I'm sad not being at CCA. The club is a ghost town.
Last year I was too involved with other stuff to even notice but this year, I'm feeling it. I paddled tonight and it was so weird with not even one paddler there. It was nice to see Tamlyn and Rory when I came in off the water though.
There was a straight south wind on the lake. Bathtub wash around the harbour but good once I got 3km out. I think the sailing club was doing big-boat lessons. There were three 20-30 foot sailboats doing big loops between Lakefront Promenade and the Ridgetown. I saw some collapsing sails and one looked like it was going to keel right over before it slowly righted itself. Everyone talked about how cold it is but I was wearing my same tank and shorts as always. The water definitely felt warmer so the air must have been cooler but it was comfortable.
All the fisherman were way out - in fact I didn't even catch sight of them until I crested the horizon line at 2.5 km. A beautiful night for a paddle.
When I got back to the club there was a group of boys and their parents waiting to go out in dragonboat. Well, the boys were waiting to go out in dragon boat. The parents were having happy hour up in the lounge. I'm not sure what the group was but there were some familiar faces running the program.
Wishing you guys great races and lots of fun at nationals. I'm going to try and make it up there for finals but it'll be tough. Even though Sherbrooke has an airport, there are no charters flying into it. I hear the course is pretty amazing - good viewpoints and deep lanes all the way across. I don't think we've ever had nationals ther (maybe just Trillium or Cloverleaf?). I heard as many strategies for junior and senior party as I did for race plans. I want to hear all the stories when you come home!

I was cleaning out various drawers and cubby holes around the house - it's ridiculous the amount of useless stuff I've accumulated - and came across some rhymes pencilled on a small notepad. Because some of it dated from when the band, Victims of Circumstance, was still getting together to jam every Sunday, I thought it was stuff I'd been working on.I usually kept that in my guitar case or with my other tabs.
One particular page had me wondering, "Did I write this? It's not terrible and with the right music could be quite good."
While I was typing this, I did a google search on a portion of the lyrics. Balls, it came up on a greeting card site. Oh well. I'll let you know if the one I actually did write, Gasoline Rainbows, ever gets picked up.

results for 200s

K1 Geoff Clarke - silver
K2 Geoff & Chris Mehak - silver
C1 Jared Trafford - silver
WK1 Tessa Oldershaw - bronze
C2 BenTardioli & Roland Varga -silver
wC2 Nina Doherty & Kaitlin Findlay -silver
WK2 Lizzy Bates & Tessa - bronze


Results for 1000s
K1 Chris Mehak - bronze
C1 Roland - silver
WC1 Rachel - gold
K2 - Rob Clarke & Jacob Sosna - silver
C2 - Chris & Dustin - silver
WC2 Nina & Kaitlin - bronze
K4 Nathan Barton, Geoff, Mehak & Jacob - bronze
IC4 Chris, Roland, Jared & Ben - silver

2 ks at Canada Games!

WC1 - Rachel Marcuson - gold
C2 - Dustin & Chris - silver
K1 Chris Mehak - silver
WK1 Lizzy Bates - bronze
K2 - Geoff Clarke & Nathan Barton - silver

Ontario has a good start at Canada Games. They're in first place so far with 93 medals - 36 gold, 29 silver and 28 bronze.
They're just heading into day two of the canoe/kayak events.

Day One - 500m
C1 Dustin Shaw - bronze
C2 Dustin & Chris Abbott - silver
WC2 Rachel Marcuson & Taylor Potts - silver
W IC4 Rachel, Taylor, Nina Doherty & Nicole Wong - bronze
K1 Chris Mehak - silver
WK1 Lizzy Bates - silver
K2 Rob Clarke & Jacob Sosna - silver
WK4 Lizzy, Cheyenne Farquharson, Mariane Fraser, Tessa Oldershaw - bronze

Ugh. Back to the awful cycle of plunking my big butt in my car to drive across the city to Centenary, just to plunk it down in a visitors chair in my mom's hospital room for the day and then drive back across the city to the liquor store so I can plunk my ass down in front of the television and self-medicate with Carmenere and pizza. I wish I were a better person but I'm not.

Got called to the hospital at 1:00pm - my mom this time. Difficulty breathing, non-responsive. I headed east since the ambulance hadn't arrived at the home yet but they'd call as soon as they knew where they were taking her. They called about 15 minutes later and said Scarborough General. Traffic from the west end was brutal - it took me over an hour to get there. When I went into the emergency and stood lost for a minute, I had a surreal moment - the wing is named after my brother-in-law. For a brief second, I thought I was losing it. (my sister later told me, yeah, Randall had the new wing built).

An amazing paramedic (didn't get his name, I should have) who was waiting with another patient asked if he could help me. I gave him my mom's name and he went looking for her. He looked all over emergency then came back and said she wasn't there but he'd call in to find out if anyone had picked her up and where they'd gone. Honestly, it has been my experience that the paramedics are the most compassionate, helpful people when you're in the hospital. He came back a few minutes later and told me someone had taken a resident from her nursing home to Centenary. As I sprinted back to the parking garage, I called Centenary (in my phone book since my dad's chemo there) and they confirmed that she had just been brought into emergency.
When I got there, I was relieved to see that she had good colour behind the oxygen mask. She was unconscious and struggling to breath though and the duty nurse was too busy to come talk right away. While Scarborough General had been fairly quiet, Centenary's emergency was full.
Finally she came over and explained that the nursing home said she had aspirated some food. No big surprise considering her parkinsons and the low level of care provided by nursing homes. The big concern now was rotting food in her lungs and the subsequent infection and/or pneumonia.
I had called my sister at the cottage and told her not to bother coming home right now. She had driven up to Muskoka last night, hitting Vaughan just about the same time as the tornado. She was already a ball of stress and there was nothing she could accomplish by jumping into her car and fighting cottage traffic for 3 hours just to watch my mom gulp air.
Okay, I'm not going to lie. The acute care wing was nasty. It smelled like poo and decay and there was some crazy guy who was clearly well known to the staff. He had driven himself in, and was claiming he didn't know who he was and that he was having hallucinations. He stared at me the entire time I was there - 6 hours. I was too worried about my mom to really notice but every once in awhile, as I got up to adjust her pillow or IV, I'd catch a glimpse of his glowering, mouth-breathing stare as he sat hunched, gripping the sides of his stretcher. It certainly added to my level of agitation. The staff just kept saying to him, " and you had your last drink when?" and he would say, "I haven't had a drink for 3 years.....okay, well I had one 3 weeks ago... no, it might have a been a few days ago." (rule of threes? Sooo, three hours? Three minutes??). I just couldn't deal, you know? So after I was sure my mom was living, I got back in my car and drove away. I just drove around the block - 401 to Markham south, east on Ellesmere to Neilson and back into another parking spot - but it made me feel better, more in control. I went back to the chair in Acute Care, pulled it close enough to hold my mom's hand in one of mine and got Explore magazine out of my purse to read with the other hand.

The doctor finally came around 7:00pm. As usual (I've been through this before with my dad) she tried to convince me that we shouldn't provide my mom with medical care, that she won't recover from this, quality of life, blah blah. Look, neither of them is actually conscious of the world around them. My mom hasn't recognized me since 2005 and has dementia. My dad is not mobile and we don't know his level of consciousness because he can't communicate. Four times they've told us my dad won't live more than a few hours and he's always recovered. If you ever have an aging parent who goes in the hospital, call me and I'll come provide support. They're (understandably) brutal but you don't have to buy what they're selling. They actually want you to withhold fluids and antiobiotics - basic care.
So, tests show my mom's blood is severely oxygen deprived, she can't breath without assistance and blood tests show there's an infection. I believe, and the doctor confirmed, that she must have had the infection before today. Again, she advised that the prognosis was not good and I should call my brother and sister home. After that, I tried to call my sister but I'm glad to say she didn't answer the phone. (my guess is she's already on her way back without knowing the above info).
Driving back to Port Credit, I couldn't face going home to an empty house and parked at the canoe club with an idea of checking out Buskerfest. I walked across the bridge but everything just felt like sawdust. I couldn't even force myself to hit up Burrito Boyz for some dinner. I went back to my car, drove to Schlockbuster and rented the most trivial movie I could find - St. Trinian's (indicator of my state of mind that I rented a movie intended for tweens).
I'm just about to drain my second glass of wine and fire up the dvd. I'm glad I have people to care about but caring about people can really f* you up.

So my car has been making a funny noise and the service light has been on for the past four days. It needs new tires and takes two quarts of oil every couple of weeks. I'm dropping it off at Riverside this afternoon but just for the sake of discussion, I dropped by the Volkswagon dealership to help myself decide whether I should end my relationship with the Nissan or stick it out. The fact that I've been divorced twice should give you an idea of how good I am at working on broken down relationships.

I had been thinking that a Mazda 3 would be the way to go but last week, I saw a VW convertible parked outside the rowing club. It wasn't a Cabriolet - something different - so I checked out the website. It's an EOS hardtop convertible. This was a good trip actually. My fear was I'd yield to the frustration of constant maintenance costs and make an impulse buy. Instead, I came away seeing the value of "a bird in the hand...".
The EOS, above, would run about $39K list or $650/mo lease. I even took a look at the Beetle convertible which is supercute (for a university student) and rolls in at 32k or $515./mo lease.
I was mulling all this over on my drive back to the garage for the report on my truck. It was completely possible that I'll save so much on gas it'll be worthwhile getting a dependable car. However, that's a lot of money for 4 tires and a couple of doors!
As it turns out, the noises I hear are a cracked manifold and a loose heat shield. Since the crack in the manifold seals itself up as the car warms up, it's not a dire issue and the mechanic feels it can wait until next year. The loose heat shield is, well, just a rattle. I can live with it. I did decide to put new tires on it but that's a minor cash output compared to a new car. So, I'm stuck with the Pathfinder for another year at least. Can't complain. It can carry my boat, store my junk and transport 5 adults on it's leather seats. Might as well get my money's worth!

Great crew, great shoot, great shot!

In other news, Duke chose worlds as the venue to propose marriage to his kayaker girlfriend from Hungary! For those who don't know her, here's her results from worlds.

The writing was on the wall for this one what with all the 200m races at trials but the IOC made the official announcement with a few lines on their website yesterday:

More women and fewer men will paddle at the 2012 London Olympics.
All men's 500-metre races will be switched to 200 metres; a women's 200-metre K1 race will be added, and the men's 500-metre canoe doubles (C2) race will be cut. Women will compete in five canoe and kayak events and men will compete in 11.
Peter Giles says the ICF has final say on which men's race will be dropped from the Olympic program. He insisted the federation will not decide the issue until December and besides, the IOC could reverse its decision. Men will certainly lose one Olympic event, Giles said, but it may not be the C2 500-metre race.
Giles said the IOC shortened the men's races to make them more explosive and exciting for television. He said Canada supports both the drive to create exciting television and the drive to include more women in elite sport, but not necessarily the move to eliminate a canoe race and to replace a team event with an individual event.
Scott Oldershaw refused to comment directly on the changes.
"We want to focus on this competition and what is happening here," he said, "so we are pretending we don't know what has happened."

Canada's doing great at World Championships in Halifax. Tamlyn's through to her semi - in fact, I think the whole team has gone through. GO Canada!

I had my first sleepless night in a long time. It was definitely one of those wide-awake and worried nights but not for anything specific. I woke up around 2am and was still lying there reading The Beckham Experiment at 5:45 so I got up and went to the club to paddle. I felt pretty good all morning, propped up by coffee, I supposed, but it's hellish now and I have to go into a meeting.
I had my doctor's appointment. His diagnosis - Dupuytren's contracture. While paddling has nothing to do with the cause, he's suggested wearing a glove when I paddle might cut down on aggravation. Hmmm. Yeah, I don't know about that. Anyway, I'm not thrilled about it but he said it probably won't affect me much for a few more years. Most commomly, the ring and baby fingers curl in toward the palm so it shouldn't interfere with my paddling or playing the guitar. At the worst, I may have to opt for surgery in a decade or so.
On my way back to work, I returned Karen's call. She said she's coming down to paddle K1 this afternoon so we're going out for dinner after practice. I guess I'll find out what's up with her and chief.

So...those of us stuck in Ontario have decided we've just hit that point in the year where it's difficult to stay motivated in training. Add to that what's happening out in Halifax - without us!!! Anyway, in spite of nice weather, it was pretty quiet at the club. Oh, except for the exchange students from Spain and France. They were sure having a good time out in the dbs!
Last night, the women's team practice for 90 minutes out on the lake. I couldn't believe that Jessica actually flew in from New York! Doug was her coach for the junior national team back in the day (when Blake was also on it). She sat with us at Jenn & Trent's wedding and Blake and I took turns telling her what a great crew we were and how we'd love to have her come out.
After practice we went out for a team building drink. Not all of us know each other but honestly, I mostly sat with people I already know. I heard some funny shit like Sheila K. thinks this team, which includes many former national team paddlers, was put together to challenge the current national team. Baahhaaaha. For sure Gavin thinks it too. Dumb bitches. I stayed at the bar later than I wanted to but it was a really fun time.
I've got an appointment tomorrow morning for Dr. McL. to look at this lump that's growing in the palm of my left hand. If not for Mark O. I might not even notice it. Naw, I would. I've had problems with my middle finger for several months and then the past couple of weeks a lump appeared and just started getting bigger. More than anything, I just want confirmation that it's nothing to worry about. It's on my top hand so I'm hoping it's just something caused by paddling but considering I'm finally changing sides after 15 years of paddling right, does that makes sense? The worry for me is it's not on a bony part of my hand, otherwise I'd just think it was a bone spur. Fingers crossed that's what it turns out to be.

Oh balls. I couldn't make a decision on what to do today;

A) drive to Welland to watch WODs
B) go for a paddle
C) go to the gym

so I ended up...

D) lying in bed, reading and drinking coffee.

Just now, when I decided that a paddle is what I really need, there was a loud bang of thunder and the sky has turned completely black! Even a squirrel who was in mid-scamper has frozen on a branch outside the stairway skylight. Now the rain is pelting down, there's continuous thunder and lightning and I guess I should be glad that I didn't leave 20 minutes earlier. Being caught out on the lake in a thunderstorm of this magnitude is heart-stopping. Worse than going to the beach after watching shark week.
I can't even catch up on computer stuff. I've too many photos stored on my harddrive to risk frying it so I'm shutting down for now.
ciao.

So I went down to the end of the road. No lightning but I did get this interesting shot of a cloud formation. The lights in the bottom right corner are on the pier at the Petro-Canada plant.



Immediately after this, a pure blue sky emerged from the clouds. I went for a paddle and just played in the waves. Lots of fun, especially since there were very few Sunday boaters.
Earlier in the day, I'd gotten a call from the gym I just joined. They wanted to know when I could come in for my "personal fitness assessment" so I said today! Now in my experience, personal fitness assessment really means, " when can we do our sales pitch for personal training" but I have to say - this one took 90 minutes and they made me work HARD. Needless to say, it's the first time I've actually pushed myself since I stopped training and, good god, I've really let myself go! If they had actually tried to sell a personal trainer at that moment, I might have signed up. However, it also reminded me of how much I love training so I am suitably motivated.
The reason for joining a new gym is simple. I've been at Revolution in Oakville which has been awesome. On the plus side, Larry, Chanda and Eve have also been there and we trained together. However, Eve broke her wrist, Chanda and Larry were coaching sports at school so by the end of last winter, I was mostly there on my own anyway. On the minus side, it's in the opposite direction from work so if I don't get there by 6:00am, it's barely time to do a proper workout, no one else in the group needs to get up that early (teachers bah!) and I stress about traffic on the QEW. Especially in the winter.
The new gym is about 3 minutes from my work, is bigger (more cardio equipment), has a pool and a ton of classes (cardio, pilates, yoga, spin, kick-boxing). Oh yeah and it's a 24 hour gym! And, the other thing I forgot, school board employees get a huge discount so I get all that for about $350 per year. I am so looking forward to missing rush hour traffic every morning and being able to run at lunch all winter long (on a treadmill). No shame there.

I am holding back posts on a lot of fun, exciting, important events recently - mainly because I want to write about them with the appropriate attention and consideration. So. I keep waiting for a rainy day or quiet time where I can be properly engaged and it's just not happening.
Even little things, like the sparrow that smashed into my screen door on Sunday and spent the better part of the day sitting on my front porch with the upper and lower parts of his beak pointing in different directions. I instantly turned into my 8 year old self, trying to save the poor thing. I crumbed up goldfish crackers (other crackers are available) which he couldn't possibly eat - although that was actually before I noticed his beak issue. Anyway I was frustrated at not being able to DO SOMETHING when I noticed around 12:30pm that his beak was normal again. He pooped on my front porch and then flew away.

Last night was off for everyone so when I got to the club it was empty except for the summer camp kids waiting for their parents. I was just dropping my stuff on the ground when someone came up behind me. Expecting it to be Helen telling me she would be locking the club, I was completely floored to turn around and find DUKE! I guess I shouldn't be so surprised considering worlds are coming up. He looks great, relaxed and happy. He and his girlfriend flew in Tuesday night and they'll be heading to the coast in a couple of days. After a quick catch-up (fb has made it unnecessary for a hardcore dish when someone has been away), we jumped into our respective boats and paddled away.
It was quiet on the lake after the long weekend. Only a few sailboats out and that guy who lives by Imperial Oil cruising around on his seadoo. Kind of a boring paddle actually. My GPS died as I was leaving the dock so I couldn't even use it for motivation.
Talked to Attila for a couple of minutes when I got back, he's covering Pete's outrigger groups while he's away. I may dog-sit Lola while they're at worlds. After he left the dock, I had to avoid that annoying french dber who was dragging Pete's boat trailer around the road so he could make a better parking spot for himself. He was already parked and had already unloaded his oc-1, he just wanted to leapfrog up the curb by 6 feet. Such a crétin.
I had a quick shower and then headed over to Rachel's for dinner. Kaylynne was already there when I arrived. She filled me in on what's new and I was fascinated by her dad's new project - bee-keeping. They actually have a hive in their backyard which will start producing honey next summer. Plus she knows all kinds of fun facts about bees, like.... honey made from rhododendrons can be toxic and might make you stoned and/or sick. There's documentation that so called "madness honey" was used to poison, then kill off invading armies a couple of times in the Black Sea area, once in 401 B.C. & again in Pompey in 69 B.C. Interesting!
Ryan and Corry from Burloak arrived shortly after I got there and then Jess after coaching db and K.C. after she finished training.
Rachel must have spent the entire day cooking! There were 3 or 4 different types of salads, seasoned meatballs in a peanut sauce (these were especially amazing and, note to Rache, I need the recipe), chicken in a cream sauce and for dessert, toffee bars and zucchini bread. She is a fantastic cook and could easily switch from Stevens to culinary school. Agh, we were so stuffed! Anyway, it was a great dinner party and we laughed a ton! When I left around 10:30, Rachel was putting together care packages of leftovers for the guys to take home.
I want to do this again at my place before everyone leaves for CCA. Hopefully we can fit it in.

Eve turned up on BlogTO's Street Style which is a Toronto version of the Sartorialist. You may recognize the photographer as well.

Real Turf for Real Madrid

Too bad it won’t last. The natural turf will be pulled up and discarded by Sunday. Only the TFC, Real Madrid and a couple of pro lacrosse teams will get to enjoy it. And of course the fans will enjoy watching a game where the ball that doesn't make freakish skids and bounces across the field.

Thursday - wind from the south-west. My expectations were pretty high for good waves but as I paddled out in bathtub chop around the harbour, I started to wonder. I could see Stringer way out in the distance, coming towards me and we passed when I was about 2km out. As he went by, he yelled "keep going another 2km - it gets a lot better". He was right.

Friday, more of the same. I noticed a wedding party having photos taken in Memorial Park. 4:30pm seems so early for a weekday wedding but I guess this is what couples are forced into by the overloaded wedding industry.
The police were out in their zodiac and they waved as they headed towards the harbour, intent on chasing down one of the fishing boats. I had some fun in the waves and after about 10 km, headed in. I could see the marine unit pulled up along the pier wall, surround by people. There were no boats around - what were they doing? I could make out the wedding party I'd seen earlier. Those bass-turds, I thought, they're giving them grief for taking photos without a permit...but no, as I got closer it became apparent that they were having their photos taken with the wedding party. The groomsmen were posed in the zodiac as I went by. Ah, such nice guys!

Saturday morning and the lake was like glass. I haven't done a steady paddle for a few days so did 14 km. On my way back in, I passed a couple groups in OC-4s. One of them was having serious steering issues but as I changed my trajectory to avoid them, they'd adjust theirs to match mine. I recognized a couple of dbers in the boat but not the steersman who insisted I admire their new OC-4. I was just like yeah, nice boat and kept paddling. Still don't know if he was just that bad at steering or if he confused me for one of their members.

After that I packed up the car and headed to Sutton where I spent a fantastic day with a friend.

Sunday. Kind of overcast and not nice. Marisha, Karen and I were trying to get together but Karen couldn't work it out. Marisha and I decided to go to Sherway instead. Four hours and a couple hundred dollars later and I was home with some new shorts. While we'd been in the mall/bunker, the weather had turned beautiful! I was going to go for a paddle but I didn't have my gear with me and it was already 6:30. I convinced myself that it would be too late by the time I ate something and ended up staying in watching the season one finale of True Blood.

Oh yeah, because of the recent implementation of the law to ban talking on a cell-phone while driving, there's been a lot of media focus on the dangers of texting while driving. Here's a situation where a text message diverted a potential tragedy (neither of us was driving at the time but that's beside the point).
On Saturday, I texted Marisha to find out if she'd heard back from Karen about getting together on Sunday. She texted back that she had not but was up for brunch. We decided to talk in the morning. The next day, she told me that if I hadn't texted, the house she was in may very well have gone up in flames.
Here's how it happened. She and Carmen had gone to some friends' for a bbq. She'd dropped her purse in the kitchen and they were sitting outside talking when she heard the text message beep of her phone. Apologizing for not turning it off, she went into the kitchen where she responded to my text.
"Guys", she said, "something's burning in the kitchen."
The host responded that the bbq was right outside the kitchen window and she was just smelling the smoke coming through the open window.
"No", she insisted, "this is definitely not food and it's really burning."
They couldn't see any smoke but as they moved around the kitchen, the smell got stronger. Suddenly the frame of a painting propped on top of some cupboards burst into flames. They had recently put the picture up there to see how it looked, directly under some halogen lights. They put out the fire and moved it away from the lights, exclaiming they had to invite the person who texted her over for dinner sometime. I feel completely removed from any responsibility (but will take the dinner invitation!).