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 ⇍   July 2nd, 2006   ⇏ 

Copyright 2006 Michael Anttila

This weekend was busy. Let me see if I can explain. Angela's friends Jason and Tanya are getting married in August, and this weekend I was invited to Jason's bachelor party. For the bachelor party, Sandy organized two days of white water rafting and riverboarding on the Ottawa River. This plan was (successfully!) kept as a secret from Jason. All he knew was that we were doing something for four days this weekend.

The Photo:

On Thursday night, I drove up to Sandy's place (picking up Matt and Rich on the way) so that we could be there when Jason showed up on Friday morning. That night, one of Sandy's neighbours was throwing a grade 8 graduation party for his kid and friends. For the party, they decided to set off fireworks in the park, and enlisted Sandy's help to set them off. Since Rich, Matt and I were there anyway, we decided to watch the fireworks go off.

Unfortunately, I packed for a wilderness trip so I only had room for two lenses, and I decided not to take a wide angle with me. I also didn't pack a tripod. Regardless, I decided to try to capture some fireworks that night, and this is one of the best photos I got.

The Rafting:

Jason was quite confused when we started driving towards Pembroke, but he started figuring things out when we turned onto "Whitewater Road" and crossed over the Ottawa River. The company Sandy chose was Esprit Rafting, which I highly recommend. In fact, I have no desire to even try any other rafting company. If I ever raft the Ottawa River again (which I'm sure I will... possibly even again this summer), I will insist on rafting with Esprit. They are not paying me to say this. ;)

I won't describe every second of my rafting day here, but I will say that I had a great time, and somehow we all managed to stay in the boat, despite our guide's best efforts to get Jason thrown out. :)

The Riverboarding:

Sandy decided to make the weekend a little more extreme by going "riverboarding". One advantage of riverboarding is that you don't have to worry about falling into the river... because you spend the entire day in the river. All you have (aside from a life jacket, helmet, and small flippers) is a four foot heavy foam board with four handles on the top and a plastic shield on the bottom. The riverboard is used to protect the fragile rocks of the Ottawa River from being harmed when your body slams into them, or so I was told.

Riverboarding was really cool, although it was tiring for me because I'm not a very strong swimmer. I managed to keep up with the group though, and by the time we hit the last rapid I was really getting the hang of things. ;) I came away with a few bumps and bruises, and a lot of very sore muscles. I'm sure I will experience the full extent of my injuries tomorrow once the adrenalin wears off. That being said, I enjoyed it a lot and wouldn't hesitate to try it again.

The Photo Again:

This photo was taken with my Rebel XT + kit lens at 18mm, ISO 400, f/4, for 5 seconds (handheld). This is pretty much "as shot", with a bit more saturation, some noise reduction, and resizing & sharpening for the web.

Oh, and before anyone asks: I don't have a photo album up for this weekend yet. I didn't take that many pictures, since I spent most of the weekend on or in the Ottawa River. I will eventually make an album of some sort (either online or on CD) and send them out to everyone who came rafting with us.

Comments

Next time you go riverboarding, I'm in like sin.
-- AAron at 2:41pm, Thursday February 15, 2007 EST

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