Ottawa’s been having a nice stretch of sunshine lately, and with a high pressure front moving through the area, today was no exception. After doing some stuff at home, I headed out to run a couple of errands.

My first stop was the Ottawa Bagel Shop on Wellington, not too far from where I live. Home of some of the best bagels in Ottawa, it also sells all sorts of chocolates, freshly-made cookies and a whole lot of other delicacies. I picked up some Michel Cluizel Grand Lait 45% milk chocolate and a couple of small bars of Green & Black’s Organic white chocolate. I’ve been a big fan of the various chocolates that Green & Black’s make for some time now, but I only recently discovered Michel Cluizel after watching a show on Treasure HD called How The Best Is Done that featured some of the best chocolates in the world. Both makers produce amazing types of chocolate!

Anyways, after buying some cookies to go with the chocolate, I headed off to the Harvest Loaf Bakery, just a couple of doors down from the Ottawa Bagel Shop. There, I picked up a loaf of light pumpernickel bread and a croissant and then continued down Wellington.

Swinging by the Tim Horton’s on Richmond Road near Woodroffe for a quick snack (the croissant just didn’t do the trick), I decided to follow Richmond Road out to its namesake, the village of Richmond.

One of the main reasons to visit Richmond is the Richmond Bakery (their Yellow Pages ad since they don’t appear to have a website). I can recall going there with my parents as a kid. Besides bread, they also have cookies. Lots of cookies. I picked up a dozen sugar jam cookies for a geocaching roadtrip tomorrow and a jam-filled cookie.

From there I decided to check up on a geocache I have near North Gower, Out in the cedars (GCP93C). I placed this cache about four years ago and it’s been well-visited since then. It took about 25 minutes to drive to the cache from Richmond and about 25 seconds to confirm that it was still ok.

Heading east along Roger Stevens Drive, I found myself in Metcalfe, from whence I made my way to South Keys Mall to pick up the bits to make a new geocache out of. After braving the crowds at Wal-Mart, I headed home with my newly-acquired stuff.

All in all a very good day! 🙂

Our third race at the Fall 400 was the best race of the day for the Algonquin College Singapore Slings. Like our first race, we were piped in to the staging area by a world-class bagpiper who is the boyfriend of one our team members. Needless to say, this attracted a lot of attention (and looks of envy) from the other teams!

Racing in lane #4 again, we made our way to the top of the race course and lined up with the other teams. As an incentive to the team, I issued a challenge: If they better our best time of the day, I’d buy a round of beer for the team at the restaurant later.

I think that worked because we shaved 3 seconds off our time and finished in 01:52.43, a few tenths of a second behind the ORCC Dunrobin Dames, a very competitive team.

To say we were happy with the results is a bit of an understatement. We were ecstatic!What a high note to end the season on!

After watching the races for the  Community Challenge and top six teams we met up at Morphy’s Landing to celebrate a great day of racing. I was in the process of ordering pitchers of beer for the team when one of the team captains announced that she was letting me off the hook and that I didn’t have to buy the team beer. As an unexpected bonus, however, a local who was in the restaurant and talked to some people on the team arranged for three pitchers of beer to be sent to us after she left.  A tip o’ the hat to the mysterious Lady In Purple from the team!

So, from the weather to the organization to the races themselves, the Fall 400 was a great dragonboat festival! Congratulations to the organizers for putting on a great event!

Our second race here at the Fall 400 saw the Algonquin College Singapore Slings finish first in our race with a time of 01:55.58. We were in lane #4 and had a bit more of a headwind.

Our next race is in an hour or so.

Well, the weather gods are smiling on us at the Fall 400 in Carleton Place today. The sun is out and there isn’t a lot of wind to contend with.

Our first race felt really good and we pulled ahead at the end to beat the next fastest team in our heat by 0.6 seconds, finishing with 01:55.06.

Our next race is in a couple of hours.

At the risk of taunting the weather gods, it looks like the weather for the Fall 400 dragonboat festival in Carleton Place this weekend is going to be perfect. The text version of the forecast suggests there will be “a mix of sun and clouds” with a high of 25°C. No threat of rain there.

(Of course, now that I have posted this, the weather will probably consist of rain, wind and waterspouts that will suck the frogs up from the river and cause them to rain down on us, too. Weather gods are fickle.)

Anyways, the Fall 400 is the last race of the year my team, the Algonquin College Singapore Slings, takes part in. It’s held on the Mississippi River in Carleton Place at the Carleton Place Canoe Club every fall. Because the river is very narrow and there’s a bit of a bend, there are only four lanes and the races are 400m, as opposed to the usual 500m. Though the lanes are straight, the bend in the river can make it look like the lanes are actually curved, which can be a bit disconcerting when you’re on the start line.

Another thing I really like about the Fall 400 is the fact that you can stand on the shore anywhere along the entire length of the race course, mere metres from the boats as they race downstream. There’s nothing like racing down a course with people cheering just a few metres away!

So, here’s hoping that the weather gods play nice this weekend and everyone has good races at the Fall 400.

The Second Annual Rideau Canoe Club Dragon Boat Festival took place at the Rideau Canoe Club yesterday. Twenty-five to thirty teams came out for a full day of racing on the Rideau River just above the entrance to the canal locks at Hogs Back.

If you were in Ottawa, then you know that it rained. All day. And it was windy. All day. At least it wasn’t really cold, though it wasn’t super warm either. Still, people seemed to be having a good time, even when they were huddled in their tents.

Many of the teams that participated were what I’d consider the “hard core” teams of dragon boat racing in Ottawa who practice  once or twice a week from the moment the river thaws in the spring and go to all the local races (ODBF, RCCDBF and the Fall 400 in Carleton Place).

My team, the Algonquin College Singapore Slings, had a great day of races (except for the 500m race where we were stuck in the wake of Gung Ho, who leapt off the start line and finished the race a good 10 seconds ahead of the next fastest boat (which wasn’t us)). Our 200m races were particularly satisfying and our last 500m race felt really good, top. We had the option of doing a 1000m race, which I would have liked to do, but given that even the Goretex-clad people were soaked, we decided to opt out. I don’t think there were many teams who took part in the 1000m.

All in all, we finished third in the Mixed Final C block of teams, which we’re very happy about. I think we get a trophy for this accomplishment, which we’ll probably receive at our practice on Tuesday.

We had a new caller for the RCCDBF: Mary Anne. Normally, she paddles for the Slings, but she volunteered to call for us when we learned our summer caller wouldn’t be able to make the race. Her first time calling was at last week’s practice and I’m happy to report that she rose to the challenge and did a great job calling under less than ideal conditions. The caller’s job is probably the hardest in the boat. I’ve been steering dragon boats for several years, something many people consider difficult, and I wouldn’t want the responsibility of being the caller.

Congratulations to the organizers at the Rideau Canoe Club for another great festival and thanks to all the volunteers on the docks and in the marshal boats on the race course!

A good friend of mine who has been dis’ing bloggers, and blogging in general, for years has come over to the dark side. You’ll find a link to his new blog, A Moment in Exmortis’s Mind, in the rightside column and also on my Ottawa Blogroll page.

Be sure to go and harass him. Lots.
— Smakendahed of Random Ogre Thoughts