Stories from the festival

Overall weekend was ok. Fun like all festivals, but busy, and weather was unpleasant, and we were consistently a fraction of a second behind where we needed to be. I did some steering along with the regular paddling.

Though there were many around, I realized afterwards I hardly spent any time chatting with some friends during the days. Though it was like that last year too, despite the extra free time and nice weather, as different people have different preferred activities between races.

Friday had the oil sands cup. We arrived and had plenty of time to set up the tent before the race, cause everything was already behind schedule cause of the silly starting block. Things looked neat though cause of the unusual (evening) angle of the sun. Out on the water, first experience with the starting block wasn't great, our steers "had trouble getting it in, so I had to pull out, and try again." Completed the first race and advanced to the second, completed it and were advancing to third, then discovered the third race was canceled for time, so we were disappointingly left with our second place finish, a fraction of a second too slow.

Had some steers and drummers meetings, by the time those were all done it was too late to go to globalfest fireworks, so some of us went to dinner. Did some good old fashioned chinatown sidewalk driving to try to grab a good parking spot (I first remember Arnold doing that actually, some years ago). Dinner was satisfying and renewed my faith in U&Me. I was substitute Sheldon and cleaned up.

Sat morning went down early, but was still slightly later than I should be. Then ran into a friend going the other way and walked with her and was more late, though it of course didn't matter. Paddled for my team, got the fastest 200m time of the festival (outside the national competition). Sometime steered for little dragons too, were in lane 7 beyond the race course so it was actually probably easier getting us set up. I found that drawing+prying was well over twice as effective as drawing alone. Second time paddling, fraction of a second behind Guardian. But overall we'd still be number 1 qualifier regardless of which method they chose. They changed the rules to use each team's best time instead of combined time, since so many teams spun out and would have had crappy combined times. Guess it's more fair that way. There was the mens race, we were second behind "team miscellaneous" as I called them. Finally there was the 1000m exhibition races. They said they were going to start slowest first, fastest last (to maximize opportunities for passing and collisions?), but they didn't (or perhaps because we were called "Topmade 1" instead of our regular name), so we started third. As we reached the turn, we had passed one team and were passing the other team. They actually admitted afterwards to pushing their turn a bit late in order to mess up our turn a bit. My comment afterwards: "Why fight against the inevitable?" We passed them as soon as we came out of the turn, and proceeded through open waters to the finish line. Had the fastest time for the 1000m races.

Was again among the last people leaving race site, and this time we went to Japanese for dinner. Ran into a few other people I know there. Started feeling a little nervous about steering. Of us five novice steers, two had spun out, and another did fine but was too stressed about it to steer again. It felt kindof like it was the Reservoir vs topmade novice steers, and the reservoir seemed to be winning!

Sunday again super early, again happened to walk with the same friend to race site. I like that parking area. Had 3 hours to wait before it was time to race. And while saturday had been a bit chilly, sunday was miserably cold and began to drizzle all day. At least I brought a lot of changes of clothing. In the morning, hung out with a fellow steers by the staging area cause some teams were in need of substitute steers. I almost got to drum a race while my fellow steered! But when they first called me to do it, I was nervous and said so and kindof backed off, then when I realized it would be really neat to be up front for once, and would probably never have that opportunity again, it was too late as a different team grabbed me to steer for them. Oh well. They were really impressed that I was asking them what their starts were and was going to echo their drummer and stuff (stuff I assumed every steers would do but apparently their saturday steers subs hadn't). They were like "Yesterday we had some guy who'd only done one race before and didn't really know what he was doing and spun us out..." and I was thinking 'should I tell them I've only really done one race before too? Nah!" Raced and got second (team my fellow was steering for got 1st though, grr, and again later in the when we both steered in the same race). Later they ended up getting bronze in div C. But I was too busy to steer them in that race. Later I steered for Really Ridiculously Good Looking Dragons (I guess that made me a really ridiculously good looking steersperson). People started converting large black garbage bags to rain poncho-vests. I had brought a whole bunch and was donating them to everyone, and wore one myself. Later on when the rain was a bit heavier I sported a white plastic bag on my head, and was no longer good looking enough to steer for them. (I had donated my touque to another teammate... I had only just put it on and realised what a big difference it made when she saw it and asked to borrow it!) But I still steered the parents team. During the semi final race I paddled in, we took a second place. To get to the Div A final you had to win one of the four semi finals or be one of the two fastest second places. We ended up being the third fastest second place, by a fraction of a second (though still almost 3 seconds faster than the #1 team in the previous semi final who did get to go to the div A final). Really disappointing, I really really wanted to be in the Div A final race like in lethbridge and vernon, even if we got spanked once we were there.

After a race, someone was shivering almost too much to talk. Was going to kick his butt (cause I knew he'd be stubborn) and make him change into some warmer dry clothes I had. But he disappeared too quick, and next time I saw him it was too late and he was shivering uncontrollably. People had him wrapped in blankets which is a loving act but unfortunately a pretty useless act as he was still wearing all the wet clothes. But everyone wants to help of course, which ends up as "too many chefs in the kitchen". I'd think with all the "outdoorsy" people within the teams though, we would have had a better response to the situation, but it can be a big step from knowing stuff to using that knowledge. Eventually paramedics arrived and took over.

While staging on shore for our consolation race, NAVY was singing away. They seem pretty fun, they like to sing and they have a whole repertoire of songs. We had nothing. Don't know who started it, but soon our team was all singing "Row Row Row your boat, gently down the stream!" to the cheering and applause of the others. Then someone got patriotic and soon all the staging teams were singing O Canada together. It was perhaps the funnest "staging" ever :) Unfortunately in the race, as was our theme, we ended up a fraction of a second behind NAVY. We should have had that one, we were much faster than them in the semi finals. Oh well. Interestingly, for the Div A final, it was the two second-place-in-semi-finals teams that took first and second in the final.

The sun came out for the final couple races of the day, it was so nice after spending a good portion of the day shivering. Mens race came after the Div A final for some reason, we took second to team miscellaneous. There were only two teams participating at that point, so we got a silver medal. As homer says, "Default? Woo-hoo! The two sweetest words in the english language: De fault! De fault! De fault!" The festival really splurged this year and printed the year on the medals! Most of us immediately scratched at it to see if it was a sticker, but it was actually engraved in! Was chatting with Andrew at the end of the day (still the guy I miss paddling with most from the old Topmade group) and we figure someone's still sleeping in piles of cash. He heard they spent $82000 on the starting block.

Stuck around to clean up. Eventually mostly finished and most people were gone. But, we discovered a couple flats of yogurt sitting in the field! Mmmm, field yogurt. It was still there a little while later, and it had been cool enough all day, a few of us decided to scavenge them! Some teammates thought we were crazy to take and eat food we found sitting around in a field. Four of us left with about 16 yogurts each.

Was recruiting people to go for dinner again. A couple teammates hanging around the beer gardens, a few running around and said they'd be right back. After Andrew left, I realized I couldn't see any teammates anymore. Waited a while, then searched the site, but once it started raining again I decided to leave. I was sufficiently worn down by the end of the weekend that I was primed to feel really upset about getting ditched. But I'm proud that instead of just feeling crappy about it, I took steps to fix it, and decided to search a restaurant someone suggested when I requested vietnamese (that's right, this weekend had the three major food groups: chinese japanese and vietnamese :P) and then would the cell number I've had memorized for years. Saw someone's car at the restaurant and saw someone else arriving, so it was the right place. Had a good time though the wall I put between me and exhaustion had crumbled. Remind me I owe someone money. Stayed there laughing and swapping stories till the restaurant kicked us out. Home, felt so good to have a shower and go to sleep.