canadian national autoslalom championships were awesome and exciting. andre and i took 1 and 2 in c/ss and have returned with trophies :D the funny thing is, b/c of my performance and results on the sunday course, i was sure that i was out of the trophies. so sure in fact that i started crying at my presumed 3rd place finish. loathingly i went to see the printed out results to see how close i was to the 2nd place competitor. to my amazement there was the number 2 with a lower case 't' next to my name! ('t' indicates a trophy) i started running around the grid area telling everyone i knew that i 'thought' i trophied!! mason and reggie (who already saw me cry) wanted to make sure i was looking at the correct results and went to double check for me. i was right! i beat out 3 other boys! i beat my 3rd place competitor by a mere 0.06 sec.
other notes about this trip: wild life encounters! 1 huge female elk in banff and a herd of big horned sheep outside of revelstoke!! too cool. the big horned are so used to human encounters that they didn't even get scared by my scream! sadly going and returning from alberta we saw a lot of forest fire smoke. calgary, in fact, was covered in smoke despite having sunny weather forecasts. the air just stinks of burning wood. the rockies were covered in smoke as well. on the return trip, however, a and i saw the most horrifying sight ever. red, open flames. surrounding the forest flames were huge areas that were just smoking. it was surreal and very sad.NYC TO 2003:: DAY 11
YAY! my vacation is extended by another day! (only downside is that since i'm working as a consultant i don't have vacation days, so i don't get paid for this!) toronto is hot and humid, but not as much as nyc. breakfast was at a cool cafe on queen street west. man! it's so nice to be able to eat reasonably priced food and not have to convert the price into canadian dollars. our breakfast was soo cheap (by nyc standards). then we walked around queen street west before catching a street car and subway to head over to one of the newest districts in TO -> the distillery. kind of like an artsier yaletown. instead of businesses moving into old warehouses they are moving into old distillery buildings, lots of exposed post and beam.
lunch was with jamie! at lunch we reveal to jamie that we have decided to move out to TO. at a quarter-of-a-century, andre and i are not satisfied with the amount that we have achieved and will be moving out to pursue our goals. !!! very exciting times.
NYC 2003::DAY 10
it's not raining this morning! andre and i pack as fast as we can and then rush out to meet mr yeu for lunch...we wait for 1/2 an hour but he doesn't show up. finally we return to the apartment and try calling to find out that he was held up at the office :( we say our thank yous over the phone and then finish packing (no time for a final visit to soho or times square) just as we get downstairs there is a downpour again! luckily this time (and also b/c of the apartment's close proximity to madison square garden) we are able to catch a cab and i fall asleep, lulled by the bumps and pot holes. good-bye NYC, i will be back for sure.
when we get out of the cab, the rain is still coming down hard and the thunder and lightening is not so intermittent. the air canada counter line up is looooong. 2 flights before us to TO before have been cancelled and our flight was delayed for 2 hours for now. we were lucky that we came to check in early this time, otherwise people bumped from the 2 cancelled flights would have taken many of the spots. the waiting room was stuffy with the humidity from the rain and also all the people waiting for their flights. cranky kids were fighting with their siblings and most of us had to sit on the hard floor. at the waiting room it was announced that our flight was being delayed by an additional hour! ugh
we finally made it into TO at 11:30 and we found a hotel in downtown and got to sleep at 1:30am. tomorrow would be an exciting day - exploring a city i had never been to!
