portland

space dragons' roving tourney this year was to portland. this was the tournament that i'd been waiting for us to get back to. they went my first year, but since i only joined a month or two before, i didn't feel strong enough to go. and i've regretted it ever since. so why is the portland race so awesome? because it has flag catching!

our finals race, which we won!!

no, that is not me flag catching in the photo, tho i did get to do it once. and it was fucking AWESOME!!! i was really worried i would miss the flag tho. it was pretty far left as we were approaching, and i was thinking that if it came down to it, i would jump off the boat to get it. there's no way i had made my team paddle 530+ meters only for me to miss the flag. but in the last few seconds our steersman pulled thru and got me close enough to grab it. :D

i have an evil stache, btw, like v from "v for vendetta"

other than the flag catching, the portland race was pretty awesome. yes it rained, and yes there was a ton of goose poop all over the place. but the teams were all really friendly. there were four cali teams: light wave, dragon warriors, our sister team: ripple effect, and us. at some point or another, the officials screwed every one of us. guess they just don't like cali. the portland teams, however, really liked us! we were our usual obnoxious selves: mass zumba stretching, face painting, loudly singing along to every song we heard, chasing after firemen, violently playing red rover, crashing other teams' hokey pokey circles and just being noisy and stupid. it was fun!

yup, that's space for you!

best part was probably getting to hang out with the team. we went to voodoo donuts, had stumptown coffee, went to powell's bookstore, and many many bars. i stayed with jill and makiko, neither of whom i knew very well before this race. and most of the time, our team hung out in a pack, which was nice since most of them live in la so i don't get to play with them much. we also hung out a lot with our sister team, which was really great too.

all in all, a really fun trip (though i don't think we'll be going back for the tourney anytime soon because we got screwed by race officials so often) and i'm incredibly happy i went. i think next on my db tourney checklist is boracay, in the philippines. it's tropical, gorgeous, and open water!

(btw, i didn't take any of these photos. i think all of them came from james nguyen, or at least his camera)