When a friend of mine called me up to invite me to go to an all-girls roller derby final championship game at a convenient plateau arena where cheap beer and raging girls with attitude on rollerblades were to be featured, it sounded too ridiculous to say no.

Indeed, we lined up yesterday evening at the St. Louis arena on St. Dominique just north of St. Viateur, paid our $12 entrance fee, paid for our 2 for $5 beers (or $3 for one, but who only gets one?) and made our way down into the hockey area. Having the foresight to bring pillows, we settled down in prime parterre seating (at your own peril) and cracked open our first cans of a truly horrible-but-good American brew “Pabst” and the Roller Derby championships between the two Montreal teams La Racaille and Les Contrabanditas began. Hosted by the fabulous Plastic Patrick and some other dude, we were quickly launched into screaming, cheering fans as the first half started.

What fun! I highly encourage you to check this sport out. Teams of mouthguard wearing, fishnet sporting women racing around a hockey arena in a violent, jostling, strategic, competitive and action-packed activity, it’s fun for the whole family. (There were a significant amount of kids there, actually). With player names like Wrath Poutine, Ashley Thudd, Iron Wench and Georgia W. Tush, how can you not go?

(Next game happens at Arena St. Louis on August 13, between Montreal’s New Skids on the Block and the Long Island Roller Rebels).

Official site: http://www.mtlrollerderby.com/
An informative Flickr set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bubbabrown/sets/72157606154552557/

Writing for Metblogs has the potential to be the most rewarding experience in your entire life. It’ll make you rich, famous, good looking, will help you lose weight, make your clothes fit better, and get you a super good deal on a new car. It will make you the most well known person on the entire planet. Yes, each and every one of you. Really.

OK maybe not. Actually those are all lies, but it’s fun at least. The truth is Metblogs is the largest network of locally focused blogs on the web, covering almost 60 cities around the world and we’re looking to add a few new bloggers/writters/authors to this fine site. If you wanna know more about us check out this wikipedia entry but it’s kinda boring so I won’t waste time repeating it all here again. If you wanna write for us, here’s the scoop:

• All author positions are volunteer. That means you don’t get paid.
• You must live in (or very near) the city you plan to write about.
• Anything you post must relate to the city somehow. That means you shouldn’t post a movie review, but talking about going to see a movie at a local theater is fine.
• There’s no requirement for how much you can or should write, but we ask that if we set you up as an author you make about 3 posts a week.
• You can post about things you love, you can post about things you hate. It’s entirely up to you

Additionally, because of our global network, there’s plenty of options for things you write to be read by people all over the world. Interested? Want more details? Post a comment and we’ll be in touch!

I was stopped yesterday by policeman on a bike at the mouth of the pedestrian area of Prince Arthur and St. Laurent. I had just biked through that area wondering ever so slightly if what I was doing was indeed 100% legal. Apparently, it wasn’t.

“Come here often?” Mr. Policeman asked. I smiled and chuckled and said “Euh…”
“You want the correct answer? Not often.”
“Yes, not so often.”
“You see that sign behind you?” I turned and spotted a sign of a stick person walking their bike inside a green circle.
“Ah…”
“Now that you’ve seen it, you know you can’t ride your bike on this part anymore.”
“Right.”
“This is a warning, but next time it’s a ticket of $37.” Eek.
“Okay, merci!” I said and biked off on the legal part of the road.

So naturally, I’ve been biking around a little more carefully, since.

    I’ve been talking with a few landlords over the past few weeks and they have all told me that this year, the phones are ringing less and people are taking their time in choosing.

My current landlord, who owns two other apartments, told me his phone barely rings at all for the 2 places he has for rent. And when they do arrive to visit, they say they like it, but will think about it.

He has the same apartments for rent last year and he claims the phone wrang off the hook. People were willing to sign right away. Some putting considerable pressure on my landlord to sign right then and there.

What he has also noticed is that the amount of scams has increased considerably.. The favorite of course being someone from Russia claiming to be moving to Canada. They send over first month’s rent but it’s a cheque for $10,000 and promptly claim they made a mistake and ‘would you please return the rest’… Of course the cheque then bounces.

If you are looking for an apartment for July 1, have you noticed that there is more choice and that you have more time in choosing ?

It may not be the same at being in the Bell Centre or La Cage aux Sports but Twitter certainly makes for a more enjoyable game. I felt like laurentlasalle, TanMcG, JohnnyCanuck, stephdau and JeromeParadis were right here with me.

• Game on!
• The Bruins are playing much much better than last time.
• The throwing of the puck behind the blue line, it displeases us.
• Now we are pleased. 1-0 Mtl.
• Don Cherry’s vest, it burns, it burns us!
• I like this second period much better that the first one. Now 2-0 Mtl.
• @laurentlasalle @JeromeParadis Price is certainly a prime candidate for the first star of the night.
• Gotta make sure that the families of our cherished Russian players remain gainfully employed…more vodka.
• Bad defensive play, they never should have had that return. 2-1 Mtl.
• Even though the Habs were one man down, Kovalev got some one-on-one quality time with the Bruin’s goalie…just before Boston tied it 2-2.
• Somebody slip some Valium to Kovalev, he almost caused us to miss out on another power play.
• Kostopoulos got hit on the face…and we have blood. At least we’ll end the game in a power play.
• We hit the goal post with 0.1 sec remaining…overtime!
• @laurentlasalle Nope, just saw the rerun, 0.1 sec.
• For those of you who can’t see the abomination that is Don Cherry’s vest.
• YYYEEEAAAHHHH! We win it 3-2. I just could not believe that we could spend 6 min in power play without nailing one.

Right now words fail me.

As “luck” would have it, we were scheduled for a Saturday family lunch at my brother-in-law’s condo near the Plaines d’Abraham. We had just learned about the explosion and fire at the Quebec city Armoury so, after an excellent meal, we decided to walk over to survey the damage.

It was so much worse than we expected.

I was raised in Quebec city and it just breaks my heart so see such a notable landmark dissapear just like that. While the North wall seems to have survived pretty well (stone isn’t a very good combustible), most of the building has been completely gutted.

You can see more pictures on Flickr.

It’s been a long winter made even worse by the fact that I missed 4 Yulblog meetings in a row. Sometimes I had a good reason (snowstorm, trip to Rome) but other times I was just too lazy, tired, depressed. This is why I decided on the following question of the night: What was the biggest mistake you ever made?

Debbie: Having broken up, then going back with my ex. I learned and kicked him out of my life!
Jean-Luc: Avoir internet!
Pluche: Avoir decide d’aller chercher de l’eau, loin de la tente a 10h PM du soir, au milieu du parc de Jasper en Alberta. Un ours brun en liberte c’est l’fun dans Yogi mais pas dans la vrai vie.
Emile: Ecrire ce que j’ai en tete, a ce moment precis, serait - je crois - ma pire erreur, ever!!
Karo: Ne pas partir faire un voyage backpack en Afrique quand j’avais le temps et l’argent.
Chris Baum: Took a full-time job when I had a great contract with the best firm out there. My path remains the same, but took some detours.
Fred: Ne pas avoir tente l’aventure aux USA qunad j’etais plus jeune.
Tanya: Not going to more Yulblog events.
Frederic: Growing old.
Mikel: Moving from a perfectly nice house in Montreal…to Ottawa! Came back 2 years later.
Zeke: Walking out of the LMMC concert on March 4th.
Le lapin blanc: Avoir une vie sociale au cegep!
Steve (Fagstein): Not asking Chez Nadia out on a date. Wait a second, she’s right here! Nadia, do you want to go out some time?
Vero: Refuser l’invitation de Guy A pour aller a “Tout le monde en parle”.
Carl: Avoir force mon coloc a faire jouer une piece d’Annie Major Matte un peu trop souvent.
Max: Avoir laisse une fille qui presentait une magnifique disparitee.
Martine: Getting my third facelift.
Ed: Falling for Frank H.’s April Fool’s blog post (three years in a row!).
Laurent: J’ai insulte la mere d’un ami sans savoir que c’etait sa mere.
Long: J’ai dit un gros mensoge mais ca m’a rapporte $10,000.
J. Ruttan: Coming here.
Eric D. : That condom that time…
Patrick: De ne pas avoir achete de condo en arrivant a Montreal en 1999.
Maggie: (Written by Chris before he wa sknown as Zeke: It happened on May 4th 1995)…and it involved a pair of galoches and an Elvis Costello Concert.
Nadia: Fagstein.
Etudiant Alpha: J’ai rit d’une leucemique de 6 ans sans savoir qu’elle etait malade.
As for me, I took the fucking blue pill which explains why I’m still here.

    Yes, I know. It was Easter weekend. I should be writing about how warm it was and how my second weekend outdoor ride went.

Mont Tremblant is in an alternate universe. At least, I don’t think it’s in Quebec. We ran up Friday (big mistake) to ski Tremblant. First time in close to 20 years. I had seen the changes, just never skied there since. What a zoo.

1. Wait in line for a bus to take you to the hill.
2. Wait in line for 40 minutes to buy your lift ticket (70 bucks)
3. Wait in line for another 40 minutes to get to the top via the gondola.

It wasn’t like that 20 years ago! When I first skied Tremblant as a kid, I remember the single chairlift on the North Side. I even remember taking it..

Chalk full of tourists.. Lots of Americans and British. All the staff speak to you in English with accents. It’s so bizare. It’s Quebec, yet not quite.  Tourists who routinely ask you how you are doing.. Whoa, again, we don’t do that in Quebec!

Winds at the top were insane. If you slid down with your arms out, the wind would stop you from moving. Conditions however were still excellent. Mid winter stuff, yet on Easter Weekend.

Sunday was a quick trip to Sauveur. No one there. No one. Skied all morning without having to wait for a chair. Conditions there too were the best I have seen all year.

Next weekend is the famous Pond Crossing at Morin Heights.  If this weather holds up, they are going to have a hard time keeping that water from freezing.

By now, a lot of the local media has been covering the misadventures of all of those “poor” travelers who were returning from a week (or more) in the sun only to fall victim of The Storm of 2008 (trademarked). I still don’t understand why some companies still consider it normal to keep their passengers prisoners of their metal tubes for 12 hours as the water runs out and the toilets start to overflow. What do you think will happen when next year’s clients start their research by googling “Air Cubana”?On Saturday, we were on our way back from Rome via Amsterdam on a KLM MD11. We’ve known since Wednesday that we would be coming in during a storm but the captain was hoping to get us in just before the worst of it. Unfortunately, the position of the jet-stream forced us on a flight path that was much further north than usual (seeing Greenland was immensely cool) and KLM lost their bet.We were initially diverted to Detroit but, as we flew over Ontario, the captain was told that the weather over Toronto was “barely” acceptable. Since many of his passengers didn’t have a visa to enter the US, he decided to give Pearsons a try. That guy was one great pilot, although the visibility over YYZ was atrocious, this was the smoothest landing I’ve seen in years. Not everyone was so lucky, while we were taxiing to our gate, we could barely see the landing lights of another plane as it came in but then aborted its landing.From that point on, we would spend many hours simply waiting. Waiting to be allowed to disembark (1 hour), waiting for our bags (2 hours), waiting in line at the check-in the next day (4.5 hours), waiting for our departure authorization after boarding (1.5 hours) and waiting for the stupid people movers (1.5 hours) at Trudeau Airport because we were now a “domestic” flight. Total travel time from our Rome appartment to our house in Pierrefonds, 50 hours. Nevertheless, we were always kept informed, the water, booze and juices didn’t run out, the toilets didn’t overflow and, even through they were under no legal obligation to do so, KLM got all of their passengers to spend Saturday night in a nice hotel in downtown Toronto. They even paid for a breakfast buffet on Sunday which did wonders for our mood. Furthermore, we could really tell that they were doing all that they could to get us at our final destination. No bullshit, if they didn’t know about something they told us so. Importantly, if they told us a time estimate they also told us where the info came from and whether we should believe it or not. Sometimes the captain would get so frustrated with ground control that his communications were almost funny but we appreciated being treated like adults for a change. All in all, the crew performed admirably under very difficult conditions.The moral of the story is that sometimes you get what you pay for. Cheap flights are cheap because they can’t afford to plan for anything else than optimal conditions.

Dave Phillips of Environment Canada says Montreal, as of the morning of the 8th of March, is but a measly 60cm from breaking that 70-71 snowfall record. You’ve heard of that record right? It’s the one your parents (if you’re my age) go on and on and on about.. “Ya, Justin but this is nothing like 1971″. Well, we are 60 cm from being able to say, BAH! ‘71 was a joke compared to ‘08. Or worse yet, to be able to nag our kids with “nothing like ‘08 son.. I remember ‘08″

It has snowed 80% of the time this winter. Which is to say, 8 out 10 days this year, there’s been some snow falling. And take it from a guy who rides his bike into work, I can believe it. One thing I plan on doing next fall is getting another frame that actually makes for proper mudguard clearance. I am fed up with having my feet and shins coated with salty water. Luckily I invested well enough in decent cycling boots and shoe covers but still.

So what’s gonna fall today into tomorrow? 30cm? That leaves us another 30cm to break the record. Ha! We’ll do that in a few days with the way it’s going.

So listen Montreal, hang tight, stock up on scotch, wine, and cook up something great for dinner and then sit back, look out the window while watching the Habs sit atop first place.. Spring will arrive. I swear.

St-Patrick’s parade is next week BTW. Just thinking about it cracks me up.

Oh, and don’t forget to move your clocks forwards tonight.