More dragonboat... no more dragonboat

After coming back from my trip monday night, immediately got wrapped up in dragonboat again. Practice on tues/thurs night and away to kelowna friday night. Barely got to see my brother since he was out wed night and was leaving before I came back from kelowna. So even though I really needed to catch up on sleep after my trip, I still stayed up late and kept getting below-average amounts of sleep. Then finished it off with a dragonboat out of town festival, I'm barely awake now.

Thurs practice, last of the season... wanted to take the boat back after, one last little bit on the reservoir with the setting sun, you know that's my kind of thing... but for one of the few times in the whole season, there were other people who actually wanted to take the boat back so they did it instead. Oh well. I found those couple were acting a little strange all week actually, but I'm probably just letting my imagination get away again.

Got a ride out to Kelowna... our driver was "fun", which had the girls kindof freaked out but I thought it was kindof cool. Though perhaps it's smarter to be nervous about passing trucks and going round corners at those crazy speeds in the mountains. The loud exhaust is cool for a while but gets tiresome for long trips. But, the people were pretty fun, and the music was mostly good. Arrived about 11:30 pm pacific time, went to the lounge for some people to have drinks, then hung out with people playing poker until who knows what time.

Don't know if it's cause of the beds, or cause I was so tired, or cause of the other person, but I was barely even aware of sleeping beside someone, whereas normally I end up not sleeping too well. He did snore a little but not enough to keep me up.

Saturday headed down to race site, hung around a while then realised our race was imminent and with no stretching or prep we had to rush to starting line and roster on-the-fly as we jumped in the boat. Reminds me of the good old days of Topmade in Kelowna! Only had 18 paddlers but only missed 1st by 0.02 seconds.

Had lunch at a nearby restaurant, but not the usual Earls that we normally end up going to. Actually didn't walk down that way at all the whole weekend, kindof sad.

Warm up for afternoon race, Jeff lead using a cantonese accent (yeah chinese can do chinese accent). Can't describe it, it was hilarious, was more of an ab workout from laughing than a stretching session, the whole team was cracking up. Raced against pacific reach 2, were beside them and would have had a good fight for first but a novice team steered into us about 150m in. Tried paddling through it but the boat was almost capsizing (BUK boats have much lower gunnel than Dynasty) and we had to quit. It hit right where I would have been sitting if we hadn't switched sides on the way out to the start line. So our Sistership guest lost her paddle and beheaded the other boat. But at least everyone was okay. Instead of reracing it, they DQ'd the team that hit us, and moved us to a different race. Unfortunately were back in the 6-16 boats, and didn't even have a fighting chance for first place vs the best team of the weekend. Our second place got us into Diamond division (below Platinum).

Many people were going for winery tours in the evening, and though I wasn't interested in the wineries, of course I was interested in being with the people. Drove by Pandosy Inn and reminisced with Arnold. Not much to see at the first winery, so a few of us fell asleep in lounge chairs outside. I woke up as someone put something in my mouth, but just said "What the hell?!!" with a pissed off look as I took it out. My imagination somehow figured it was a coin, but it was actually a chocolate, so it wasn't too bad. Meanwhile, they were doing the same thing to Arnold of course (like at every festival it seems, now I know how he feels) and also as expected he didn't wake up. They did some chest knuckle thing to wake him up, not sure what that's all about. At the second winery, tasted a little bit of a few as others were tasting them. Of course they all tasted disgusting in my opinion, except an ice wine which was bearable.

Japanese restaurant was ok, pretty expensive. Most of the team was there, but of course not the 'prodigies' (yeah I know that's from the old topmade team but there's such a resemblance). Arnold tried to sneak wasabi into someone's green tea ice cream. Just back to the hotel afterwards. Visited my favorites for a bit till they went to bed and kicked me out, then visited the women's poker game and the men's poker game (which was now in my room... oh yeah, our room got switched and they moved our stuff cause a pipe or something broke in our old room.. at least no damage to our stuff.) Went to bed/sleep ~1:30 despite the game and noise, don't think it lasted much longer.

Probably the first one up in the morning, got ready and packed cause I thought we were going to a real restaurant for breakfast. But others didn't get up. And the restaurant was closed anyways. So hung with the couple other early risers. Made it to race site not too long after we were supposed to meet there, were the first ones on site besides Charlene who had flown in and was probably wondering where everyone was. Others arrived soon after, except the prodigies who were another hour, but it didn't matter anyways cause it was windy and the races got delayed over an hour. Then they started, but changed them to 250m, going the opposite direction, and staggering the running starts. Didn't catch up the schedule at all. We did well enough in our race to make it to the final rather than consolation.

Lots of waiting around bored, couldn't go wander off really cause who knows what would happen with the schedule. Hung out with Andrew a while. Saw someone with a golf club, and saw a toilet paper roll on the grass for some reason, I made a joking suggestion and soon enough he was there and it was flying through the air leaving a trailing stream of toilet paper! So juvenile, so fun. He cleaned it up so as not to be too irresponsible.

The festival did all the womens races, but things were so far behind, they canceled all six mixed consolation races. Then weather got worse and noone could race, so they canceled four of the mixed finals with the remaining two as maybe. The weather eventually cleared up, and Diamond A and Platinum A got to race, even let us do regular 500m. We came 5th in our division, putting us 17th overall, but everyone was close together and deserved to be racing each other. Watched the Platinum A final, it was great, most teams were pretty much side by side through most of the race, then about 75m from the finish line, River city dragons (from Winnipeg) (the team that kicked our ass saturday) finally decided to start trying, and shot out 3/4 boat length ahead before reaching the finish line! It was amazing to see, it was like they were just toying with the other teams, letting them think they had a chance.

Our second team had already taken off when their gold division final was canceled, so those of us still there quickly packed up. Many left before I could say bye. Back to the hotel for a quick shower in the pool area, and on the road again back to Calgary. Back to crazy speeds. I fell asleep pretty quick, and once again I got abused because of it. I awoke to the sound of one girl scream while the other shouted "OH MY GOD!!!" while we lurched forwards as the brakes were slammed, with my vision filled by the bright light inside the car. As you'd expect, I didn't scream or anything, but my hand went up to brace and apparently my eyes were pretty wide. A couple seconds later I realised there had been no impact, and I looked sideways and saw a camera pointed at me, and knew what was going on. Actually, it's kindof unfortunate that they messed up with the camera and failed to get a photo of me, I would have liked to see my reaction, it must have been pretty funny cause everyone was laughing hysterically (except me who was still kindof stunned). Honestly though, I didn't really feel scared during those moments. I felt that the car was going to be smashed, but I didn't anticipate harm or pain. Maybe there just wasn't time.

Three cars of the convoy had dinner together in Revelstoke. Interesting to observe the seating choices. Everyone got to share stories a bit more, then back on the road. The high speeds near Golden were too much for one passenger, so our driver slowed down and took it easy for the rest of the trip. After passing us our convoy even phoned to check things were okay. Got back into Calgary around 3 AM, I took someone home before crawling into my own bed around 3:30 am. So much for catching up on any sleep.

But with dragonboat over, so it feels that the summer is too. Farewell my friend till next year.