fun at the border (not instigated by us!)

Had a great practice last night..went out with my boat, steered a second, then paddled again with a third team.. three hours of on-water bliss. I love the perspective that different coaches and crews impart. Plus I had to entertain myself as G took the day off to travel half-way around the country to catch up with family. Anyhoo.. got to the border and saw quite a sight. An RV, towing a very nice, shiny, black, convertible pony was jammed between the yellow radiation (as we call them affectionately) poles marking the tight little lane. The driver had obviously followed the curved lane markings, rather than approached the thing straight, and neglected to realize that big square bus-like vehicles don't bend in the middle. The resounding impact had apparently caused the tow package to buckle a bit, so that the pony somehow shifted on the hitch -- the poor guys were having a terrible time trying to disengage it. When i drove off, 11pm at this point, they were still at it. I soooo wanted to take a pic of the whole thing.. it was surreal and pretty amusing, but one of the guys looked so incredibly frustrated, and unhappy look that i thought that would just be poor form. I hope they got out of that mess!

how to pass the time in stop-n-go traffic: #241

A little face grooming - you can do that anywhere! And you can arrive to practice looking absolutely stunning. (The hairy legs however, well, that you need to take care of at home.)

not your usual border crossing

We roll up to the border. Thin, older, sour-looking, freckle-faced man in the little yellow booth takes our IDs and asks the standard question.

"Where do you live?"
"Burlington and South Burlington."
"How do you know each other?"
"This is my friend and team mate."
"What were you doing in Canada?"
"Dragon boat practice."
"Dragon boat." It wasn't a question. His eyes narrowed. His face got sourer. "What charity event was it?"
"Oh no charity event.We are part of a regular team, and we had a practice."
"No event? Were you working?"
"No, just practicing. But we have a charity event in a couple of weekends in Burlington."
His eyes just bore into me. Make me squirm a bit. "Are you asking me to come?"
"Err... sure!" I say and laugh, not really sure what the correct response is. If it's even possible his eyes narrow a tad more...
"You can't hit on a federal officer when he's on duty you know."
Seriously? Goodness!
"I'm sorry. It won't happen again."
"OK then, here you go," he says handing back our IDs, "have a good night."

Golden heatwave

Temperatures were so high this weekend, that I half expected to come back to a car (left in a hotel parking lot so we could carpool) with melted, oozing tires. Thankfully that didn't happen... but for sure WE oozed a lot! A new friend of ours, a fellow dragon boater from Philly, told us that for every ten pounds of weight lost a boat gains an extra three seconds of speed... well... i think we definitely delivered on that one!

The Montreal International Dragonboat Festival is a rather unique event - e.g. the women's class is just that... one big hot mess of women's crews. There are no subdivisions (like senior, BCS, community, intermediate, premier, etc).. you're all just lumped together and going for bust to see what happens. This year, there were 48 female crews... ours among them. As in June, we were being pitted against one of the national teams on which three of our crew sit. It was gonna be a challenge.. and we welcomed it!

Our boat did fantastic. We "got the $#%& off the start line" as directed, and had really strong races - strong enough to get us into the Division A finals in both the 500m and the 200m - along with two premier teams and Team Canada. In the 200m - dang it was close... less than half a second between the top 4 teams:  54:03 (Team CA, with our girls on it!), 54:17, 54:21 and 54:29 (our boat).... so sweet!  The 500m final was very similar. 2:18:26, 2:19:04; 2:19:18 (Team CA) and 2:19:26 (us) - we were one second off from the gold, and just a dragon's whisker from bronze. Even though we wouldn't medal, we would be going home very happy. Great training ground, really SOLID.

Still, G and I are accustomed to bling. And since we decided earlier in the season that we wouldn't leave another festival without some sort of jewelry, we had our work cut out for us. We were lucky enough to be able to paddle with a second, mixed crew from our club... made up of a lot of folks from one of the teams we were with last year.. so it was like coming home in a sense. And we did so well, we got bumped up to the premier division finals (your times earn you a spot in either the Rookie, Intermediate or Premier finals) - and 2:18:19 was enough to net us GOLD in the 500m... in the worst, heaviest, crappiest lane to boot. As our coach said, that was like a TRIPLE win! So very very satisfying.

On the way home, at the border, we were asked if we were bringing anything back. G and I leaned over and waved our bling at the guy. "Hell yeah!! Medals!" we yelled. The guy chuckled and asked "did you beat a Canadian team?" "Hell yeah!" We answered. He laughed. We laughed. He didn't need to know we were WITH a Canadian team. And technically, we told the truth so no harm no foul. Hee.

So yeah, hot hot weekend! Medal is on the rack... next race, August 13. This one will be strictly for fun: we're paddling with another of our former teams and coaches... the one we started with in Montreal and really owe all our successes to, so it'll be pretty special actually. Love love LOVE that crew.

The summer is starting to wind down... BOO.

Preparing for the Montreal International Dragon Boat Festival

Can't seem to stay out of the city. Went up last weekend just for fun - which completely flabbergasted the border guy. "You're going TO the city? Are you crazy? What on earth for? I'm staying off that island for the rest of the year!" he declared quite animatedly. "Well, there's a multicultural festival we want to check out, as well as the Biodome..." He wasn't impressed. A few years older than I, he had just been to the U2 concert the night before - which he proceeded to tell me all about. Never mind that there was a car behind me, and then another, then 3 more (and this was the only lane open)... there was apparently a lot that needed to be said. I got a rundown of the concert itself (awesome and loud); heard just how close to Bono he had been (never gonna get that close to him again); and how getting home through all the traffic had taken the poor man over 3 hours (what the heck had he been thinking?). I couldn't get a word in edgewise... so i just grunted and smiled and ooed when it seemed appropriate. Eventually he gave us our IDs back, but still kept talking.. and tho i tried inching the car forward and giving the signal that hey, maybe it's time for me to go...he was having none of it. I toyed briefly with the idea of just gunning it forward but decided against it. If the man wanted to talk, who was I to deny him an audience? Eventually he had to take a breath so i jumped in, wished him a pleasant, quiet rest of the weekend and continued up to that awful island of traffic horror (on a Sunday morning.. really rather pleasant!). 

Anyway... enough of that digression. 

Hard to believe we only have two competitions left in the season.. one next weekend and the other at the tail end of September. Coming up is the Montreal International Dragon Boat festival - where we will have the added challenge of racing against all sorts of premier women's teams rather than in our usual division. It'll be tough, but soooo good for us. Plus I love this festival.. it's where G and I both got our first taste of what dragon boat racing is REALLY about... where we fell head over heels in love with the sport... and where we've made some amazing friendships. We've competed in it every year since - and our summers are generally measured around it. We're also hoping to again join a second, mixed team to race with, just for a little extra fun and action.. otherwise it ends up being like a very looooong track meet. Anyway, we'll see. In the meantime.. the day is wearing on and it's almost time to head to practice. Yay!

GOING TO WORLDS!!!

A bronze medal & confirmation that the team is Hong Kong bound!

Incredible weekend in Welland. Saw a lot of amazing paddling. The divisions were so close, I think all 85 teams racing got quite a reality check. I know we did. The time differences between us and our competition really came down to one or two strokes for the most part. CRAZY!

Friday morning we walked from our hotel down to the course for practice. The water was calm, deep and a gorgeous green color. We'd heard so much about this course we couldn't wait to get out on it and see if it truly was as good as we'd been led to believe. We found our team, helped raise the tents and get settled and then it was time to load up. The boat we got was so new, they hadn't finished taking the bubble wrap off the seats!

The practice was short, but delicious. The water warm and oh soooo fast. Perfection! We stayed out there just long enough to whet our competitive appetites and came back in. A few hours of meditation and focus were now in order before our 500m heat - the time we registered strangely eludes me at present. The final would be the next morning.. and we knocked that out at 2:12.81. A great time, and four seconds faster than our goal, but not quite enough for first place... which was logged at 2:12.64. CENTISECONDS!  We had a screaming start and held everyone at bay for at least 480 of the 500m, but they crept up on us at the end and slid in by a dragon's nose hair. Silver was to be our color for the day. Grr.

Saturday afternoon it was the 2000m that would torture us. You generally either love or hate this race. Personally, it's one of my favorites. (Then again, I don't think I've ever met a race I DIDN'T like. I just love this stuff top to bottom and sideways.) And OMG it was hellish and brilliant all at once. Hopefully there'll be video available at some point.. i'd love to actually see how it looked from a spectator's vantage point. It was mad crazy, and our boat was so SOLID. Sitting in seat 5, smack in the middle of the boat, I felt the power all around me. I was barely aware of anything else... and by the time we crossed the finish line my right foot and hand were visibly mottled with the sheer effort of it. Despite losing ground on a few turns, we finished with a respectable (but, sadly, 4th place) time of 9:56, ready to puke our guts out.

Sunday morning we walked to the course again. Already at 9am it was scorchingly hot. We passed a gaggle of the biggest, fattest Canada geese we'd ever seen and immediately envied them their cooling swim. By the time we were up to race our first 200m heat, we were ready to melt. But a little cool race water on the backs of our necks and we were ready to rip it. Just before we headed to the starting blocks, we were stopped in the water, focusing. Our boat is stunning. We sit there and just breathe. 22 women sitting still, totally focused, breathing in and out deeply... it is powerful and calming and so much more. As I was breathing I felt a strong need to turn around and look back, look for G, my partner through all this. I turned and she was looking right at me...it was uncanny really - our eyes just locked for a second, and that's all we needed.

Boy did we rip it. We screamed down that bloody course in 53:67 - ahead of all the other crews. Again.. it was centiseconds. Might as well have been nanoseconds tho. Of the five boats in the heat, four were bang on top of each other: our 53:67, then 53:77, 53:88 and 53:90. We had some serious company here!

We knew we would have a run for our money in the final. Again we hammered it out at the start.. quite possibly that was our best start ever. All boats fought extra hard for that race... and again the top times were a hair off from one another. 53:66; 53:68 (ours, another silver race); 53:87. The difference of one hard stroke... UGH!!

We took bronze for the competition as a whole, and are secure in the knowledge that we have fully and unequivocally earned our berth for the World Club Crew Championships next summer. Still, despite setting off for home without that coveted and elusive gold, we left with something much more valuable. The fire that is now in our bellies is going to keep us roaring hungry over the next 12 months as we step up our game and prepare for Hong Kong. And hungry is what we need to be... so that we may grab the gold where it REALLY counts: on the WORLD course.

Celebrating the end of a fantastic racing weekend (holy crap we're going to Hong Kong!)

Arrival in Welland

Had a fast ride through New York State to get here.. we laughed, told stories, and tried to contain the excitement as we neared nearer and nearer. When we finally saw the sign heralding our arrival, we screeched to a stop and did the goofy tourist-picture thing. Part 1 of the dream is really here!! As we drove into town to our hotel, we passed the race course... a total goosebump moment. There it was, the best course in Canada, and tomorrow WE would be racing on it. Yeeeeehaaaaa!!!

After a good supper and an early turn in.. we are ready to rock it. Tomorrow just became today :) Just got up, heading to breakfast and a practice. First races are this afternoon - the 500m and the 2000m. WHOOOOP!!