International Birthday

8/6/11

Well it’s my birthday. I am 28 years old, and this is the first time I’ve celebrated a birthday outside of the USA. The good thing is I had an amazing visitor, with whom to celebrate.

We (Team ‘Merica), had a pool workout at 10am and a meeting at 11am, and then we (me and my amazing visitor) went out into the little town of Oakville, Ontario. Not only is August 6 a special day for yours truly, Oakville celebrated the day with a Jazz festival (I like to think it was all for me).

We had lunch at a quaint, eclectic café, The Griffin House and enjoyed some Canadian Jazz music. Actually, there was a lot of music at different points along the festival grounds, some of it kids music, some acoustic, some karaoke, and other random sounds. The featured acts, during our wanderings, were some youth bands, and they were pretty good (with the exception of one band’s cover of Led Zepplin’s “Dazed and Confused”—that song is just too awesome, and so very hard to get right).

After listening to some music, we headed back to the Appleby campus, but not before some ice cream at the Marble Slab Creamery (Marble Slab = Canadian for “Cold Stone”). Back at Appleby, we lazed by the lake and watched a sail boat race (is there a technical term for this?) in the distance, until it was time for my amazing visitor to take her leave.

A lot of other Team ‘Merica players took the “free day” to watch some men’s rugby. They drove into Toronto to sweat in the heat and see our USA men play Canada. Though I didn’t get the score, I believe our men lost that contest.

For the remainder of my birthday (and our post-match day), I watched, with my amazing teammates, some international track and field events and some “highland” field events, the Canadian Highland Games (that sport where the competitors heave logs, throw big rocks and pitch large feed bags—sounds like good rugby training). Then we all had dinner and a meeting and are now watching “Harry Potter” while the English ladies, who are rooming above us, are watching something American (they were blasting Motown earlier).