Tag Archives: gold medal

Dragon Boat Video

7 Aug

Okay, hopefully this works, here is a video of my teams second, third and fourth race at the Harrison Dragon Boat Festival from a couple weeks ago. 🙂

Just in case anyone was interested lol

Quick Note: I tried clicking on the link once it was in my post and it gave a message to watch the video on YouTube so there is a link on the screen that will take you to the video on YouTube. No big deal but for some reason when I do that it plays the video suuuuper slow and the picture is out of sync with the audio. Hmm. That could very well be my computer doing that so it may play well for you but if it doesn’t than I apologize, I don’t know why it is acting wonky. 😦

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Harrison Dragon Boat Race Festival July 25, 2015

29 Jul

This past Saturday was the Harrison Dragon Boat Festival, held at (in case you didn’t guess) Harrison Hot Springs. The race is held on a beautiful lake. This means clean, heavy, choppy, water – it’s pretty much awesome. 🙂

2015-07-26 12.00.59There are four races in a day, which is average for festivals. The day and most of the night prior it was raining and not cold exactly but not warm, ya know, cause of getting drenched every time you went outside on account of the rain so we all prepared for a rainy race day but lucky for us when we woke up it was overcast and windy but not raining, yay! 🙂

The paddler’s village is on the beach so we all lugged the stuff we would need for the day the whole 5 minute walk from the motel to our team’s tent and settled in for a day of awesome.

Our first race started fairly normal, the teams lined up, madam caller gave us the mark to go and boom! We are off! Then all of a sudden we weren’t because another team rammed their boat in to ours! Fyi, this is not normally a contact sport so yeah, not cool.

Since the team that hit us never came over to apologize we don’t know for sure why it happened, I am going on the assumption it was an accident since there was no reason for them to do it on purpose.

Let me set the scene for what happens when dragon boats collide…the boat with the most momentum tends to go over / into the second boat so the dragon head and part of the boat actually ends up inside the other boat. Since there are people in the way this generally means the dragon head hits or goes over top of a paddler, or two, or three…and sometimes hands and paddles get squished between the boats. Sometimes boats tip, sometimes they don’t, there are a lot of factors that decide that.

Here is a video of multiple dragon boat crashes, you can see how there are a lot of different reasons for boats to flip. Just ignore the propaganda type text that is talking about dragon boating lol oh, and no, none of the crashes shown are our crash, I don’t think it got caught on video which is too bad really, it’d be fun to see!

So yeah, we got hit, at first we kept paddling but we got the call from the water marshal to stop so we did, then once the boats were no longer connected we were told to keep going so we are hmm, maybe halfway through the race and have to start from a dead stop while the other teams had kept going (well, except for the boat that hit us). Basically we just dug in and gave it everything we had and then some to stay in the game. It is amazing how motivation and adrenaline can help boost you lol For that race we ended up coming in second place, I know right?! You’d of thought we’d be last but nope, second. 🙂

The water referee saw the collision and recommended we file a complaint with the officials so we did and they took 6 seconds off our finish time. That kept us in second place finish for the race but that’s ok, it’s still a good finish, especially considering the collision!

The remaining three races seem a bit anti-climatic compared to the first, no more collisions, no more drama, just normal racing. We placed first in races two and three which put us in to the medal round for Division A Rec which is awesome and terrifying all at once.

Part of me was all “how’d we get in to A Division? We’ll never medal in A Division, dammit, why aren’t we in B Division?” but I think that was just my nerves talking. I know how we got in to A Division, we earned it, and we were going to show everyone there we earned a spot in that medal race by kicking ass! 😉

There was a bit of nerves, a lot of encouragement being shared amongst the team, reminders that we know what we are doing and we’ve been doing great all day so just keep it up then before you know it we are lining up for the race and there is no more time for nerves, no more time for doubt, no more time for anything but focus, determination and control. Relying on training and technique and muscle memory, relying on our steersperson to keep us safe, relying on our caller to keep us motivated and in the game, relying on ourselves and our teammates to get us to victory!

So how did that race go you ask? Oh you know, fairly well, we only came away with the GOLD MEDAL!!!

The Twisted Hips Won Gold!

The Twisted Hips Won Gold!

You can see me over to the right wearing the black baseball cap. 🙂

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After the festival was over we all went back to the motel, we were in a bunch of suites but congregated in one as it was the biggest. All the normal things happened after that, people showered and changed, we all kept our medals on, went for dinner at a local pub, got congratulated by random strangers (fellow dragon boaters and non-dragon boaters) as we walked through the town, then we ended up back at the motel to celebrate (aka drink and revel in our victory lol) 🙂

The next day those of us that stayed overnight (which was most of us) went for brunch where I had the most amazing omelette ever, Mmm! and we slowly started to drift back to our vehicles. We all car pooled to some degree so don’t go thinking 22 people all drove up there individually! 😛 You could tell that nobody wanted to leave even as we were all saying how we should leave because the goodbyes kept being drawn out, excuses were found to take pictures, people lingered for ages until finally we all went our own way. You’d think we were never seeing each other again or something when in reality it was Sunday and we were going to see each other at practice on Tuesday lol

Our last race weekend group selfie…

Some of my awesome team!

Some of my awesome team!

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Rio Tinto Alcan 2015

23 Jun

June 20th & 21st were the days of the Rio Tinto Alcan Dragon Boat festival. Technically the festival started June 19th with the dotting of the dragon eyes ceremony but I never go to that so for me the festival started June 20th…that is this past Saturday for those of you not near a calendar lol This festival is the largest Dragon Boat Festival in North America, it is actually the largest outside of China, it is massive. This year there were over 100,000 people there and the competition was fierce!

Let me just say this weekend was beyond awesome! 😀

Both days were sunny and gorgeous and busy and I loved ohhhh I’d say every minute of it!…well, maybe not the early rising part cause I hate mornings but once I was up definitely every minute.

I was racing with two teams this year. My team, The Twisted Hips which is a mixed team…that means we have both men and women on the boat. The second team was Concord Flying Dragons, they are a ladies team that a friend of mine is close with, they needed a couple extra ladies so I got asked and of course said yes, who wouldn’t want more chances to race?

Both teams won medals, wOOt! wOOt! which means I came away with a Gold and a Bronze! Oh yeeeah! 😀

My bronze and my gold medals.

My bronze and my gold medals.

Aren’t they such a pretty addition to my collection? Love em! 😀

The Twisted Hips

The Twisted Hips – we won bronze.

The Flying Dragons

The Flying Dragons – we won gold.

My team!

My team!

This is my team, I’m so proud of each and every one of them! We’ve been training since February, in the cold, the rain, the dark. We come to practice when sick, when we don’t feel like it, when we’re exhausted. We race with injuries, when our lives have a million other demands, in any weather. We fight for our division within the festivals, we earn our medals, we race with determination and heart. 🙂

And I’ll stop with the preachy aren’t-we-awesome stuff now lol 😛

I don’t have a team picture of Concord…yet! I like keeping team pics from each festival so I’ll be making sure to get one eventually.

I took some random pictures during the weekend which I will now bombard you with! teehee

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Okay so there weren’t as many pictures to bombard you with as I thought, I took a lot but I highly doubt you want to watch a series of pictures showing the end of a race or multiples of shots that are near identical lol I don’t have any video footage of our races, if I did rest assured I’d be providing you a link so you could watch lol

For me the festival is all about the races, obviously, but there are a lot of other things happening to keep those in the crowd entertained. There are a large variety of food trucks, with pretty much nothing healthy lol Some of us from The Twisted Hips shared some Beaver Tails which sounds barbaric until you learn they are pastry, deep fried, with toppings put on top. They are oh so yummy! We went with the classic toppings of cinnamon and sugar but you can get a whole bunch of stuff on them. There are also vendor tents for shopping, yay shopping! You can find all kinds of things, dragon boat gear, clothes, jewellery, food and drink samples (I got a delish blueberry yogurt from one tent and a yucky tofu mango drink at another *shudder*) and random other things. There are also tents set up from companies giving away stuff, or with contests you can enter, you know all they really want is your business or to recruit you to their cause or to teach you something but hey, free stuff is enticing so I’ll listen to someone talk about why I should drink tap water over bottled (which I already do lol) if it’ll get me a free item that I will, oddly enough, never ever use, and end up having to throw out at some point when I am decluttering. It’s weird lol but it’s a festival! 😛

Oh! I forgot! We sponsored a team from Portland, which really means we bought them some food and were friendly with them lol They also won a medal so we took a team pic with them. 🙂

Rio Tinto June 20-21 2015 J

I don’t know who took this, a camera ninja obviously! But there I am in marshalling (the waiting area where teams get lined up before going to the boats) in all my dragon boat finery lol

Who took this? lol

Who took this? lol

And lastly, this is me with my dinner which came loooong after we won and celebrated, it was the best burger ever! I’ve probably had better but I was so hungry it sure seemed like the best ever lol 😛

I'm such a lady lol

I’m such a lady lol

So there we have it, it was an awesome weekend I wish didn’t have to end but of course it did, sigh. Filled with friends, and fun, and food and medals! 😀

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Victoria Dragon Boat Festival

19 Aug

Alrighty, so two things…

(1) Sorry for the inconsistency of my posts, I have been having internet difficulties and have been going for days with NO internet! None! It is quite annoying, sigh.  Shaw has replaced the modem so theoretically I should have internet access again without disruptions…we shall see *glances with suspicion towards Shaw*

(2) This post is not going to be about my vacation (no, I’m not done with those posts), I just want to let you know what happened this past weekend, then I’ll get back to my vacation posts – hopefully with a bit more speed than I was posting them before because of ya know, actually having internet access again lol.

On to the fun part! This past weekend I was in Victoria BC dragon boat racing, it is a two day festival, August 16th-17th. I didn’t go with my team (The Twisted Hips), instead I went as a filler for a team called Dragon Hearts Attack. They were short some paddlers and my coach works with that team so she asked if I was interested in racing with them. I had already booked the time off work assuming I would be racing that weekend and since I didn’t have another team I was racing with I said yes. I love the festivals, the competition, the fun of it all and I was bummed that I didn’t have a team to go with so I was really glad this worked out. 🙂

Three of my Twisted Hips teammates were also going to be competing at that festival but for one of the sister teams of the team I was on, they were with Dragon Hearts Burn. Three of us went over on the ferry together Friday night and spent almost all of the weekend together. 🙂

This picture was in the bathroom at the ferry terminal, because apparently people need to be told to not stand on the seats *rolls eyes*

Seriously?

Seriously?

There are two races per team a day at this festival and once you are done your second race on the Saturday you are basically free to do whatever you want…within reason! lol You still have to be able to paddle the next day! 😛

It was our coaches birthday on the Sunday so we all went out for dinner on the Saturday to a Greek restaurant, it was yummy, nothing amazing but not horrible either. Ray got this appetizer that they light on fire, it is cheese, he ordered it because it gets lit on fire which I think is a perfectly valid reason lol

That's the waiter, not my teammate lol

That’s the waiter, not my teammate lol

Here’s what it looks like when it isn’t on fire…

Cheeeeeeese!

Cheeeeeeese!

The restaurant had a belly dancer…

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Who then came over and tried to teach some of our guys how to belly dance…not gonna lie, they weren’t very good lol

It was a funny lesson!

It was a funny lesson!

They then had a dance off which I was too busy laughing through to take pics of, there is a video but I can’t figure out how to get it off facebook and on here so you’ll have to take my word for it that it was freakin hilarious!

Coach got a birthday dessert of baklava, hey c’mon, it’s a Greek restaurant, what did you expect?

A candle in a piece of baklava, classic? ;)

A candle in a piece of baklava, classic? 😉

After the dinner some of the team spent the rest of the night partying and having fun, nothing too wild since we had to be up and in the lobby by 6:30am the next day, ugh.

Races went exceptionally well on the Sunday for my team and we ended winning gold in our division, yay!

Gold! Gold! Gold!

Gold! Gold! Gold!

One of the main sponsors for the festival was Denny’s, hence the name Denny’s on the one side of the medal, I feel I should now get free pancakes for life from them as a congrats lol 😛

The three of us that came over on the ferry together spent the next chunk of time wandering around a small piece of Victoria. We couldn’t go far cause one of us, Kathryn, rolled her ankle coming down The Chief prior to the festival so she was gimped. She was thankfully off the crutches but still limping quite a lot and she had to sit often to rest it. Sucky. She was supposed to race that weekend but wasn’t able to cause of the ankle. 😦

Some of the sights we saw included…

A whale made out of a bush.

A whale made out of a bush.

A fancy hotel covered in ivy.

A fancy hotel covered in ivy.

A woman being a statue, I'm surprised she didn't melt.

A woman being a statue, I’m surprised she didn’t melt.

A statue of Emily Carr that makes her look like an unattractive man...that is a monkey on her shoulder.

A statue of Emily Carr that makes her look like an unattractive man…that is a monkey on her shoulder.

The Netherlands Carillon

The Netherlands Carillon

The Netherlands Carillon was a gift from BC’s Dutch community to honour Canada’s 100th birthday in 1967. Her Majesty Queen Juliana of the Netherlands unveiled the cornerstone of the tower on May 23, 1967. A carillon is a musical instrument with a set of 23 or more bronze bells. This carillon, the largest in Canada, has 62 bells. It is housed at the top of this tower, which stands 27 meters (89 feet) tall. The largest bell in this carillon weighs 1500 kgs. To play the Netherlands Carillon, a musician climbs the 75 steps of the spiral staircase and then a 10-step ladder. There, the carillonneur depresses the keys and pedals of a clavier to play a song on the bells. Carillon bells do not swing like church bells; they ring when struck by clappers connected with wires to the clavier.

We happened to be there when the carillonneur was up there playing, at first it sounded like a song, then it sounded like a child hitting bells at random, then it sounded a bit like a song again lol it is an interesting sound.

Memorial to our courageous dead.

Memorial to our courageous dead.

Parliament building and a pretty fountain.

Parliament building and a pretty fountain.

The harbour - those tent tops and the crowds of people are the dragon boat festival.

The harbour – those tent tops and the crowds of people are the dragon boat festival.

hitchBOT!

hitchBOT!

We came across hitchBOT lounging on the sidewalk! When I first heard about his journey across Canada I so badly wanted to come across him and yay! I actually did! He managed to hitchhike from Halifax to Victoria in three weeks. 🙂 People had written happy messages on him and attached cute little magnets to his chest, magnets of Canadian flags etc, to show where he had been. I’m so glad he made it lol I was kinda worried for him. Here is his website link if you are interested in learning more about him http://www.hitchbot.me

This statue is called The Homecoming and commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Canadian Navy

This statue is called The Homecoming and commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Canadian Navy

This random building that I like the look of lol

This random building that I like the look of lol

So there we go, that is my weekend in a nutshell. 🙂 I would like to go back for 2-3 days as a mini vacation and actually have lots of time to wander and do things. It’s great travelling places when racing but you don’t have a lot of time to play tourist ya know? So I’m thinking maybe next summer going over on my days off and seeing what I can see as well as go off and have some adventures.

Had an awesome time, lots of fun memories and I am so glad I was able to go. 😀

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A Gold Surprise!

12 Jun

Last weekend my team and I competed in a dragon boat race festival, to read about it click here. It is a smaller festival so even though we won gold in our division we didn’t get anything for it, well, except bragging rights lol

Our coach this evening after practice had us all gather around and surprised us with…

Front Side

Front

Back

Back

Gold Medals!

Turns out this year the festival organizers decided to award medals to the winners but medals were awarded Sunday and my team competed Saturday so none of us were there for the medal ceremony. Lucky for us coach was there so she collected the medals on our behalf. None of us had any idea we were getting them so we were all super surprised and of course delighted when we got them tonight. It was like winning twice lol 🙂

I have a video of the final race that one of my teammates uploaded to facebook and am trying to get to embed on here but not sure if it will work…

…aaaaand nope, it didn’t work. sigh. I’ll try again another night.

It was an odd practice tonight, we were all tired for some reason and paddling just seemed harder, ugh, I hate nights like that. 😛 We have a makeup practice this coming Sunday because this past Tuesdays practice was cancelled. I won’t be able to make it to the Sunday practice because I will be at work, boo! There is only one more week until the biggest festival of our season, I can’t believe how fast this season has gone!

 

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