It’s hard to say which province or city in Canada (or the world) has the best kept secret of where is the best place to train if you’re heavily into water sports. Living where I am on the south coast of BC (British Columbia) you are able to train year long (if you want to) on the water. However the rest of the province and Canada is buried under snow, so they can not head out to their favourite watering hole for a practice but instead are able to train either at a pool sitting on the deck with paddle in hand or in a true paddling tank.

Over the years I have wished we had one out here for the longest time to help spice up our training, as well who wouldn’t want to be indoors paddle instead of being outdoors being hailed on? (Been there done that, no more thanks). A paddler friend of mine from Montreal told me that I should attend one of their indoor paddling practices anytime I want to head out east.

Now I can say we finally got a paddling tank out west! That’s in one of the 2010 Olympic venues buildings that worked along side with a Rowing and Paddling Centre and they designed a paddling tank inside the building, for their rowers and us paddlers (dragon boaters, outriggers and other canoeists). It’s got a boat structure of an 8 person skull or a 10 man canoe/dragon boat (dragon boat team normally has between 20-26 people).

Thier website did not have much information about this paddling tank and even in the email I got back from them saying no more then 10 people in the room. So there goes my idea of having 10 people in the structure and rest of the team on the edge of the deck.

On Saturday I was offered a chance to be in the first dragon boating paddling clinic being that was put on by my coach, in the clinic there was only five people in it so we got more one and one time in the hour that we had then we would have if we had a full boat of 20 paddlers out on the water doing the expect same thing. More pictures on flickr.

It would be interesting to see how much will be changed in the paddling tank once the Olympics is over. I know they will be putting up the mirrors then and adding a video system but not sure what else. A few of us noticed when we first stepped into the boat structure that there wasn’t anything for our feet to go against and if you weren’t careful there were lag bolts sticking up from the corner of the bottom. Hopefully that gets fixed or looked at.

Now we got to wait until April before they re-open up their doors again to the public.

If I had to rate this venue out of three out of five paddles. As not 100% finished and its more of a rowing tank not a paddling tank but it is something.

Just thought I’d write a quick little post before I head off to the island for a halloween party my best friends brother is hosting.

Have you all have a wonderful and safe Halloween night whatever you plan on doing.

After a week long headache trying to figure out who was attending my annual movie night last Saturday, I gave up guessing and purchased enough food for ten people, should have purchased for the five yeses, reality there was three of us. We did had fun eating everyone’s zombie cookie who wasn’t there.

Wish I had pictures of that but only picture I have is just some of the movies we watched. If there was more of us we were gonna do some games like pin the brain on the zombie and or have a carve pumpkin contest. Instead we just watched movies all night/day long.

So the moral of this, or what I’m taking from this is only invite people who will attend and never trust anyone who says maybe.

Silly as it sounds, it just clicked the other day when I was talking to a long time net friend. That we’ve been friends now for 10 years and it also means its my onlineversary. Even though I got an email account in 1995, I wasn’t really into the interacting with people in chat-rooms and what not until the fall after I graduated high school.

Within the 10 years I’ve been online, there has been a lot of changes. I remember Bolt.com one of the first networking sites out there, to everyone having a site(s) on geocites, to if you weren’t hosted by someone/had your own domain you were looked down a upon. Even the battle of who’s browser is better internet explore vs netscape (at the time) now internet explore is against firefox, safari, chrome, opera etc. One thing I don’t miss is the ever so many webrings, tagboards and annoying pop ups on peoples sites.

I still think its neat that I’m still use two of my original screen names/email accounts from 1999.. They are now used mostly for my long time friends/family on chat and to collect all my junk email. All my paddlinggeek screen names have everyone else I talk to on chat.

How many screen names have you gone though before you found the perfect one?
Do you still use any of them?

So my Halloween movie night/party is tomorrow night, and yet I still don’t really have a head count on how many people are coming. Sent out 15 invites and got five replies back, the other ten waited until I called them their replies were they might be there. A “might” sounds like I’ll come if nothing else pops up.

Is it me or people these days just rude? I’m sorry but if someone is taking the time to plan/host an event, make handmade invitations (that were snail mailed) wouldn’t it be curtness to reply back with an answer then not at all? Both VancityBuzz and Duane think that our generation has that attitude of I’ll show up to your party, if you got something I want …. aka free beer and free wifi. Instead of going because its your friend who’s hosting it.

One of my best friends mentioned to me last night “If someone don’t reply back/said yes but never show then they get put on the do not invite list”. I think I’m gonna start falling that rule as its a good rule to go by. Why should you end up in tears over them being rude. I also think I need some new friends.

What do you do when you got people who don’t rsvp?

Odd! I had this post set for Tuesday the 13th but just noticed it didn’t publish. So here it is..

My thanksgiving was filled with outrigger and spending time with the family and friends. On Saturday instead of the normal dragon boat practice, we opted to take out the 6man outrigger instead since not that many people wanted to paddle on the long weekend. The lake did not look choppy/white cap-ish but there were pockets were we paddled though were I just felt like I was gonna be seasick if we stopped paddling. Later that night we had our family thanksgiving dinner, the food was amazing there was barely any leftovers. The picture above is the pumpkin cheesecake that my cousins girlfriend made.

Sunday I helped out at a Outrigger regatta as one of their timers. It was great fun but for the fact it was freezing cold all day long. I was wearing two of my hoodies and I was still cold. And on holiday Monday my Mom and I headed over to my best friends for her vegetarian thanksgiving dinner.

Now only a month and a bit until I’m state side for US thanksgiving dinner.

For you Canadians, How was your thanksgiving?
Whats the one thing you look forward to on Thanksgiving?

Happy October everyone,

Not sure about you but autumn finally arrived to Vancouver on Tuesday by having a major rain storm. Thankfully out where I am, I did not see the same amount of rain compared to the people who live/work in the downtown core. The picture below was taken when I went out for my mid day walk, thankfully it wasn’t raining to hard at that point.

With the wacky winter and long heatwave summer that we’ve had, I’m really curious what autumn has planned for us this year. Thankfully I was able to winterize my garden last week before the rain came and made a family classic beef stew with the potatoes and carrots we had in the garden.

I’m looking forward to when the leafs on the trees start turning colours and and falling. But I’m not looking forward to raking up the fallen leafs.

How has your autumn been so far?

Sidenote: Just re-added my halloween related smilies to the comment section

Over the weekend at my last dragon boat festival of the season, my mom (who came up to be support) noticed one of the booths was selling the brand of paddles that I’ve been eying since early spring. On Saturday after my races, I came back to the room and noticed there was a Kialoa paddle lying across the bed, It didn’t click until I saw the paddle why my mom was asking what length of paddle I wanted if I got a new one. But boy did she surprise me. One of the reasons why I was drawn to the paddle was it’s t-grip and how comfy it felt.

For those that remember this paddle is replacing the Apex paddle that broke in half back in July. I only owned the apex for 9 or so months, oh well shit happens.. Its gonna be wall art once I get it fixed. I was told this will be part of my christmas present so now I have to act surprised on christmas morning when she puts a bow on it.

When I was surfing around on the net looking up information for when I get my next paddle, I noticed there are 27 different dragon boat paddle brands that are approved by the International Dragon Boat Federation (IDBF). Which got me thinking about how it would be a neat challenge to try them all out. Not do it as a one paddle, one day kind of trial but do it over a season or even half a season to find out how does the paddle handle in our year long weather conditions, and our different water/wind conditions, does it matter what boat your in/where your sitting, is it to heavy or light (can it cause damage to the body) all that good information.

Since I now own four different dragon boat paddle brands, I’m debating if I want to start writing reviews on paddling equipment (paddles, pfds etc), Though I’m not looking forward to seeing how much its gonna cost me.

Do you or would you write a review cause you love the product or for the money?

After @guapomole posted this youtube video (below) on twitter, I started thinking that I should kept with skateboarding instead of giving it up as a preteen. Also got me thinking about this year’s dry-land training routine since my 15th dragon boating season almost coming to an end in a few days.

I’m thinking about take up land paddling (a long board with a kahuna big stick) as my cross trainer this off season instead 6man outrigger, I’m looking forward not having to travel an hour to/from get to practice especially on those crappy nights.

It may not be the correct stroke that I do but from the videos I’ve been looking at, you can get a lot of good top arm drive, the whole body gets a workout and just think about the balance one can get from that too. Using this and my other core exercises would for sure help strengthen my core muscles that I lost due to the surgery I had back in April.

I want to be on the A boat next year, which means there is a lot of work a head of me to do.

What do you do the spice up your exercise routine?
Would you use a sport to strengthen another sport?

Why does everything have to happen today?

Back in June I noticed Purdue’s football schedule and they were playing against Oregon so the thought about dragging one of my friends to come with me and do a mini road trip after practice in the morning. Days later I got invited to a family friends wedding and got asked if I could join a team and race with them in Portland. By this time I was thinking what else could happen could on September 12th and how would I be able to clone myself.

By the end of the summer YVRTwestival was announced to be having a function the same time as everything else. If either the wedding or the twestival event were at different times of the day I could have seen myself take part in both but I can’t. Poor Aidan is upset that I can’t go with her

Today is gonna be a busy one, I’m just about to head to practice, then race off to the wedding then watching the football game via the internet when I get back home since the game isn’t being aired near me Right now I’m not willing to pay $30 more bucks to get a channel that might air a few of their games per season.

Sure I’d love to be watching the game live and or be racing this weekend (hoping for bling) and or even mingling with fellow twitters but I’m helping out at the wedding so I can’t really miss it.

How was/is your Saturday?