the Big-Wheel-Man: