winter boat parade, or christmas as we know it in long beach

i, along with a bunch of space dragons, decorated a dragonboat with lights and a festive banner for the naples christmas boat parade in mid december. whoohoo! the only thing missing from these pictures is the never-ending song (feliz navidad), and the bikini-clad girls who paddled around us on their paddle boards. equipped with beer can holders and all!

end of space dragons 2009 dragonboat season

it's friday night, 3:18am, and i'm not asleep yet! not having practice at 7:30 the next morning is really making me feel like i can just stay up all night. this isn't going to be good for tomorrow...

the race last weekend was awesome. once again, ripple showed us a good time, and we almost-but-not-quite medalled. that's ok, we definitely rose to meet the competition.

this was also the first time this season that i've called a race! so i shamelessly stole this picture from the official sf dragonboat festival gallery, and share it here. blame davin, he's the one who told me about it.



goooo white boat!

other highlights:
- missing diana lui but dancing with mike, toliver, aditya and jill at the dropbox 2 million user mega party (trapeze artist! skanky cage dancers!)
- seeing jerome for the first time in years
- getting to women's finals
- ripple food (congee for breakfast sat morning? hell yeah)
- ripple pimp-wagon
- almost missing last red race >.<
- everyone telling me about the awesome tomatoes at the paddler's party
- 13 pullups
- getting super toned from running around all weekend and not eating enough
- cozy night in with mel watching breakin'
- clear view of the golden gate bridge
- lunch w/ angela, sophia, denise, matt and andy (random!!)
- constantly falling asleep at work

take that, rewind it back

Remember how last week I tried to climb without stressing too much before the race while still getting my endurance workout in? I just jotted some stuff down afterwards while I was at YVR waiting for Tina:

A small success: 2 long traverses and some overhung stuff. I suppose it should be 'long', though, because my traverses are pretty sad! I have to improve my endurance to the point where I can make it around the gym on a single traverse. This time, I only made it about a 6th of the way, and I can only blame so much on people being in the way!

This weekend, the team's in Vancouver, competing at Rio Tinto Alcan, our biggest dragonboat race yet! This is where we find out exactly how we measure up against the best teams on the west coast. It's exciting, but I'm slightly apprehensive as far as my personal performance goes. I haven't really had time to train as much as I'd like. I've only been to 2 practices after falling off my bike and before that, only 4 or so after the cast came off! And it definitely feels like I haven't had a chance to get back into paddling form. All that means though, is that this weekend, it has to be mind over body! I can't let myself get tired in any of the races.

edit: pic of the men's boat after their first race on Saturday!