This past weekend I went home to visit my family in NJ. It was my nephew's birthday so I had to be there to see him. He turned 4! It was a lot of fun to see him playing in his new swingset that he got for his birthday. I even got to climb through it with him.

I was also able to go fishing with my dad while I was home. I love to go fishing. We went into the bay, the ocean was too big with hurricane Bill passing by. We caught some keepers both Saturday and Sunday.

Monday we took Matt to Sesame Place. It was so much fun because he was so into seeing all the characters. We went on water slides and had a good time. He was so tired when we left that he fell right asleep in the car.

Me and Matt :)

Posted by Carolyn Braun at 10:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This has been an amazing weekend! I was able to get out and paddle
(which I am sure you know I love to do). Andrea, Jared, and I made a
run down the lower yough over the weekend before we headed down to
West Virginia. In WV we went to the Tygrat River to a white water
clinic. In the clinic we worked on our boof strokes which are used
when running water falls. I am guessing that you can figure out what
we did next... we ran Valley Falls!
It was awesome! Of course I did not do so well because I only started
whitewater kayaking last year, but it was all in good fun. My fiist
run over the falls was right on line. Unfortunately, my boof stroke
did not have enough power and I faceplanted into the water. I rolled
up and was fine. I had to redeem myself so I went up to run it again.
Lets just say that my first run was my better run. My line was perfect
again, but I flipped at the bottom and ended up in the curtain of the
falls. (This is not where you really want to be... Oops) I rolled up
twice in the falls and when I flipped again I came out of my boat. I
tucked into a ball and I swam deep down to get away from the falls.
When I popped up from under the water I still had a smile on my face!
I only ran a rockslide twice after that and called it a day on running
anymore waterfalls. I just took pictures of Andrea and Jared after
that. I still had a ton of fun! Next year I think that I will be more
ready for class 4 whitewater.

Me going over Valley Falls!

Posted by Carolyn Braun at 1:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So two weeks ago I went to the Youghiogheny river with a couple of friends. We left on Friday and came back on Sunday.
Friday morning Jared came early in the morning to pick me up before heading to State College to pick up Andrea. It was pouring out! Once we got to Andrea's we had to load her gear in the rain. The ride down was fun with interesting conversations from texting etiquite to if we pulled the kayak behind the car in the rain what would happen?
We made it down early enough to fit in a loop run. I was very excited because I had never been on the Yough before. We met up with a few other paddlers and took about two hours to go down. It was so much fun! This was the biggest water that I have been on! When we got to the end Andrea and I decided that we wanted to participate in the loop race. We went back to the put-in and signed up. Jared was our personal safety boater. I came in second to last, but the experience is what really matters. After we got off the water we changed and grabbed dinner with some other boaters. I was so tired by the time we made it back to camp.
The next morning we got up and met our groups for the clinic. My group was group 4. We met at the put-in and got ready to go. For the first part of the day we played in a couple of rapids (elephant and z). We then ate lunch before heading for a loop run. That night at camp was the big Turkey Bash dinner. I mainly stuck with the vegetables, no turkey for me. After dinner was an instructor meeting where they talk about the students in their groups. After the meeting I found out that I was being moved from group 4 to group 8 (there are only 9 groups!).
Sunday was fun (even in the rain) with a trip down the entire lower yough. I made it through cucumber without rolling but I rolled at dimple rock, which was scary. I also punched double hydrolic and ran mouse trap and some other fun lines.
Overall, that was an amazing weekend of paddling. I threw in a few rolls along the way, but no swims for me! I can't wait to get back out there and do it again.
Here is a link to the article from the loop race. There are a couple good pictures of Andrea and me (I am in the little red boat with a red helmet and red lifejacket)
http://worldkayakblogs.com/throwdown/2009/08/04/confluenceohiopyle-hometown-throwdown-3/

Andrea and Me at the start of the race!

Posted by Carolyn Braun at 11:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So we were given a task of saying why I chose Lock Haven University. Well for me it is kind of hard to explain but I will do my best. I wanted to transfer schools, the college that I was at was not the right one for me, especially since I decided to be a teacher and I was not able to get my teaching certificate there. I wasn’t sure where to look when my cousin suggested Lock Haven to me. So I made the drive out (5 hours from home) and made a visit to the school. During my visit I met a physics professor who gladly chatted about the physics program with me. I also saw how friendly the area was and just had a good feeling while on campus. At that point I knew that Lock Haven was the right school for me. In the end, Lock Haven was the only school that I applied to. I am sure that I made the right decision for me; I can’t imagine any other school being a better fit.

The friends that I have made here are friends that I will always have!

Posted by Carolyn Braun at 7:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)