Vancouver | June 22-24

Squad	Division	Place
	Rec C Semi Final	4th (2:18.24)

Funniest face ever?

Is she drinking a lobster?

Hosted by ePower Dragons

On behalf of our team, I wanted to say Hi! and let you know that we're looking forward to meeting the Los Angeles Racing Dragons.

A little bit about us: we're a team of 27 novice paddlers who work in various departments of Pivotal Corporation, a Vancouver software company. This is our first year as a team, and this weekend will be our first dragon boat festival - so we're pretty psyched!

We're having a carb-loading fest at a downtown restaurant this Friday, and we would love for you to join us. Please let me know if anybody on the team is interested, so I can confirm for the reservation

Cheers,

Sarah H.

Hello!

Team LARD: I wanted to send you guys an update on Vancouver - even though i know that Leon will send a more thorough one... He won't be coming back to LA until tuesday and i thought you might be curious about our trip.

Our first race was Saturday, at 8:12am (yuck!). It went very well - we placed 3rd with a time of 2:12. (this was a huge improvement on last year's times of 2:30s). This placed us into a "good" middle lane in an afternoon quarter final race. When we got out for that race, it was quite hectic.

There was a strong wind that was blowing all of the boats into each other and into each other's lanes. We had to approach the starting line multiple times to get setup correctly. The race started strong - but then, we got cut off by another boat and almost got into a collision! (Kudos to little Kenny for keeping us straight the whole time!). Our end time was 2:16 and we finished 5th. This placed us into Recreational Division C semi-finals on Sunday.

But first we raced with Dieselfish for the women's and men's races. The women's race was delayed by a 4-boat crash in the race before us! But, once we got started we had a good race! We didn't win it (we were racing against False Creek) but it was fun, nonetheless. The men's race went well also, but they didn't win either.

That evening we went to a BBQ, to sushi, and then, straight to bed. Our Sunday race was at 9:48am. 8 boats were in it, and the first 2 boats would get to go to the finals. We had an excellent race... esp since we were 2 paddlers short. However, we had no idea how we had placed! There was one boat that came in first by a lot but the next four boats (including ours) all came in at approximately the same time.

ah the simple pleasures in life.

So there was a rather long delay in getting the results. I asked one of the organizers and he told me that the race was the closest one that had ever happened in the tournament since 1986!!! The officials had to watch the video a few times and there was also a race protest. In the end, the 1st boat came out with a time of about 2:08 - so the 1st boat's adjusted time was about even with everyone else. We came in 4th and had lost the race by about 0.2 seconds. (If I recall, 2nd place had 2:18.03, 3rd 2:18.11 and we had 2:18.24)

So that was the end of the racing for us. We all went sightseeing and then a group of us all took the 7:50pm flight to LA. There was a delay, and we all got home at 3am!

Laura M.

We stayed at the Kingston Hotel yet again because it was cheap and it was close to the race site and because it was cheap.

teamLARD is gaining traction and returns to Vancouver determined to proverbially kick-ass and chew bubble gum. Although, from the photo above, I do believe Wynne's run out of bubblegum.

The team has now placed itself in the recreational division and has made it to the semi-finals. While this is progress, it still frustrates some of us as we know we can do better with more training and a more complete roster. During these early years, the team had difficulty finding enough women to field full women's teams and at times found themselves looking for hired guns from other teams to fill in the ranks.

Capilano Suspension Bridge

We stayed again at the hotel and tolerated the poor accomodations again. While being frugal has its charms, there are limits, and we definitely were reaching the end of our ropes. I do believe, this year, Leon and Kenny took on the challenge of lugging the team paddles up to Vancouver on their flight. For those of you who are curious, transporting 20 wooden paddles in a large cardboard box held together with duct tape and twine with no handles is no way to start a trip.

This year, some of us stayed after the race to do some sightseeing and we headed up to the Capilano Suspension Bridge. It is a 450-foot long bridge spanning a 230-foot deep canyon. For those brave enough to cross, there was a small trail with lots of trees and small educational display. Kenny and Wynne both yelled at people, notably Mike H. to stop jumping on the bridge while crossing (Kenny is acrophobic). Leon found his simple pleasure -- turning the wheel to make the worm wiggle in the dirt. Creepy yet fun.

-Kenny reminiscing 2010