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.

The second part to Alain Gravel’s excellent report on Enquête (Radio Canada) was aired yesterday. Some absolutely fantastic reporting by Mr Gravel. The two part series which included the confession by Miss Jeanson as having been doped on EPO since the age of 16, was gripping reporting.

Yesterday’s reportage attempted to explain who was to blame for all of this. How could it be that a 16 year old girl was introduced to EPO ?
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Yulblog is a monthly gathering of Montreal bloggers. I’ve known about it since before I started writing on Metroblogging Montreal in December 2004. It’s odd that my first attendance is almost three years later. I actually wrote the second post ever on this blog which makes me the longest runner on this thing, but I think I might just be the youngest (23) blogger here. How ironic!
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I’ve been racing bikes now for over ten years. I like to think that I have a pretty good understanding of the racing scene here in Quebec. Two weekends ago, I attended a track race at the velodrome in Bromont, Quebec. At your average track race, we’ll usually attract 30-40 racers.

When I pulled up to the track, the parking lot was PACKED with cars. Outside there was a huge BBQ being prepared and people and bikes all over.

“They can’t possibly be here to race”, I thought.

Ben non! They were going to ride Le Mondial Cyclotour Some 250 bike riders riding through the Eastern Townships.

Man, I was jealous. We’d kill for a turn out like that in any of our races. I took a quick little tour around the parking lot in between my races and whoa, the bikes these people ride! Full carbon everything that costs in excess of $4000! There’s very few of us guys who race who would dare race on something that expensive. Wheels alone on some of these bikes were $2500+.

But Cyclosport in Quebec is very popular. More and more baby boomers are choosing biking over golf. A recent article in La Presse discussed how “business rides” are being formed whereby business people ride together and share business cards.. This was the kind of thing that was exclusive to golf only.

There are many, many clubs in Montreal the Montreal area whereby riders of all skills and levels get together on a weekly basis to ride.

One of the biggest events of the year is quickly approaching and I heard they will attract something like 800+ cyclists.

Another first Wednesday has come with a fun and well-attended Yulbog meeting. After much considerations, I decided to go with a question that seemed appropriate for the middle of summer:

If you “had” to go on vacation with an actor/actress, who would it be and where?

Marie-Eve: Ewan MacGregor in Berlin
Ella: Simon Pegg in Majorca
Debbie: I’d be in London with Angelina Jolie and Alan Rickman, or Scarlet Johansson, or Clive Owen, or Ed Norton, or Salma Hayek, or Monica Berlucci, or Koda Kumi, etc…
Pluche: Jessica Alba in Kauai (Hawaii)
Nathalie: Marvin the Martian on Pluto
Marie-Josee: Adam Sandler au Nunavut
Marc-Andre: Monica Belluci a Florence
Christelle: Jake Gyllenhaal in Peru
iBen: Uma Thurman in Australia
Josh: Angelina Jolie, Neve Campbell, Jennifer Connely, ok ok I can’t choose only one allright! I’d take them to a Mauritius beach although they’d probably prefer the bedroom.
Pierre-Nick: Celine Dion in Las Vegas…NOT!
Miss Klektik: Angelina Jolie and Clive Owen in NYC. I can choose two.
Sebastien: Scarlett Joihansson in Porto, Portugal
Patrick: Jennifer Connely at my place
Luce: Romain Duris at Puerto Escondido
Ed: Marge Simpson in Shelbyville
Mikel: Christopher Walker in Europe
Nadia: Ewan McGregor in Barcelona
Mare: Julliet Binoche, anywhere
Jean-Luc: Heidi Klum, sur une ile deserte with lub!
Vanou: Kevin Smith, aka Silent Bob, in Jersey all the way!
Jack Ruttan: Sarah Berhardt in Montmartre, Paris
Joanie (Pupuce): Josh Duhamel, Iles Turquoises
Daniele: Kim Rossi Stuart (Romanzo Criminale) dans une villa en Toscane
It’s Josh again, I forgot Denise Richards, Sharon Stone, Marylin Monroe and Jayne Manfield.
Alexandre: Alyson Hannigan au camp de l’orchestre
Michel Dumais: Sigourney Weaver - Whatever planet but no Aliens please
Martine: Gael Garcia Bernal, chez Ikea (parce qu’etre “domestic” avec lui…ayoye!)
Carl: Sienna Miller dans son loft du film Interview
Photomax: Monicca Bellecci ou elle voudra
GaB: Audrey Tantou et Amande Congdon a Honolulu
Catherine: Marc Beland a Venise
Benoit: Gwyneth Paltrow a St-Tites-des-Caps
Pascale: Johnny Depp en Grece
Marc: Salma Hayek in Merida, Mexico
Zura: Ralph Fiennes and Angelina Jolie in Peru - Machu Pichu
Laurent: Charlotte De Turckheim en Nouvelle Caledonie
Josh forgot to add Salma Hayek
Steve (Fagstein): Mary-Louise Parker or Casey McKinnon. Where? Who the fuck cares!
Etudiant alpha: To Longueuil with the big Lebowski
Pierre-Luc: Kevin Rose a San Francisco
Gharl: Salma Hayek en Italie et/ou dans ma chambre a coucher
Virge: A Casablanca avec Jude Law (wwoo!)
Melanie: En Australie avec Ryan Reynolds
Francis-Louis: Un onzen dans Hokkaido avec Rachel Weist et Karine Vanasse
Marc-Alexandre: Avec Catherine Zeta-Jones au Dieu du Ciel a Montreal
Catherine: Avec Hugh Grant a Ibiza
A.J.: Hedy Lamarr in 1920’s Berlin
Yannou: Philippe Noiret aux Marquises; on irait voir la tombe de Jacques Brel
Elise: A montreal pour l’ete avec Chow Young Fat (de H.K.) le Chinois le plus sexy au monde mangre son age gradissant. Ou? A Bali car, selon Yannick, il n’a pas grand chose a dire mais c’est pas grave car il y a plein de chose a faire.
Sylvain: Ananova, she’s unreal! We would go to Second Life for sure…how about Cyberia?
Joss de Pieds dans l’eau, tete en ville.: Partir faire le tour du Mexique en moto avec Galorie Garcia Bernal
Artemisia: Avec Ethan Hawk aux Seychelles…mais Jonas Parker ferait l’affaire
Jonas Parker (Alston): Karine Vanasse in Amsterdam…to get her all relaxed
As for me, I’d love to discover Cambodia with Angelina Jolie who seems to be on a lot of threesome-approved lists. Unfortunately she’d probably kill the mood by trying to bring back another kid.

I just got back from the Yulblog meeting and turned on the news to hear that my wife’s biggest phobia has just become reality. A major highway bridge linking Minneapolis and St-Paul broke into several pieces and fell into the Mississippi River…during rush hour.

Looks like our infrastructure isn’t the only one to be messed up.

More than 50 vehicles were on the bridge at the time and there were casualties, 7 for now, but rescue operations had to be interrupted because of darkness. It could have been even worse, a school bus with 60 students and teachers was left teetering over the void on the central section which fell down but, fortunately, didn’t sink.

And now I’m realizing that I have several good friends in the area. Crossing my fingers.

Metroblogging Minneapolis has all the details.

[update] As you can guess, I’ve been watching the news instead of writing the participant’s list from the Yulblog meeting. I hope to have it done sometimes tomorrow today.

J’ai souvent entendu des commentaires/plaintes sur le fait que Metroblogging Montréal ne reflète pas parfaitement l’image de notre cité. Sauf quelques exceptions, la plupart de nos billets sont en anglais…ou en franglais. J’ai donc décide de lancer cette invitation officielle aux bloggeurs (ou carnetistes) francophones qui seraient intéressés à se joindre a nous.

Il vous suffit de m’écrire à nantel[arobas]digitalapoptosis.com ou de passer me voir au Yulblog de ce soir.

De plus, je vous serais reconnaissant de bien vouloir publiciser cette invitation, surtout si vous avez un blog francophone.

Merci.

Vanou said it best, Flickr really knows how to throw a party!

Celebrating not only the release of its 24 hours of Flickr mini-book, but also its new multilingual format, Flickr ended a four-cities tour with its biggest party yet. Yes, we beat London, Paris and Berlin when it came to attendance.

The city’s photographers and bloggers were treated to lots of schwag, including t-shirts, excellent food from Angus Dei, an open bar, great music (but not too intrusive) and an excellent ambiance in the perfect location.

As you can expect, lots of photons were captured during this event and more than 400 images are already online.

I’ve known René Lapalme from Une vie en musique for a little more than a year but I really “met him” at the December Yulblog when he interviewed me for his show on Radio Centre-Ville. By a funny coincidence, he published the interview on my birthday.

In late February, he announced that he was taking a break because he was feeling tired all the time. He posted a couple more shows but on his return to blogging on March 31st it was becoming obvious that things were not getting better. His blog is still online so you can follow the rest of the story (I just don’t have the heart to relate the rest of it). Unfortunately it doesn’t end well.

This afternoon, I heard from Martine that Rene passed away last Saturday at the young age of 42. From his symptoms and the rapid progression of the disease, I’d guess that it was pancreatic cancer, one of the least survivable kind.

This is coming at a time when another one of our own is going through his first round of chemotherapy. Hopefully we’ll have enough good vibes to spare.

[update] Radio Centre-Ville 102,3 CINQ-FM will be commerating his many contributions between 6 and 8 tonight. The podcast will subsequently be available at radiocentreville.com.

Friday June 22nd has a big red circle on my calendar. Not only will it be the beginning of my summer vacation (yeah!), but it also marks the day that Flickr is coming to town.

This event is part of a book launch commemorating the 24 hours of Flickr. According to its Upcoming page, the location is still being arranged but one of its notable participant will be Heather Champ who is not only famous for her many contributions to the photoblogging world, but also happens to be one of the founding member of Yulblog.