Vancouver | June 21-23

Squad	Division	Place
	Rec Division A Semifinal	8th (2:17.69)

Hello team!

The uniform you selected this year is…
Uniform #1!

Believe it or not, after the first day of voting, it was almost a 3-way tie, separated by one vote each. Sunday voters determined the results. See attached files for front and back of this year’s 2002 uniforms.

All of you, especially those going to Vancouver, must confirm with me your order, sizing, AND YEAR JOINED, as well as pre-paying for the uniform ASAP. (For your reference, the team started in 1998; if you are unsure of when you joined, please contact me). There is no maximum amount of order per individual.

Cost. The uniforms will be a total of $40 for the first one, and $35 for additional shirts. The uniforms are made of supplex lycra, a soft-stretch, moisture wick material made by DuPont. It is paddling specific. Sizes XS-XXL. The breakdown of costs are as follows: $20 (shirts) + $10 (2-color, 3-panel printing) + $5 (screen set-up fee) + $5 (US flag patch, year joined patch, embroidery) = $40. Additional shirt orders will be at cost ($35), without the screen set-up fee.

I will be taking orders at practice this coming weekend. Checks payable to Wileen Wong, our team treasurer.

Note that these are for tops ONLY. Information on Drywick shorts is forthcoming. These shorts do not require as much lag time for order.

Leon Cheng

Eddy and I decided to do something different this year for Vancouver. I was teaching at the time and it was summer break (or summer unemployment). I had some time, and I wanted to spend some travel time before the races. So we decided to take our bikes (Eddy has the red Honda VFR, mine is the blue Suzuki SV650) on a one week trip up the coast and twisties of the Pacific states on our way to Vancouver.

It is a 1,500 mile trip from Upland to Vancouver. We spent some of the trip riding up the PCH and when the traffic became unbearable we headed inland to check out the twisty mountain roads. Some of those roads made me soil my shorts as we carved (okay, Eddy carved the corners, I put putted around) through the mountain roads, many of them sans guard rails.

While the trip itself is worthy of page with our fair share of insanity: Eddy's bike rectifier exploding, a 50 mile backtrack with the tow truck, an emergency re-wiring of his bike, crazy white folk who didn't like Asians and dust storms and rain and monster slugs, all good times.

When we reached Vancouver, the order of our first jerseys came in. Oh the excitement!

We were all standing in front of the hotel trying on our first LARD jerseys. I pulled mine on and looked down in sadness. I looked and felt like an overstuffed sausage garnering a few laughs from my team mates (I don't blame them, i look at the photos and cringe myself).

One last complaint about the jerseys. They were HOT. It was like wearing a portable sauna. They were the epitome of anti-breathable material.

I have one race moment I have etched in my memory. I am usually the mid-stroke during races, and Diane was sitting in the bench in front of me. If you are not aware, we do not take our boats up with when we race. We use whatever boats are on hand at the festival, and the boat we were in had benches that we all had trouble bracing ourselves in. When the horn sounded, Diane fell backwards with our start. I have vague memories of paddling through the start. I didn't think it was a big deal. Vancouver was still a very new venue for us and we were still learning what it meant to compete in the dragon boat world.

Good times.

~Kenny K reminiscing 2010-07-28