Through it you can follow my journey that i call »My Way To The Top«. Browsing the page you will find out more about me, my sport and the way of achieving my goals.
I hope you enjoy the site!
JZR
Tuesday 23 December 2008
Soča river
On Saturday i went to Dejan Testen's B-day party in Trnovo ob Soči. It is a village in the upper Soča valley surrounded with great mountains. The place is far from any civilization and so the sky is very unusually starry at night (only in the desert i have seen more stars at once). The mountains arround were already covered in snow and the reflexion of the light of the stars and the moon made the white mountain tops visible all night. But the main atraction of the valley is the river Soča. It is beautyfull in color, really clean and very popular among kayakers. At any time of the season it is always crowded with paddlers, even in the most risky partsof the river and on a winter day you will find lots of them. The next day i couldn't refuse the offer of Peter Kavzer (prodigy slalom paddler) and Nina Mozetič (winner of this year's slalom World series race in Bratislava) for a paddle on the turkuaz color river. So they took me for a ride on an easy stretch of water, it was officially the first winter day, there was snow all around on the mountains and we were really enjoying the paddle....both of them were looking amazing in and out of those eddyes...i tryed to imitate them to much and...i swam, ofcourse. The water was really, really cold but all went well and i was on shore in less then a minute. Great party, followed by a great paddling-after-party made a great weekend!
Posted by Jernej on Saturday 03 January 2009 - 21:46:28 |
Saturday 13 December 2008
Army days
As a member of the Sports unit of the Slovenian army i had to take part in a 3 day military training in Vipava. It was 3 days of marching, saluting, nodding, waking up at 5.45am, 'precision bed making', guns assembeling and shooting with various weapons. In my group there were plenty elite athlets and together we decided we would simply take the whole thing as a new experience and a special wired fun! Switching the brain off and just take everyithing as it comes was the only way to go. We had a little time for our own training too (after dinner) and it was a great feeling finding myself in the gym with so many succesfull athlets from various sports: Peter Kavzer (top slalom paddler), Brigita Langerholz (top 800m runner), Matija Kranjc (javelin, olympian), Maja Tvrdy (badminton, olympian), Vesna Dekleva (sailing, olympian), Špela Ponomarenko (top flat water paddler), Bojan Tokič (top table tennis player), Martina Čufer (top climber), Jani Brajkovič (top road cyclist), Matej Žagar (speedway), memebers of the parachute team world champions... Every time i find myself in the company of such special people i feel honoured and privileged so much. It is a special feeling.
Posted by Jernej on Wednesday 24 December 2008 - 21:06:36 |
Friday 12 December 2008
Kayaking weekend
Last Friday we had the anual 'Paddler of the year evening'. Lovro Leban won the title for men thanks to his shocking 2 gold medals on the downriver world champs in Ivrea. And Špela Ponomarenko won the title among the ladyes for her outstanding 6th palce in the Beijing Olympics. Besides them we had a huge number of magnificent results as a federation this year. The win of Eva Terčelj at the junior world slalom champs and the team gold at the sprint race of the senior downriver worlds were some of them. I always love to attend this evening because it is the only day in the year when all the Slovenian paddlers from all the disciplines meet and have a good time. It is also great to know, that in Slovenia you need a really extraordinary result to win the title. In the men category you almost always need a world champs medal to win. That's just a priceless feeling and huge motivation! The day after we had the annual 'Christmas marathon' from Koper to Portorož (some 16km on the sea). It was the 17th editiona and my first time i was watching it from the shore. It was not that much fun and it brought me a bit of apetite back.... Gerhard Schmidt from Austria won and Jernej Korenjak was in close second. Tim Kolar as a junior finished in a great overall 4th place.
Posted by Jernej on Tuesday 23 December 2008 - 21:08:09 |
Wednesday 03 December 2008
High tide
On Monday there was an outsting high tide on our coast. The water was 372 cm above the average level and the sea flooded quite a big part of all our three costal cityes. Parks, parkings, squares, streets and ground floors of many houses close to the shore were sometimes half a meter under the water. It never got really dangerous but the damage was big anyway. I went to see it happening in Koper and have also driven to Piran, to witness the famous Tartini square under water. High tide, low atmosferic preassure and southeren winds pushing sea water up the Adriatic were the three reasons for such an outstanding fenomenon. It was the second highest tide in the last 48 years. The situation was similar in Venice (100km across the bay) where the San Marco square was almost a meter under the water.
Posted by Jernej on Sunday 14 December 2008 - 22:02:01 |
Monday 01 December 2008
Running
Lately i have been running quite often and to keep it interesting, i found some new exciting running pathes. One of the best ones is on the top of the sea cliffs between Belvedere and Strunjan. That is an amazing place to run!
Sometimes when i get to the tip of the Strunjan peninsula i make a loop around the Strunjan salt ponds and sometimes i just follow the beach and run all the way down to the medival town of Piran. Anyhow you put it, it is so easy to forget of time on such a running route.
Posted by Jernej on Friday 12 December 2008 - 20:17:59 |
Sunday 30 November 2008
Magnifico
On Saturday i went to see a concert of Magnifico, a slovenian singer. It was held in the Ambasada Gavioli, so the audience was restricted to around 1500 spectators. The place is not that big and the acustics are poor, but we managed to get really close to the stage and the felling of beeing a few meters from the 'star' was really grat. I really enjoyed the evening and it was funny to spot the recently nominated minister for transport Patrik Vlačič standing right behind us in the first rows!
Posted by Jernej on Thursday 11 December 2008 - 21:14:49 |
Tuesday 18 November 2008
'Vertovec' trail
On Sunday me and some friends took part on an organized hike in the upper Vipava valley. It was a perfect sunny day for such a hike. It was a 5 hour round hike over a very nice karstic terrain, with lots of autumn color vineyards, woods and pictorescue old villages. In between we also went to the 'Ostri vrh' hill (422m). Nice weather, beautyfull colors, riped kakis on the lafeless Persimmon trees and over 4000 participants made a nice Sunday!
Posted by Jernej on Saturday 29 November 2008 - 20:09:39 |
Friday 14 November 2008
Tomo Križnar and Darfur
On Tuesday i went to see the film Darfur – war for water. It was filmed by Tomo Križnar and produced by Maja Weiss. An interview folowed with Križnar and Suleiman Jammous, the humanitarian coordinator of Minawi Sudan liberation Army.
Križnar has been visiting Darfur (esteren part o Sudan) for a number of years now. In the past he has already shot the film 'Nubas – clean people'. While the material for the film 'Darfur – war for water' was shot in 2005 and 2006 when Križnar was a 'special advisor of the Slovenian president for Sudan'.
The humanitarian catastrophy in Darfur started in 1956 when the leaving British goverment handed ower the power to 3 Arabic tribes in Sudan. Since then, most of the goverment and power is in arabian hands. The old indigenous black tribes are their victims since then. Darfur has rich oil reserves on the south of the region. China, Russia and USA are trying to get to it and therefor the Sudanese goverment is trying to erradicate the native popultaion of Darfur. On top of it, due to climate changes the Sahara is growing south for 7 kilometers per year and so the acces to drinking water in Sudan is becoming a huge problem. The Jebel Marra mountains in central and north Darfur have a lot of drinking water. When Sudanese goverment trys to kill or at least push the Darfur inhabitants over the border into Chad, the black Darfur tribes are retreating into these mountains. The mountains and the water there are their last chance of surrvival. The violence on the people of Darfur is a genocide. The goverment is attacking them with the Djanjavit tribe, with moderen guns and often bombing them with modern combat airplanes, they sistematically kill and rape the women and children.
Križnar and Jamous say that there are 2 best ways to help people in Darfur. The first is to donate money over Tomo Križnar's home page. With this money Križnar will buy sets of photo camera+video camera+laptop+sattelite phone. This way people of Darfur will be able to send daily information about the situation to the world via internet. The offical channels of humanitarian help normally don't reach the target population. The second way is to encourage people to push the Europena politicians to actively involve in the Darfur crisis. Because Russia, China and USA have big interests in the region, noone expects from them to take action about the genocide and overall humanitarian catastrophy
Posted by Jernej on Tuesday 25 November 2008 - 21:07:32 |
Monday 03 November 2008
Olives
Yesterday i went for olives. In my region and in the whole Mediterranean olive trees have a special meaning. They are the base of the so called 'mediterranean diet' and from the old Greeks and Egyptians on a symbol of abundance, glory and peace. Some of these trees can grow up to 2000 years old. The ones we were collecting from were much younger. It was my first time and i was quite happy to learn how is it all done. When we started in the morning i was really wondering if by dark we would manage to collect enough olives for one family's year consumption. We were around 10 and untill sunset we managed to clear around 70 trees and collected just under a ton of olives. You can cold press over 200 liters of precious oil from a ton of olives! That's a lot of oil and a lot of fun for an autumn's Sunday!
On the photo: i am the left one of the 2 people on the olive tree
Posted by Jernej on Friday 14 November 2008 - 14:03:04 |
Wednesday 29 October 2008
Army walk
We have just had a meet of the Sports unit of the Slovenian army. We did a social hike from the village of Rovte to the hilltop called 'Sveti tri kralji' and back. After that we had a pleasent lunch and were introduced to archery in the Center of war veterans in Logatec. The view from the 'Sveti tri kralji' top was amazing and we had a good chance to meet other athletes of our unit. By puting me on their pay roll, Slovenian armed forces are my main sponsor.
Posted by Jernej on Sunday 09 November 2008 - 21:01:31 |
