It's the Thought that counts...: Montreal DB Trip with PA

Yeah, I know these posts are delayed, but might as well do em. This one is about my weekend with Paddlers Anonymous in Montreal for the International Dragonboat festival held during Civic holiday weekend ( July 29th August 1st ). Thursday

Left at night from work back to Toronto to Idy's place and slept over at my Richmond Hill home.

Friday

Got on the bus at Yorkdale where most people were getting picked up and loaded up the bus with our stuff. Went to McDees for a pit stop and sandwiches were quite delicious for a cheap price as usual!!

Had some trouble figuring out where exactly Gardner Hall was in Mcgill residences but finally found the place and we all unloaded our stuff and settled in. No air conditioning there but it was pretty clean residence. Reminded me of V1 in Waterloo with the shared washrooms on each floor.

After settling, we went to Guido and Angelina for italian food. It wasn't that great but some dishes were pretty alright. I had a pasta with very unfresh mussels and clams and it was expensive for what it's worth / size. Service wasn't that great neither. The place looked nice though. So some of the ladies took some pictures there. Girls like taking pictures don't they?

And here's me and Idy at G&A

And here's her beating me up ( I love this pic )
Ok, so after dinner, we went clubbbb/bar hopping in st.laurent. Taking the Metro or whatever it was called for the first time in Montreal. Btw, this was my first Montreal downtownwalking around chilling in Montreal experience!
A bunch of us went to bars here and there had a round of shooters that were suppose to be Polar Bears but ended up to be hardcore polar bear vodkas. They were cheap but they weren't too easy to swallow. I was expecting some sweetness there!! Chugging beers I'm not much of a beer chugger but I do have a picture of me chugging two at the same time!!
After that, we hit the club district, there were a few empty clubs with free entrance bought a few drinks here and there and danced a little bit. They weren't that bad at all : I like the Montreal clubs. Afterwards we hit up Tokyo Bar and that place was PACKED , free entrance for guys and girls with flyers . Drinks were decent priced and it was quite an experience. Idy got quite drunk so stayed there the rest of the night.
Got home at 2am ish? Walked the way back like drunkards on the streets. Like 10 of us arms over shoulders linked and just wandered back to the residences. The worst part was the road that went to the residences was one LONG and steep uphil' 10 minutes if you're not drunk but 20 minutes if you are
I was quite tired for the races but up and at em on Saturday.. 7am oh boy.

Saturday

Had breakfast at the Mcgill cafeteria.. had like 5-7 items of carb food items
Effects of alcohol still felt during the first race of the day.
Montreal Race at Park DeJean or something was very nice. It was made for some Olympics event that happened a few years back. Lanes were nice and wide and deep.
Pulled some 2:26-2:30s times on qualifying day. People were tired and it wasn'tof a huge importance here. Eventually we were placed in Rookie B division the next day. No matter, it was all about the hardware.
Oh well went back to residence, and showered got ready to get out to go to Old Montreal for dinner and chillin'Walked our way around downtown first actually and I bought my sexy ham sup sunglasses cuz my old oakleys were stolen. Oh well took a really good pic of me with em at Caban :

Then afterwards, we went back to the Residences to change into some pimping clothes to hit Old Montreal. Wow Old Montreal is beautiful. So many people at night on the weekend.
Resauranted du vieux port .. after waiting in line too long at this other steak place; every good restaurant was like filled. Anyhow the food at this place was cheap and good to eat. $20 bucks ish. I had some fish and Idy had some chicken. We heard rumbling that night and apparently it wasa fireworks show and from what we hear, it happens every weekend for some international fireworks festival / competition.
After dinner, met up with couples from the PA daWave team hehe and spent a good night in old Montreal. Had ice cream cones / some had crepes, and ben and jerries and we also did caricatures!! Ours was deemed the most funny, I would scan and post here if I had a scanner. I'm known as the Sailor now lol. ( The guy we had was VERY good and is very creative at the end of the picture.
It was a blast, having new friends laugh and poke fun at us while we couldn't see what was being drawn! And then of course these things outdoors catches quite a bit of attention from everyone so we had a crowd going because of our obnoxious and loud laughter. At times, there were periods of confusion and curiosity from bystanders as to what the artist was going to paint next. As it made sense, they laughed at the funny results. It was a fun night indeed and we also took an early trip back 1 am ish with taxi and slept early for the semi and finals the next day. This was it.. HARDWARE day. No hardware = sadness haha j/k (
I was running on low sleep because I worked very hard the week before at work to compensate for skipping Friday so I was really tired. I'm tired right now posting this so I'll keep it short:

Sunday was REALLY early due to our rookie b placement. First race was like 7-8 am I can't remember. But it was early enough that we werne't able to have our included breakfast at mcgill again.
Semi Finals and Finals; for Finals we really focused and silence in the boat there was. We pulled a fast time of 2:19 ripping and killing all babies in the other lanes. Our times were faster than the A div by like 3-4 seconds but we dind't really beat them because of the weight difference screw up in the SRS boats used there at Montreal. If you are an avid paddler then you would know from Network54 and all the things that messed up at Montreal

We didn't actually care, lol winning was awesome. There is an action pic of us crossing the finish line winning with around 3/5 of the boat. It was quite an experience, surprisingly, I felt good that day, I pulled so hard that I had to grunt once and made a face. It was crazy, I felt I broke a seal to my pain threshold for db. It;s all about experiencing your limits of endurance and pushing it to the max in subsequent races. I know in the future races, I will be better because of this.
Because in each of the top divs of each class, you can get medals and a big cups for placing first (Montreal was really generous with the medals and cups ). we were able to bring back gold and a nice big gold cup that could possibly fit a couple champagne bottles.
Just went nuts after the race there, it was exciting as heck. All I remember was Nancy from daWave yelling 'hardware' as we rocket finished to the finish line. Rockets baby !! We had our lunch again PA BBQ at the park and also Chill, our bold friend got our medals and cups because we had to leave early due to our bus schedule.
Of course, this didn'tt look good for Montreal but it wasn't a big deal. And I heard from the paddling forums that they ended really late that night like 7 pm or something.
Lots of joy, carrying the cup and doing the PA famed pyramid and trying to put the cup on top to the person on the top. Fearful of crushing the cup, we only tried doing that once. The pyramid would collapse before the cup went up top.
Though we have some pictures that look quite nice.
So yeah , we went back to res and showered and packed up to leave on our school bus and went to mcdees again.. quite good hmmmmm
It was a long drive back to STC it was like around 9pm but the night didn't end and we went to Danny's bar one of the member of daWave to Keele and Finch near York university at Cue Bar to have DELICIOUS wings and drinks. We also played some poker cough cough and me and idy.. well Idy.. WON half the pot ( split with Jer sun)
It was an awesome weekend overall made new friends and chilled with old ones! ( GOOD TIMES )
Francis Roque is quite a guy with his dSLR. Make sure to check out his website for those 800 pictures of us in PA Montreal. Some awesome shots here and there!