Hello again, friend of a friend... Music festivals and paddles FTL

Well Apex, you've continued to disappoint me even 3 weeks later. So I finally got the thing on Friday and guess what? The build quality is pretty disappointing compared to my previous paddle. Story of my life.

The blade is most definitely sharper and the carbon fiber has a nicer finish, but the T-grip is definitely sloppy. It's made of a rough/matte carbon fiber instead of the smooth finished kind used on the rest of the paddle, but it's also not seamlessly smooth against the shaft this time. Also, instead of the slick plastic end caps plugging the sides of the grip, they've replaced it with circular CF cutouts epoxied in. It actually gave my hand a blister after using it on Saturday because the grip's edges were so sharp. Weak.

I will undoubtedly have to take some high grit sandpaper to it in order to smooth it out, because that's pretty unacceptable. I mean it's not that bad but you'd think for $250 and made to order that they'd do a better job.

I also managed to run ran 3 KM on Sunday after an exhausting dragon boat practice - it was an all time best bringing my 3km completion count to...one...which doesn't say much, but I'm pretty happy that I was actually able to do it without fainting into a bush or something.

In an effort to light a fire under our asses after that poor showing in Pickering, our coach wants to level up our cardio for Hamilton with some post-practice jogs. I can't disagree with it but that's the furthest I ever continuously ran without stopping or walking. I made it in 17 mins 11 seconds and that was pretty much an all out effort at that point. I'll be honest, I didn't want to look like a struggling chump running jogging along the lakeside boardwalk in front of all those good looking people so I had to finish, heh.



My legs were also pretty tired from the Burlington Waterfront / Sound of Music Festival I went to on Saturday because of all the walking. I swear we just continuously walked around that city eating junk food and listening to music like all night.

I'll have to admit, it makes the Mississauga Waterfront Festival look like chump change and it was WAY bigger than I expected. WAY BIGGER. LIKE HUGE. They basically closed down the entire city for human traffic that weekend and it was sort of like a small scale Nuit Blanche + carnival, minus the confusing art and free energy drinks. There was just tons of stuff scattered all over the closed down streets and waterfront to enjoy. Bedouin Soundclash even opened for them on Thursday night this year, probably after realizing how much crappier smaller the Mississauga festival is compared to it.

We actually left midway though the last band, Tokyo Police Club (because they suck), to avoid what would have probably been the most inconvenient midnight traffic jam ever. I think it was a good call because I don't think that my stomach could have held any more tacos or beer at that point anyway. I swear as it got darker and darker, more and more people just showed up and the lineups for anything just became too ridiculously long to deal with. They were relentless.

Here's Hollerado at the main stage doing their thing in the early evening. That's the biggest of the 4 stages (there were also random street bands setup all over the place), and if you think it looks sort of busy just imagine how much busier it got at night.



I'll probably go to it again next year but with better planning on our part, heh.