By Jason Au

Biased announcers, boat-hopping, illegal drummers and race format changes aside, the second reincarnation of Team Trail Mix had a fun weekend at the London Dragon Boat Festival, which took place at London's Fanshawe Conservation Area. Visit the dragon boat rankings forum for lots of whining about the event. We won't get into it here.

This time around, Trail Mix's crew was comprised of paddlers from the University of Toronto Piranhas, University of Toronto (University College) Water Dragons, Cartier Partners Tempest, TCBA Flying Shanghai Noodles, a rookie, Western 360, and a last minute addition from the University of Western Ontario - Owen Wong, who was only supposed to drop off a few members of the team off to the race site.

The weekend was a great chance to get away and have some fun. Sure, the weekend was a little stressful, what with cramped-up living arrangements and people getting very little sleep, if any. The first day of races went by pretty quickly. If there's anything the author got out of the day (wasp sting aside), was that if you ever want to have a good time, bring temporary tattoos. Could be a more sure-fire way to inject life into any social or athletic event? I don't think so. By the end of the day, we were all (ok, fine I was all) covered up in tattoos from Cartier Partners Tempest and Mercedes Benz crews.

After the first day of races, we thought we had been eliminated from the "A" final, so that night, Trail Mix took the part of London equivalent to downtown by storm. All...3 blocks of it?! Some went clubbing, while a quieter bunch walked around town and eventually ended up at Williams Coffee Pub.

On Sunday, events unravelled awkwardly, and the final was expanded from 6 to 8 boats. We raced a good race, but our rag-tag team was clearly outclassed by the competition. After eating a final team meal at Alice Fazooli's in Mississauga, we parted our separate ways, having enjoyed yet another weekend of paddling.

Final Standings (A-Division)