Archive for June, 2008
Last year on September 11th, Matt Harding visited Montreal with one purpose: to dance. He was looking for residents to dance with him, so I decided to participate. We were about 20-30 people in total, so you don`t really see me, but I was there.
I am really impressed with his newest video and seeing happy dancing children from other countries always puts a smile on my face. Try to spot me in the Montreal shoot. I am on the right, but in the second row. There will apparently be longer videos of every shoot in the near future, so perhaps you will see me more clearly in those.
Posted under juggling & rant & travel
I’m 3 days late, but I am finally back. I have ridden the lobster, travelled across Nova Scotia, and survived. I now have a black hood on my car, but it survived the 1300km trip back home. Tomorrow I get to go back to work. Vacations end way too early.
Upcoming goals:
Learn how to unicycle
Stop being so blobby (aka, get in shape)
Sort through all the pics I took and upload them
Thanks to everybody who supported us throughout the event.
Ride the Lobster was AWESOME!
Posted under juggling & travel
We’ve done it. We rode the lobster. 
We officially finished the race on Friday, and Saturday stayed around Baddeck for supper. I am currently still in Halifax as I am waiting for them to finish fixing my car. I was supposed to show two of my teammates around Montreal, but since I am stuck here they will be leaving without me. One already left by train, another left directly for Singapore by plane, and Jiahui is leaving for Montreal by plane tomorrow morning. She’s taking the bus to New York tomorrow night, so she will only have a couple of hours to check out Montreal. I should be leaving for Montreal by car tomorrow night. I will probably take my time and do it over two days. I hope the wildlife avoids me this time.
I had a really good time this week with my team. They were a lot of fun and we laughed a great deal. We ended up 34th out of 35 teams, which is impressive since we used smaller wheels with no gears. On Wednesday, we participated in the time trials (21 km stretch) and got rather good times. These guys are fast. We also did the Criterium, which is a race we did in downtown Truro in closed off streets. That was rather impressive to watch, and was a great opportunity for me to grab pictures (coming soon).
On Thursday we got back to long distance racing, but we borrowed a 36″ Coker unicycle from the German team. This gave us a slight advantage from Monday and Tuesday since it allowed for faster racing. It was the first time the team used it, and on Thursday, only one of us used it. Considering they had never tried it before, they did really good. This was the first day we actually finished the race. It might not sound like much, but spending over 12 hours racing across a province, you are really happy when you can go through the finish line. The biggest issue about that day was that our Coker rider got injured. He could barely walk, so the rest of the race was completed with only two riders constantly switching. A LOT of it was uphill, so I am really proud of them. I spent a lot of time stopping the car at the top of hills, then running down halfway in case they needed help mounting the unicycle again. While it is nothing like what they were doing, I got my dose of exercise that day.
On Friday, both male riders used the Coker and we started off really well. We were competing with much faster teams, which is always a god morale boost. Unfortunately, our injured rider from the day before pushed his limits again and he was out of the race about halfway through. At the end of the day, everybody was really tired, but we finished the race and were quite happy about it.
It is hard to believe that it is actually over. It sounded crazy when we started, but now it is hard to believe that we actually did it. It was one hell of a race and I met a lot of new and interesting people from all over the world. The generosity and friendliness of everybody involved surprised me and helped make it an unforgettable event. I think most of all, I am going to find it really hard to accept that my new friends are going back to the other side of the world. There are chances that I might never see them again, but you can be damn sure I will do my best to go visit them in Singapore next year. This time, I will make sure that I will be able to ride a unicycle and I will tour their country on one wheel beside them.
Expect lots of pictures soon!
Posted under juggling & photography
It is midnight on Tuesday night and we are currently sleeping away our muscular pain. Well, I’m not, but the three riders are hurting like crazy. Since I want to sleep soon, I will keep this update short.
Friday night - Saturday night:
I left home at 11:30 pm to reach Portland, Maine for 7am. It was a very pleasant ride, but I came close to hitting two moose along the way. Those creatures are FREAKING HUGE. I also saw three raccoons, a fox, a porcupine and other various critters. Heck, I saw more animals than people. I was going through the United States to grab the ferry from Maine to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. It is a bit expensive, but saves you a lot of time. On the ferry, I met two of my teammates as well as about 10-20 other unicyclers. We all kept each other company for the 6 hours on the ocean.
We arrived in Yarmouth and headed off towards our first stop in Annapolis Royal. We were three people in my cramped car, but it was a beautiful day and a pleasant ride. Along the way, I was telling my story about the animals the night before when disaster struck. A deer ran directly in front of my car. I had no time to stop and hit it head on. It flipped over my car and landed on the side of the road. The deer died instantly, and while none of us were hurt, my car was badly damaged. We managed to reach Annapolis Royal, but it turned out that my radiator was leaking, so we had to stop every 20km to add water to my radiator. There was no way I could get that car to Montreal. Not a good start to a vacation. 
Anyways, at Annapolis Royal, we met everybody else and had a good time. Our third rider was already there and we were finally all together. Everybody was SUPER friendly (racers and the locals). We ended up bringing my banged up car to our motel (where it still is at the moment). We slept, but with how the day had progressed, I did not sleep too well.
Posted under rant
Last week Dave and I created this small frisbee game which we call frisbee soccer (not to be mixed with the awesome team sport, Ultimate Frisbee). Since I’m lazy and Dave’s already written it down, you can check the rules on his site. We tried it again tonight, but we decided to play after the sun had set. We each own a frisbee with light-emitting diodes inside them so that it glows at night. We also have these other LED straps which you normally wear so that you know where the other player is. What we did tonight was put one LED strap on each top corner of the goals and then play the usual game with the frisbees turned on. It is crazy to not see any player but see this discs of light come flying at you. The animals seemed interested too. We got approached by a raccoon and a cat and Dave got hit on the head by a flying bat. We will definitely do this again over the summer period, and one day I will bring my camera and take some night shots.
Posted under photography & rant
Yesterday we were hit by a rather large rain storm. It is nothing compared to the hurricanes down south or the typhoons in the east, but it was pretty powerful compared to what we usually get. Some towns got hit with hail the size of golf balls, while others got attacked by the wind. My town got ravaged by the wind.
One of the benefits of where I live is the plenitude of large trees everywhere. Compared to most newer residential areas where the trees are smaller, I am surrounded by massive 30 - 50 feet high plants. They offer shade and privacy from the other buildings around me. The only problem with big trees is that they get pushed by winds a lot more than their younger siblings. The result is that they either break or they get uprooted and topple over. My town had over 100 trees get uprooted. Amazingly, none of the trees in my direct area did any damage to the buildings nor cars. They did destroy fences and killed our access to electricity. The juice just started flowing back a short while ago after being over 24 hours in the dark. I know I should not complain when I look at the natural disasters around the world, but it sure hits home nonetheless.
I took a picture of the workers today cutting up the toppled trees to bring them away. It is not pretty site to see such a magnificent tree get chopped up like that. Since I also recently got my new infrared filter, I decided to flex a little IR muscle and shoot it with style. Expect more infrared pictures from me soon.
Posted under juggling & travel
Next week, I am heading out to Nova Scotia to participate in a 800km unicycle race. That’s right, eight hundred kilometres on one wheel! While I will not be actually riding in this race, I will be acting as the support member for my team. The race has a total of 35 teams with riders coming from all around the world. My team is coming from Singapore, and includes Jiahui who’s site is linked in the “Friends” section of the right menu bar.
The race lasts 5 days with day three acting as a “speed trials” event. Even though it is a relay race, it should prove to be a tiring and tough challenge. On the official race days, roughly 200km will be driven, so between 3 people in a team, each rider will be riding close to 70km each day. Here’s hoping we get nice temperature and no rain!
You should be able to follow the race from their website once it begins. The puck the riders will be carrying is a gps unit and the details should be available online as the day progresses. You can already get a good idea of what roads we will be voyaging with this interactive map.
Our team is called “Masticating Bunnies from Hell” and I think we will have a really good time crossing Nova Scotia. I’m greatly looking forward to hanging out with unicyclists from around the world and hopefully making new friends. There is still a week left of anticipation before I head off to Nova Scotia, but every day I think about riding the lobster!
Posted under music
This is my second post dedicated to Groove Armada. I still don’t know too much about these guys, but they have some really good tunes. This one, entitled “At the River” is one of my favourites. It is very chill and relaxes me everytime I listen to it. It helped me out numerous times when I was stressed out and working late.
Unfortunately, I can’t embed the official video (blame Columbia Records UK), but here is a link to it.
Here is a picture of the cd cover with the song:
Wow, did the heat ever increase today? I went out to pickup something and got fishslapped right in the face with a blast of heat. As much as I prefer summer over winter, I am not a fan of the intense heat waves we get in Montreal sometimes. It is disgusting to look at the island and see it covered with greenish smog. I can only pity all the people sitting down on bleachers watching the F1 cars go by this weekend. They will be red like lobsters if they don’t put on their SPF ∞ lotions.
One thing I did find cool today, which is most likely attributed to the F1 race, was the surprise visit of the Snowbirds! I used to live close to an air military base as a kid, and I never got bored of watching their air acrobatics. Check out ths video below to get an idea of what they do, but trust me, it is so much cooler in real life. These pilots are insane, in a good way.