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Vancouver, Canada

Another weekend, another festival down at the Olympic Village – this time is all about dragon boat racing which it would seem that half of Vancouver is involved in judging by the sheer volume of people and teams participating. Luckily it’s a very colourful sport so quite nice to watch from the make shift beer garden set up in the square by the seawall.

But there’s only so much genteel fun in the sun one can handle before the time comes for the rough and tumble of a sport I’m altogether more familiar with – roller derby! Proving that he will watch anything sports related, Ryan bravely came along for his introduction to the fastest growing all-female, self organised sport in the world.

It was a double bout. The first was between the local team, The Riot Girls and the Tide Pool from Tacoma. It was very high scoring and the fact that it was still light outside was a little distracting but as the sun went down, the atmosphere went up. The Riot girls won by over 100 points so not much of a competition.

The half time entertainment was a glee-style performance of Thriller by some local zombies. A lot of fun.

The next bout between The Bad Reputations and The Taco Kickers was much more interesting, not least of all because Ryan and I decided to back different teams. He backed the Bad Reputations because they undeniably had a better uniform and I backed the Taco Kickers because, well, they’re called the Taco Kickers! It’s all about the names in Roller Derby – my favourite in this game was Hurt Russell with Hittin’ Miss being a close second. Now that pride and a strawberry milkshake were on the line, the game took on a whole other dimension and it couldn’t have been more nail-biting. The teams were neck and neck the whole way through to the final bout when my girls kicked Ryan’s in the Taco’s and led me to victory!!!

We left via the Chinatown night markets to get my milkshake – ah, the sweet taste of victory!

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