Calgary dragonboat festival 2006

Ok, you knew it was coming, the extensive chronicles of my calgary dragonboat festival 2006 experience.

Started off with hanging out a bit friday evening to get wristbands and set up a little. Not many people came down for that though, and soon headed home. Then, it was saturday morning, on site at 7 am... Calgary's still so cold at that time in the morning! The good thing about that is that you get to park fairly close. Poor Carol was kindof stressed as people were still arriving an hour late, but overall she did a great job with organization throughout the weekend. Congratulations also have to go to Arnold, it's pretty crazy keeping eight teams on track! Throughout the weekend we almost continuously had one team or another (or several at the same time) racing or marshalling. The saturday races are to seed you into whichever division for sunday's races, so although you may blow away the other teams racing, it's time that matters. Timing isn't the best way to compare teams, since water conditions vary so much, but it's still probably the best way to seed divisions. Had an early morning mixed race. Next was the 200 m mens sprint which was kindof neat. We didn't do so well in any of the mens races unfortunately, maybe we should do more than one practice! Also, the other teams were really strong, kudos to them. In the afternoon, while still holding a half-eaten sub in my hand, it was time to warm up for the next mixed race, since the festival decided to skip the lunch break and push up the races as much as possible. I guess it was in case the weather turned bad later. Similar to the morning mixed race, there was no real competition. We missed having the best time of the day by 0.04 seconds, but like I said, times can be deceiving. Later in the day once again it was the mixed and mens 1000 metre races. For the mixed, it was totally a last second thrown-together team, and we almost missed it, it was pretty funny. The mens had headed down first, and the marshaller was yelling "topmade dragoneers get down here!" and we were just standing around, we were 'inferno' not 'dragoneers' at that moment, the marshaller was screaming "topmade!?!" getting upset till the mixed team came sprinting down down to the docks. We (men) got to be sitting in the boat at the finish line as our mixed team came across, that was pretty cool. Unfortunately again the men didn't place so well, but still the race felt really good. Most people headed off after the races, but some of us stuck around in the somewhat windy weather for the Spirit of the West concert. They're pretty much my favorite band, of course I was going to stick around! And it didn't go on too late, so there was still time to relax in the evening and go to bed early.

Sunday again had a 7 am start, again pretty chilly. Got to see a crow chasing a golden retriever, that was a good laugh to start the day! Looking at the schedule, it was pretty cool to see that Topmade had got three teams into the A-division, including a recreational team! In fact, later in the day, they went head-to-head against the Topmade semi-comp team and came out on top I think, which is pretty impressive! Late morning was the div-A mixed races, now were against some real competition. Needed to come in first, or have one of the two fastest second-place finishes in order to go to the A-championship. We managed first, though the time-sheet showed it to be our slowest race. But everyone else in that race seemed to do slower than before too. Still, competitors who were also advancing to the A-championship were excited to see our slower time. Again shortly after lunch it was the mens race, and though we had a good warm up, we were still running down to the docks as we often seem to. I'd been appointed co-captain of the mens, and it was actually kindof fun shouting out the roster as we were hurrying down the docks to the boat. Once more though, we were beat out by the other stronger mens teams. Oh well, I already have the full set of bronze, silver, and gold medals for calgary mens division, it felt like a good race and that's important. With all the warming up, marshalling, and racing, had to miss some of the other teams final races, even though several friends were among the other topmade teams.

Div-A championship was (almost) the final race of the day, and boy was it a good race. In the end, there was only about 4 seconds between first and sixth place, see one of sheldon's photos. We didn't win, but it was still great! Guardian was first, and HSBC was 0.1 seconds ahead of us. Not only was it one of the most exciting races, it was the most exciting minute-after-the-race too! There was some sort of Karma, some cosmic forces at work, as we crossed the finish line and somehow lost control, swerving to the right and despite checking boat, rammed into the side of the next boat, capsizing it and sending the team into the water. Of all the teams, it had to be Guardian, the team that had split off from our club before this year. The other weird thing is that they were in the boat we own (so obviously we wouldn't intentionally damage our own boat). Wow. So then while we were calling to see if anyone was hurt, one of their guys Russel was in the water throwing a temper tantrum and swearing at us over and over, not giving a damn whether his teammates were hurt. After a bit he started cheering about them having won, still not concerned about his teammates. What a loser, I think if someone acted like that in our club they'd be gone. Anyways, they seemed to be okay, so we returned to dock and let the 'rescue' boats do their work. Thinking and discussing it later though, you gotta wonder, over the years there have been several collisions more severe than this one which haven't come close to capsizing a boat.

Headed up the dock and Marvin was there saying "scott, we need you on the UTS race." Ok, turn around and head back onto the dock. This was the final race of the day, the "oil sands cup". Had to do well in this one for one of our sponsors, and so we did, taking first place again. It was fun, but exhausting. At least I got to switch sides, we've been practicing both sides all season to be able to do both, even though one is usually stronger. My right's still generally stronger, but I had hurt my back a week ago and it hurt less when I paddled left vs right, so that probably evened things out a bit. Surprisingly, after a weekend of paddling, pretty back-intensive, it felt better than it had before the weekend!

Hung around to clean up, and then the awards ceremony. Most people who weren't getting stuff in the ceremony had already cleared off, and the rest seemed to head off pretty quickly after. Some of us went down to inspect the damage to our boat, and hung out on the boat/docks for a while, it was really peaceful feeling. I'd hoped to hang around a while and maybe go out to eat after, despite being exhausted. I remember having done that before. I remember it being dark too, I guess the races and awards ceremony and clean-up were all much later that year than this year. I remember some of us trying to subdue and tie up Byron. I remember finally heading off, and being a little sad to go, and then while at a red light, Charlene pulled up beside me and let me know they were heading to a restaurant in chinatown, so I joined them. I remember Monique almost falling asleep into her congee :) Anyways, those are all years gone by. This year, noone wanted to go out, except me and Arnold, so we were the last of topmade to leave the festival. Had some Y2K, chatted a while and finally headed home sometime after 9:00, and that was pretty much the end of the dragonboat weekend.