Oooooh man, what a weekend! 😀 The 11th and 12th were the Dragon Boating Festival and for the first time I was a part of it. I can’t wait for next year!
Lemme tell ya, dragon boaters are their own special breed, lol. They work hard and they party harder – which is sweeeeet!
Both sat and sun KL and I (well, our whole team as well as other teams) had to be at the Paddler’s Village way early in the morning, on sat we were there at 7:30am and sun we got to sleep in and didn’t have to be there until 8:15am, oooooh, soooo late! 😉 hehe. We were there until 4:30pm or so on the sat, we could have stayed later cause the races weren’t all done for the day but we were finished with our races and we wanted to come chill at my place (she stayed the night), sunday we didn’t leave till after the paddler’s party in the evening so I got home about 12:45am…a looooong day! 😛
Keeping in mind this was our teams first time racing and we had only practiced together as a team 4 times so don’t expect this post to be a story of how we won a medal, lol, cause we so didn’t! We came in 88th out of 100 teams – my competitive side wants to say that totally blows and how embarassing but the realistic side of me says we could have done worse and hey, we were the least trained team there so at least we beat some teams! 😀
I’ve never been involved in a competitive sport like this before, where you go and compete against other teams from around the world and when you’re not on the water competing every team is friendly with each other because it’s this small community, shrug, it was weird but nice. Heck, even when on the water the teams are friendly towards each other, well, before and after the actual race, during the race you’re so focused on your boat you don’t even have time to look at the other boats let alone think of them. lol.
The weather on sat was cloudy but warm, the sun didn’t really come out until a bit before our second race, so around 2pm or so? I put sun screen on but sadly, I missed a couple spots near my hairline and just above my eyebrows so I got burned, sigh. That wouldn’t be sooooo bad but sunday was bright and sunny but coolish (figures! lol) and even though I had sunscreen slathered on all frickin day I burned! Totally ended up with racoon eyes, ow! What’s worse of all though is my freckles are darker, grr! I tried to be careful with my arms cause our team shirts had regular t-shirt length sleeves so I didn’t want part of my arms to be darker then the rest (by darker I of course mean the freckles are darker, not the actual skin, once the red fades from a burn it goes back to it’s normal uber pale colour). I almost managed it…almost…today I noticed in the mirror that the freckles below the sleeve line are darker, sigh, but hopefully if I keep them covered the rest of the summer they will go pale again quickly. Man I hate the sun. *rolls eyes*
Sunday night was the Paddler’s Party in the beer gardens, the ticket covered the price of 2 beers so everyone was drinking! Even though the beers were $5 each that didn’t stop people from goin crazeeee, oh, there was wine as well but nobody was drinking that, lol. So the beer was flowing, people are yapping away, then the bongs came out, yup, bongs. Two seperate teams brought them, one was a standard looking bong, the other had 3 spouts so 3 people at one time could chug – I’ve never seen that before, quite the contraption. 😛 I did not do the bong, it’s not my thing and besides, I was only drinking a tiny bit since I was gonna hafta drive later, lame but oh well, KL however was not driving later and she was already quite drunk by the time the bongs were pulled out so she decided she wanted to do one. lol. I of course, being the good friend that I am, took pictures that I am going to post on facebook. teehee.
Everyone had a killer time at the party, and sure, part of that was the beer, but a big part was just the comraderie of a group of people who may be completely different from each other in all kinds of ways but they have one awesome thing in common and that has brought them together for a weekend of fun. 😀
I woke up this morning feeling like death and all I wanted to do was sleep some more, lol, 4 races in 2 days is a lot for muscles that aren’t that used to it yet – plus the dancing at the party used all kinds of muscles cause lemme say, the dancing was not the tame kind at all! Oh yea, the party had a dj, sorry, forgot to mention that. Plus, my throat was way sore from all the yelling etc but it was all worth it and I’d do it again in a heartbeat! I’ll actually be doing it all again, but on a smaller scale, in about 10 weeks, yah! 😀
My food was not all that great this weekend – it started off ok and then tanked. KL is a great friend but a horrible food influence, sigh. Sat I had oatmeal for breakfast, but after that KL and I ended up at a pancake breakfast fundraiser (a team is trying to get the funds to go to a race in San Francisco) so I ate 3 pancakes, I didn’t really have lunch but I did snack on some grapes and had a small soft serve ice cream cone in a waffle cone with a half sized flake chocolate stuck in it – yum! I drank water all day so that’s all good at least. Now that may not seem so bad but after we left the racing area we decided to get dinner and neither of us had the energy to cook so we ordered food from White Spot, man I love that restaurant. I got a bbq burger with cheese, it came with yam fries, coleslaw and a root beer. Oh my. Then Sunday, started off with a Hearty Medley’s, I resisted the pancakes but we ate lunch on Sunday at the village and sadly, there were no healthy options, shrug. I did my best, got a wrap with taco style ground beef in it, lettuce, grilled veggies, salsa, little bit of shredded cheese and sour cream – way delish! Then later an even smaller ice cream then the day before, um, a bunch of beer, and then when trying to minimize the effects of the beer 2 apricots, a peach, a granola bar, a heck of a lot of water…and then KL and I (again) bought dinner, we went to this place she swears has the best burgers in the world, and it’s true, they are awesome but oh man, two burgers in two days? My tummy may never forgive me for this, *shakes head*. It was huuuuuge! And had crispy onion strings on it and cheese, oy, oh and of course it came with fries! lol. I couldn’t finish the burger but I ate almost all of it and had some of the fries, sigh. Way tasty but I told her it was so bad for me (the whole menu is horrible, it’s the only menu I’ve seen that doesn’t even attempt to have something healthy on it!) I would only eat there at most 2 times a year – cause, dude, that just so doesn’t fit in to my points! lol.
Today I was back to basics. I didn’t exercise due to scheduling issues but I am at 19.5 points for the day and not even tempted to snack on something to eat that extra half point – I think I may still be digesting from last nights dinner! hehe.
I’ll be hiking for sure tomorrow and then going to acting class in the evening – wednesday I will be driving to Alberta so no exercise that day and who knows what will happen food wise – I am hoping I’ll manage to eat fairly healthy cause I hafta be super good this week to make up for the weekend, *scared face* I finally managed to lose that weight I managed to put on when I was in Alberta over Easter (and just after Easter) and what do I do? I eat like a maniac over the course of 2 days and probably gained it all back. sigh.
The weekend was such a great time – who would have thought I’d enjoy it so much? Looks like I am becoming an active person after all…if that can happen, well, anything can! 😛
The Amazing Shrinking Woman 
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