Wow... I've been bad in the past, but to leave my website without an update for nearly one year... ouch! It's more than time to catch up!!! As you will see the past year has provided me plenty of reasons NOT to find the time to update these pages.

So what's up in my world. Basically, lots of work, and very interesting work. As a matter of fact I've never been busier! The easiest thing at this stage would be to go through a chronological report of the past 12 months.

September 08: some good paddling in the French Alps, and a trip to Amsterdam / Dutch Water Dreams WW course. I was attending and filming for the Kajak Festrival (http://www.kajakfestival.nl). Great event with good atmosphere, plenty of kayaking disciplines, and a good party too!

Kajak Festival 2008

The video can be seen here. Editing by Florenz.

Kajak Festival - Promo 2009 from Paul v Boerdonk on Vimeo.

Apparently the event won't happen this year, which is a real pity. But it should be back in 2010 hopefully.

Then I hit the road along with the Kanoshop/Rokxat crew to attend the now famous Kanu Messe in Nuremberg, Germany. Rokxat is the European distributor for Fluid. Great bunch of people doing an amazing job! Again, a very good tradeshow. Fluid/Rokxat had one of the biggest booth at the show, and probably the coolest too, thanks to a super fancy Fluid Deejaying setup where i could play every evening. Two white Solos are dedicated to the sound and lights. They both contain multicolor spotlights, and a big speaker in the cockpit. A third Solo is used for the the turntables and mixing table, and light controller. It's all super well designed and assembled and it KICKS ASS! So cool. IMG_3432.JPG IMG_3438.JPG fluid disco 1.JPG

Now I only wish FLUID would make an open canoe of some sort so that we can fit even bigger speakers in it and a subowoofer too while we're at it. The last evening at the dinner we had installed the Fluid DJ booth in a corner and i played some tunes while people were having dinner. But soon the tables were pushed aside and this usually quiet and formal place turned into a dancefloor! Some more speakers were collected over various booths at the tradeshow and the party was ON! A few hours later the crowd moved to the various clubs accross Nuremberg, each looking to end the night in the best possible way.

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Party is on in Nuremberg! Photos courtesy of Peter Lintner. Tx!

Next stop was Austria with the Adidas Sickline Extreme Kayak World Championship. After a nice run down the class 4-5 Oetz (and bumping into Corran Addison randomly - the guy can still paddle!), it was work again. I was there hired by the organizers but working on my own, detached from the TV production team. The brief was simple: do your thing, shoot and edit daily clips. My footage would also later be used in the 26-min TV show. Despite cold conditions, the event was a great success and a great time was had by all, competitors and spectators alike.

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Here are the clips that I produced (each clip was shot and edited same day and displayed at the public tent in the evening).

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Soundtrack by "Orange but Green" ; they gave a great concert and a great show on the saturday night party. And that was just one of the highlights of a great party, a great night and a perfect ending for this time spent on the road. It was then time to find my way home, which wasn't easy after a nearly a mouth of travelling abroad!

!5.JPG from left to right: Tao Berman, myself, Michelle Ramazza

!4.JPG Some extremely charming company and a welcome change from the smelly kayakers ;-)

The next few weeks were spent back home, beginning my new job as "Video Content Manager" for the Freeride World Tour (www.freerideworldtour.com).

What does "Video Content Manager" mean exactly? well, basically, my role would consist in managing and supervizing the whole video production process, from planning / budgeting / booking to shooting to editing and delivering. While the main priority remained the TV news and 26-min TV highlights, there were also numerous other video products to deliver, such as webclips, taylormade clips for the different sponsors, and to answer various requests for footage and such. Since I was also in charge of directing all the TV shows, no need to say my winter has been totally hectic!

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Basically, a good part of what i've been doing resides in the FWT Youtube page:

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=FreerideWorldTourTV

The Freeride World Tour 2009 was composed of 4 main events : Sochi-Russia, Squaw Valley-USA, Tignes-France, and the finals in Verbier-Switzerland, spread over january/february and March. On top of it, the same organisation team did the Winter Outdoor Games in Chamonix-France, another event that I was involved on for video production. But more on that later.

So October was filled with Excel files, budgets, meetings and conference calls, with frequent stops in Lausanne where the FWT headquarters are located.

In November, a very welcome break occured with a 3-week paddling trip to Kenya. I had been talking about a autumn trip with Mat Dumoulin and Marc Girardin, and I remembered seeing some nice pics and vids from Mark and Michelle Basso. After a few emails it was all set. We'd fly to Nairobi and enjoy the Savage Whitewater base. Indeed we were very warmly welcomed by James Savage as well as his parents, and they made this trip a memorable experience for us.

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Mark and James Savage, in front of their home river, the Tana.

The Savage own and run a rafting company about 2 hours from Nairobi. The place is like a little piece of paradise, super nice and friendly. It also turned out to be the perfect starting point for our daily expeditions to the surrounding rivers. And what rivers!

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Local life in the village of Sagana

I was totally amazed by the beauty and diversity of the Kenyan rivers. Within a radius of 1 to 2 hours of driving, you can get big volume, tiny creeks, big slides, clean waterfalls... and no need to mention the luxuriant environnement and stunning scenery.

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After a week of hucking and paddling it was time for a little break, so we embarked on a 3 day safari which was a very rewarding experience as well. I'll let the pictures speak here.

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After that it was time to get wet again, and paddle some more rivers of the area. My 2008 paddling season ended on a nice technical drop of about 10-12 meters, my very last paddlestrokes of the year, nice !

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It is crazy that in over 2 weeks there, we all got the feeling we had barely scratched the surface. Kenya definately holds a big potential, with entire areas remaining to be scouted and explored. It's also just a day away from the White nile by bus, so that could become a perfect combination if you're going for an extended trip and want to creek and play in these 2 destinations. For more info check out and contact the Savage. They rock! www.whitewaterkenya.com

It was then time to fly back home! Back to cold Europe. December was again filled with budgeting and planning for the coming season, and also editing trailers for the various events.

January saw the first stop of the FWT in Sochi, Russia. As soon as you pronounce the word "Russia", inevitably come to mind all the clichés associated with this country: crazy vodka drinking, extravagant bureaucracy, tall blonde girls, Lada cars all over the place and a big cultural and linguistic gap.

And to say the truth, all of this is true.

Located on the Black Sea, Sochi will be hosting the Winter Olympics in 2014. Our settlement was the ski resort of Krasnaya Polyana, an hour drive from Sochi. A small resort with only 3-4 chairlifts, but blessed with generally abundant snowfalls thanks to the proximity and humidity of the sea. Putting the event together was a big challenge and I must say that my colleagues have done an impressive work there. On the video production side, the big challenge was to make the whole story fit into a tiny 26 minute for TVs. We have four categories (Ski Men and Women, and Snowboard Men and Women) and this event was ran over 2 days of competition on 2 different faces. Not to mention the inevitable adventures and anecdotes that you can expect to experience in Russia! So this was definetely a challenge to depict all this and make it interesting for the TVs, to combine the narrating of a world class freeride competition and add a local, typical russian flavour to it.

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photos © Nissan Russian Adventure / J Hadik / C. Margot

All in all it went smoothly. The competition was shot in HD, using 4 sony EX3 cameras and 1 HDCAM for the "long lens" producing close up action shots. This setup was completed by several POV cameras placed on riders' helmets along with lavalier microphones and dedicated audio recorders. Onsite we also had 2 editors taking care of file management and of the editing of the TV news (most of the times, 3 min of footage sent over a satellite uplink for TV stations, on the same day or at D+1). This was our standard setup over the season. In Tignes and Verbier the addition of a helicopter equipped with a Cineflex stabilization system was a huge plus for the pictures. More on that later.

After the competition I flew back to Munich to work at Dropin studio on the TV show. It was completed a week later and broadcasted in many countries accross the world. All in all it has had more than 50 000 views on Youtube as well, which is fairly good for such a long format for the web.

The complete Nissan Russian Adventure 26-min show can be seen here, in HD : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiYsiefmvoU

A shorter clip from contest day 1 can be seen here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPVF26G0unI

After a short stay at home early february and a couple runs down the local rivers, it was time to pack again, this time for about 50-55 days on the road, from Chamonix to Squaw Valley to Tignes to Verbier, with a stop in Munich inbetween each event. I left home under a grey sky and cold winter day. Two months later when i got back home it felt as if i had jumped in time : spring was there, flowers, sun and all. Strange feeling! But I guess i'll keep that for another post.