Results from Pan Ams for Canoe-Kayak;

WK4 500m - GOLD - Alexa Irvin, KC Fraser, Una Lounder, Kristin Gautier

MK4 1000m - SILVER - Connor Taras, Philippe Duchesneau, Richard Dober, Steve Jorens

MK1 1000m - BRONZE - Philippe Duchesneau

MK2 1000m - GOLD - Steve Jorens, Richard Dober

MKW 500m - SILVER - Emilie Fournel
Saturday's results ; KC & Kristin were 5th,  Connor was 6th ). Rich Dalton GOLD, Emilie Fournel 4th and Hugue Fournel & Ryan Cochrane GOLD

They've taken the word 'cassette tape' out of the Oxford English Dictionary. Sign of the times? I'm not sure. Have cassettes really disappeared from our culture? There's bound to be a renaissance just as there's been for vinyl records and film cameras. And guaranteed there's a hipster or two out there, rocking retro walkmans on their skinny jean belts. 
A few years ago, I found two cases of old cassette tapes in the garage. I'd put them together over a couple of decades and I still love listening to them. Well, as long as I'm in my 2002 Pathfinder, that is. That's the only cassette player around my house. Seriously though, mix tapes are part of our fabric, our cultural history. Isn't this a futile attempt to remove it from our lexicon? Tapes are referenced in lots of current books & movies.
“The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with — nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they can add up to the story of a life.”
-Rob Sheffield, Love is a Mix Tape
The mix tape (and therefore read/write cds) might never have evolved if not for the cassette tape. All of a sudden we could record our fav songs from the radio or vinyl, even other cassettes, and then blow off Can-con and payola-driven playlists for our own mix. Even better, we could make a mix tape for someone else, usually someone we're crushing on. A gift that's cheap and heartfelt.
"The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don't wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules. First of all you're using someone else's poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing."
-Nick Hornby, High Fidelity
Obviously you can still put together your own mixes using the new technologies but you don't have to work for it; selecting the songs, getting the equipment connected, pressing the play*record buttons at exactly the right moment, stop-rewind-start-stop-play*record....everything to put together a seamless, perfect expression of you - the you existing in that exact moment in time.
P.S. iTunes Genius is the Anti-mix tape. iDeath to creativity.
Anyway if you, like the OED, are done with cassette tapes forever, check out the recycling options available...
BTW, the words added to the dictionary while they were removing cultural icons are sexting, retweet and mankini. psshhtt whatever. 

Fall has arrived. Dammit. 
I was hoping for an extended summer but resistance is futile - from now on it's neoprene or nothing. My feet are pretty cold when I come off the water without socks or booties. Last night was flat, the water clear  & green all the way out. A big difference from the past week or so. We've had high winds and waves. The sand has been scraped up off the bottom and dumped at the beach edge so that stepping into the water,  you immediately sink ankle-deep into sand. And you can see the bottom all the way out - exposed rock and weeds.
The lake temperature today is 63f and a gale warning is in effect (source Environment Cananda). I have a hair appointment (with Seb's dad!) right after work so I don't even need to make the decision. No paddling tonight.

Fun night last night. We'd been planning a downwinder all week - conditions are perversely ideal during work hours so all we could do was shoot for 4:30 and hope for the best. I knew it'd be tough for me to get to the start point in time but I booted it over there as soon as I got off work and picked up my gear. I could see them, about 1000m off shore, heading east. I jumped back in the car and belted over to a beach about 2 km east and was able to slap my board down on the water just as they passed. I had to get around a kite surfer who had his kite and rigging strung across the little bay there.

What a great time - conditions weren't ideal but they weren't terrible either -  9 of us. I think that's probably the biggest group so far. Just as we finished the 8-9km, the SW wind spun around completely and started blasting from the north. If we'd waited about 10 minutes, we could've easily done a downwinder back to our start point! We were all getting cold though so we loaded all of the boards onto 2 trucks and headed back to cars and then on to our local for dinner and drinks. A few others came by and met us - like old times we ended up closing the place.

At the end of the night, one of the guys had forgotten his blackberry on the table but none of the guys would take responsibility for it (just one of the ways guys are smarter than girls).. I found out why when, at 6AM, I heard this bizarre and LOUD series of tones coming from my kitchen. I'd had a lot of pinot and didn't even remember saying I'd take the BB so I really couldn't make sense of what I heard. My iphone has been malfunctioning lately so assuming it was more of that, I grabbed it from where it was charging in the kitchen. I was heading back to bed when I heard the tones again. SO LOUD! INSANE! In that state of Still Drunk, About to Get a Hangover, I sat on the stairs to clear my head and considered how some new kind of technology could have gotten into my house while I slept. And then the lightbulb went on - foreign blackberry in my purse.
Unfortunately, I've never used a BB so 2 more phone calls rang through before I figured out how to silence the thing. I recognized one of the callers and knew he was meeting up with the phone's owner so I called him back and he passed on the info..

I tried to get back to sleep but by then a couple people were texting me so I got up. The north wind is whipping the trees around. I decided to stay upright for now and get all my errands done. I wandered out to look at my truck. After the downwinder, before we went to the bar, I'd dropped the truck off at home. I was in a rush to change out of my wet clothes and get some dinner so I didn't bother to put my board away. I'd left it sticking out of the open back hatch, opting instead to back the truck right up to the garage so the board couldn't be pulled out that way. It didn't look any worse for wear so I decided to leave it 'til later. I took the VW, picked up some birthday flowers for a friend, some goodies at the bakery, dropped the blackberry at the owners home, dropped the flowers off for the birthday girl and then went to the vegetable market on Southdown to load up on fruit + veg for the week.
When I went out to move the truck so I could unload the board, it was clear that a squirrel had found the open hatch and gone in looking for food. He must have bounced around a bit because the glove box was open and all kinds of stuff was pulled up/tossed around from under the seat. He got at least one granola bar, possibly more - I keep a box in there for days when I end up at the beach for hours - so he's set for the winter! Anyway, I think right now I'm just going to watch some pvr'd tv shows and then nap for awhile. TFC match tonight with the girls!
Sometimes I can't decide if my life is disorganized and sad or AWESOME.