Links and Today's Update

A Few Links For You: En premier, commencons en Francais: Club D'Enrainement Stamina de Victoriaville, Quebec. Apres ca, il y a Roller Estrie. Re-voici VRL Le Club; le club de patin qui s'entraine au Récréatheque a Laval. Finissons la partie francaise avec La Fédération Francaise de Roller Skating.


Club D'Enrainement Stamina skaters in 6th (behing organge and blue of TISC) and 10th (2 spots behind Jim White) during this year's Roller Sports Canada marathon in Montreal
...back to English now; the last site, La Fédération Francaise de Roller Skating, is the France's federation website. In their speed section, they've got a bunch of resources. Follow this link and it will take you to a map of France. From there, you can view the regions and the deparments.


French coaches at worlds
I LOVE Nistevo LLC's website (Luigino, Matter, Powerslide)- just look at that magnificiant picture of Joey Mantia; again, like I said before, must be a really cool guy who took that picture. Here are some nice boots from Australia: SS Boots. This one I love: Team Slacker.

Today's Update: I'm now going to make a couple of connections with music and movies. Some of you know that I play music (guitar, sing, piano) and that I used to play some small shows. Well I've been practicing a ton and writing lots of material, and soon I will make a CD and sell it to try to raise funds for skating. I've got this grand plan of becoming a billionaire...well, I'll settle at being a millionaire.


Ready to rock before a show: Left to right: Bruce, me, Allan
The plan goes this way: I make a brilliant album, make tons of money, and then build a couple of indoor banked tracks and sponsor races and teams.

Andrew Love recently put up a kick-ass video of Derek Parra and Ashley Yamborough doing some slideboard in Salt Lake City. The video consumed his bandwidth so he had to spend more $ on his site. In response, he is asking for help- he put up a Virtual Tip Jar on his website. I love how Andrew explained his reasoning: 'Musicians play because they love to play, not for the tips; I do this website because I fundamentally love this intersection in my life between writing, skating and the good folks I am blessed to know through this sport'.

If anybody knows about musicians, skating, and good folks, it's definitely Andrew. A little less than a couple of years ago, I got a call from Andrew while he was driving out to Salt Lake City. He asked me to go to a concert in Toronto. His brother's band was playing and they needed a photographer. I got confused with the venue and unfortunately, I didn't make it out.

I really like how Andrew explained the reasoning behing Virtual Tip Jar. I've got my own little one on this website (see upper right) that I put up about a month ago and couple of people have already donated. Thanks a ton for helping out the likes of Andrew and I. We've got dreams and we need help.

Being a musician myself, I stumbled across a band called 'Broken Social Scene'. Angela Zehr from Toronto got me into them when I drove her to a BSS concert in Montreal a bit over a year ago. I stumbled upon their video for Major Label Debut. It's a song and video VERY well put together:


In other news, be prepared to be majorly inspired: my father passed away in 1979. The night before he passed away, he went to see the first Rocky movie with my then 5 year old brother. Well, as the Rocky website lets us know, 'the greatest underdog story of our time...is back for one more round'. December 22nd is opening night for Rocky Balboa. How many of us have heard that un-mistakeable song 'Eye of the Tiger'? How many of us have gotten pumped up and excited over this song and over the Rocky movies?