Blue Jays Date Night

Yes, yes I know, baseball IS the most boring sport on the planet. Ball. Ball. Strike. Ball. Strike....... I know the next thing that happens HAS to be at least a little exciting, but I've already fallen asleep at this point.

Just kidding. We went to a Jay's game last week and it was lots of fun. The cheap seats have a pretty good view, and the game was entertaining, in spite of the Jay's losing 1-5. Here are some shots from the game.


Roger's Center.

Look for the fat man in his underwear. See him? Is that not a fat man in his underwear? Weird.

JumboTron.

Roger's Center at night.

Blue Jay's Rookie night.

People GO to Blue Jay's games. Who knew.

Moving Day in Waterloo

Today was moving day in Waterloo, followed by some excellent trail riding. This left more or less no time for the interweb, plus I left the pictures that I wanted to post back in Toronto.

I can do it back in Toronto, as I head back tomorrow for Capitals practice. Oh, in other news, I made the Capitals for 2009. :)

Scary Cutesie Dollies

The last couple of days have been packed with cutesie dollies. I'd like to say I wasn't creeped out at all, but I'd be lying.

The most recent was just an hour again, while I was mountain biking at the Hydrocut in Waterloo. I came really really REALLY close to running over a cutesie dolly. I was going pretty fast, because it was a nice rolly downhill singletrack. I realized at the last second that what looked like a root was actually a cutesie dolly, as it recollected and tried to jump back and slither away. I missed it, but it was close!

This morning, there was a cutesie dolly in a full sized web, in the office. It was pretty much at face level! By good fortune and minor miracle, I didn't walk into it. Later I mustered the gusto to catch it (in a large box) and take it outside.

The other day, Sheasby found one of the biggest, scariest dead (Yes, dead. Yes, still scary.) cutesie dollies I have every seen. It was in the laundry room. I would pretend (at least in print) that it wasn't at all wiggy, but I didn't think to take it's picture for the blog until after I broomed it into the dustpan and flushed it away. I wanted that fucker away - it looked like a combination between a cockroach and a giant water bug. Yikes.

Nationals - Winnipeg Free Press

I forgot to mention the newspaper in my Nationals blog. When we got home from the bar, the hotel had put the next day's Winnipeg Free Press under our door. This was very cool, because a picture from the finals was on the front cover! There was also a larger article inside, including a picture of Rookie, and one of the four captains. :)

Lotus Wins Nationals

Yesterday, Lotus beat Stella to take Nationals in an extremely close game. The final score was 15-14. I don’t think it gets more exciting than a universe point. Maybe a universe point with about seven turnovers? I thought we absolutely had it several times, and that we were absolutely fucked several times. But we pulled it off. Kristin scored the winning point!

The final was held in the stadium where the Blue Bombers usually play. Just in case you don’t know your Canadian football geography, this puts Nationals in Winnipeg. Ah, Winnipeg. (Aside: I feel a little bad about this, but I hate Winnipeg. There, I said it. When it’s not disgustingly hot, it’s disgustingly cold. When you aren’t turning your forehead into bacon in the 30-something degree heat, the mosquitoes are flying away with your children.) Anyway, playing in a stadium was very very cool. There are way more people about than a normal final, there is crazy noise (making it very hard to hear anything on the field), the surface is turf, and there is a JumboTron, which even showed instant replays. I actually didn’t look at it, for the most part, in an attempt to stay focused. It’s too bad, on one hand, because it would have been sweet to see everything on they put up there.

The other cool thing about the Bomber’s stadium was that we got to see it the night before, completely with Blue Bombers. One of the girls on Lotus is friends with a football dude (#55, Ryan Donnelly), so we all went to the game, Saturday night after the semi.

Speaking of semi’s, we beat Zephyr from Vancouver in the semi, after they took about Quebec City. Zephyr had lost to Quebec in pool play, are we had a really rough game against them as well (in power pool play). We were down 1-4 to Quebec before pulling up our socks and out the win, 9-7. Anyway, we kind of stomped Zephyr in a very very rainy (and cold, have I mentioned that I hate Winnipeg?) semi. The final score was 15-3.

The format of the tournament was really strange this year. We had three games on the first day (in the sweltering, sweltering heat). Two games were pool play – Fusion from Winnipeg and PPF from Waterloo (scored were 14-6 and 15-7, respectively) and one was the first game against a four team power pool. This was Stella, the team that we played in the final, in another really tight game – Lotus took that one 11-10 in, you got it, another universe point.

This left just two games on Friday. Even more strange, we didn’t start until 3:15 that day. Wisely, our captains had us get to the fields for noon, and ran us through a light throwing practice, which really helped us getting ready for the two late games. The first one was Storm from Montreal, who we have had several close games with this year. We started off strong and they kind of rolled over for us. Final score was 11-3. (note: when I put “kind of”, I hadn’t looked up the score yet. They most definitely rolled over for us). As I mentioned previously, the next game was Quebec, and this went far less smoothly, but in the end, a W is a W.

Last night was a lot of fun, celebrating the big win. I ducked out early, after we finished celebrating at the fields and headed back to a hotel for a beer. My aunt Bunny and uncle Herb picked me up, and we headed to my uncle Jim’s house. They all came to the stadium to watch the game, which was great. So I hung out with those guys for a bit and had dinner, plus it was my cousin’s seventh birthday. After a couple of hours of fun with the relatives, they were nice enough to drop me back to rejoin my team as they finished off dinner at Earls. The one redeeming feature of Winnipeg is that my relatively live there. Yes, the only one. ;)

After a little more hotel drinking, we headed out, to various bars whose names I do not remember. It was a lot of fun. I think I got about 3 hours of sleep (which was actually more than some of my teammates) before getting up to catch a 6:30 am flight home again.

I really am very happy to have finally won another Nationals. My first was in 2001 in my rookie season. Not to be confused with my Rookie season(s). ;) After trying to hard just to get back in other final, how sweet it is to come home with a gold metal. Yeah Lotus!

Cottage/Waterloo/Nationals

Fun/Fun/Bring it on.

Toronto Bike Wandering 2

I went for another training/funsies/picture-taking ride in Toronto today. I checked out Tommy Thompson park, as per the suggestion in the comments section of my other Toronto bike riding blog. It looked like a great destination from here, because I could ride the whole way along the water. Plus it's only open on weekends and holidays. Perfect.


I've painstakingly posted a map of the route, which was about 45 km. I do mean painstakingly, because Blogger is being a little bitch today.

I rode Barracuda today, the bike my friend Nat lent me.

Here are some shots from the ride.


I had lunch here, because there was a live band playing and rock to sit on. They were very enjoyable, and there was a man on stilts dancing away to the music. I tried to get a picture of the band (no dice), the stilt man (shitty picture) and this dude, juggling fire (what dude jugging fire, you say? Look closely. Someday I will buy myself a nice zoom lens. Or eat lunch closer to men juggling fire).


You know you are new somewhere when you take pictures of their public transportation.


This was also taken during lunch.


Who has Heart in your head now? Everybody!

View Larger Map

In an unrelated note, NATIONALS is NEXT WEEK. :)

Alberta Shots

I recently went on a picture-organizing tear. They were SO disorganised, which is not at all how I liked it. I just kept getting pressed for time, and spending the bare minimum amount of time organizing them. I'd dump a folder onto my computer, planning to delete the terrible shots, flip the photos that needed to be, crop a few things, and organize them into proper folders....right. All of this is to say, I'm about 2000 shitty pictures lighter, I have a nice organized picture folder on my green laptop (;)) and on my external hard drive, and I'm very please about it. Here are some of my favorite shots from my wanderings in Alberta. I'm pretty sure I've posted at least a couple of these pictures before, but I also like them as a set. And now....bring on the Ontario folder. :)

Hair

Sunday Road Ride

My friends Jenn and Ryan took me road riding yesterday. They were headed out with their friend Dan, who had just ridden 250 km the day before and needed a recovery ride. I think if it was me who had done the 250 km, I would need a recovery hospital room, but Dan wanted a light ride.

Jenn was nice enough to lend me her commuter bike. His name is New Schwinn, and we get along great. By the way, New Schwinn is an anglicized version of the German verb Neiwschwienn, which translates to "cause lady parts to hurt".

The ride was a lot of fun and good cross-training. The day was perfect for it. It was warm (my guess is 25 or so), but not melt-you hot, and there was a nice breeze. Actually, on top of the breeze, there was a crazy head wind as we were heading north. This balanced out headed back south into the city, because we could easily rip with the wind at our backs.

The suggested ride was found from a website that suggests nice rides in Toronto, accessible from subway stations. I'm sure I will check more! We took our bikes on the subway from Jane to Kipling and back again. I remember thinking as we set out, "maybe I will ride the last leg home instead of taking the subway", which would have added about 10 km to the ride. 65 or 70 km later.....not on your fuckin' life. ;) Anyway, I don't have the link yet, but I'll post it if I get it.

The map above isn't exactly where we went, but it's pretty damn close.

I really hope I get to go again sometime. :)

The Bata Shoe Museum

Kristin had good friends in town (Stas and Edyta), so we all went to the Bata Shoe Museum yesterday. Here are some shots.

Shaq's gianornous shoe.


Dr. Evil's shoes. (signed by Mike Myers).

Stas and Kristin.

The cowboy boot is part of the museum, and the others are Stas and Edyta's shoes.

It looks nasty, but it's for shelling chestnuts.

Toe-knobs. What a good insult. And pretty sandles.

These shoes are TINY.

Sandles that look like pigs.

If you have a chance, check out the museum.....and wear comfortable shoes. Happy long weekend, everybody!