Irie, Silver Medals and the Long Walk

I am currently without a car and I understand Durham Region Transit route schedules about as well as I understand how my new cell phone works.

So I walk a lot.

No car means I couldn’t do my part-time job (gotta earn that Pizza Dude nickname), so I had a free night Saturday and there was a reggae festival downtown I wanted to check out. So I walked.

From my house in the east end to my buddy Colin’s place, right in the heart of downtown – took 40 minutes. The walk a few streets over to the TD IRIE Festival at Memorial Park (after re-fuelling) took just a few minutes more.

IRIE is a celebration of Caribbean music – reggae, world music, soca, salsa and soul – that was born 11 years ago in Toronto. Along the way Mississauga was added and now Oshawa makes three (which is a reflection of Oshawa’s changing demographics, in case you were wondering), with more than 100,000 people expected to attend the three-weekend event.

Memorial Park was bursting with people Saturday night. The air was thick with the smell of roast fish, jerk chicken and oxtail, and reggae beats were blasting from the stage. The stylings of King Fabuloso, the Black Latino, to be exact, who describes his roots thusly: “I’m from New York, with Jamaican parents. Born Costa Riiiiica (you gotta kinda sing that last part), and I now live in Pickering.”

So there you go.

Anyhow, we didn’t stay long at the festival – Colin is not as big a fan of reggae as I am – but we caught the King’s entire set and I enjoyed some fried snapper on rice (with a little oxtail gravy). And we drank in the sights. Good music, a little dancing, and so many beautiful women.

Definitely worth the walk.

Speaking of walking, the walk home (after some more re-fuelling) took a little longer than the way there, but I think I was singing along the way.

That always slows me down.

**

I didn’t get a chance to catch any of the lacrosse action at the Civic this past week. That’s too bad: it’s not often we get treated to a World Championship of anything right in our backyard.

The United States, as expected, had little trouble winning the gold in the 2013 World Cup women’s lacrosse tournament, but Canada enjoyed its best ever performance by reaching the final against the mighty Americans.

The two games against the U.S. were Canada’s only losses in the tournament, in fact, though the scores in those two games weren’t close. The U.S. crushed our girls 13-2 in the preliminary game, while the gold medal game was more of the same, as the Americans didn’t break a sweat in winning 19-5.

But with four grads of the Oshawa Lady Blue Knights on the Canadian team, a silver medal and a packed grandstand for the final, the tournament can only be described as a huge success locally and for the national program.

As I said, I didn’t see any action, but I did run into the American team enjoying a post-match re-fuel at East Side Mario’s Thursday evening.

I couldn’t help but notice that they were all very young – early 20s – and they were all very beautiful.

The young part is easily explained. Field Lacrosse – especially for women – is a college game south of the border, and there’s no pro league or Olympic Games or any other incentive to keep the girls playing after their NCAA careers are over.

The beautiful part? They are athletes, after all. Strong, smart, bold and full of confidence. Being beautiful is only natural.