<p style=”text-align: left;”>The Illinois whitewater festival was a blast! I didn’t know how the slalom course would be as the level due to flooding was almost 8000 cfs. It was a little pushy but there was still a lot of features with nice big waves. Julie Alsberge was up visiting her sister who had heard about the event and encouraged her to participate. We used  our own boats to run the long boat K1 class and borrowed others play boats for the short class. Julie was really worried having never paddled a play boat before, but to her excitement ended up getting first place in the K1W short class.  The boater cross was a mass start then 3 gate race for long and short class.  While everyone was busy try to sink each other I snuck away for a first place in the long boat race.  All the folks up there were super nice, and we felt very welcome. It was cool falling right in with them on course take down and knowing what to do.  I encourage others to make this trip next year, and hopefully we will see some of these boaters at our race as well, as Julie and I made a number of new friends.  They did however make jokes about us taking prizes back across state lines. A big thanks to all the Chicago Whitewater Association members that made this Awesome event possible!    CT Mike</p>