Cheat River Festival '05

(05/07/05)

Last years Cheat River Festival was the first North American river festival for Fluid, making this year two. In the past year Fluid has entered the US market strong with the three sizes of the Flirt range. With new outfitting and two models of the new Solo creekboat range Fluid will be even stronger in '05.

This years Cheat Fest was a lot of fun getting to meet up with old friends and meeting lots of new ones. It was really good to get to meet and paddle with Craig Rivett, South African Fluid Team Paddler, and the Huge Experience kids that he is currently traveling with. Fluid had all three sizes of the Flirt series on display as well as prototypes of the two sizes of the Solo creekboat series. Fluid had a strong showing at this years festival with lots of Flirts on the water as well as paddlers Seth Chapelle, Craig Rivett, Heather Chapelle, Bobby Miller, Steve Graybill, and many more on hand sharing their quality Fluid experiences. The big attraction to the Fluid booth this year was the awesome video footage on display. The footage included everything from paddling Center Chute on the Potomac, to dropping waterfalls in West Virginia, to running big rapids and surfing big waves on the Zambezi. Be sure to check out some of this footage in the Gallery. The Fluid Team has been busy over the past year ripping it up on some of the best stretches of whitewater this planet has to offer.

Another great thing about this years Cheat River Festival was getting to have Whitewatervideo.com as my neighbor. Milt, owner of Whitewatervideo.com, is quite a character and is a lot of fun to have around. Be sure to check out Milt's site and purchase your copy of Wet Dreamin', my playboat and playspot guide DVD.

I hope that everyone who attended Cheat Fest this year had a good time, and if you weren't there that you put this great river festival on your calendar for next year.

See you on the river- Bryon Dorr