Lachine

In three years living in NH and ten boating in New England, I’d some how never made it to Lachine until last weekend. But, Quinn and I rallied a crew and headed up to Montreal for a day trip on Sunday, and wow. It’s pretty damn good.

We left Hanover at 7ish on Sunday morning. Quinn seemed a little too chipper when I picked him up, but it turned out his hangover just hadn’t hit him yet because he was still a little drunk. Occupational hazard. We picked up Alan, Simone, Erik, Justin, Will, and Dave on the way to Canada and then attempted to cross the border. Unfortunately, the Canadians were a little skeptical of my passport picture (I would be too) and pulled us aside giving the van a brief search, but eventually let us go. When we finally got out of the van in Montreal, it was…of course, 50 degrees and raining. I’d made a personal promise to never playboat in weather where I needed my drysuit, but having driven 3.5 hours to get there I had to violate it — soon I’ll have a new Immersion Research Comp LX Dry Top so I won’t have to wear the drysuit. Thanks IR!

Lachine is everything it’s cracked up to be. I’ve been to the Ottawa twice, and other than that have surfed at Hartlands and Tville. Big Joe is far and away the biggest wave I’ve ever surfed. Little Joe is definitely bigger than most things I’d surfed before. Even Pyramid was pretty huge. It turns out, unfortunately, that I’m terrible at playboating. I missed the waves on the first attempt and had to pull my way back up the series of ropes without even having had a surf. On the second attempt, I got into a somewhat controllable front surf on Big Joe and kept eying “The Pit,” the steep region on surfer’s left that’s even more big, bouncy and out of control, and couldn’t help but think to myself, “People really go in that willingly? I’m going to get my ass kicked if I go in there.” So I blunted on the shoulder and then washed off…again and again.

Pyramid is a much more manageable ride. It was surging in and out while we were there: you could catch it just about any time, but before throwing anything you had to look back and check if the foam pile was still there. I had some epic front surfs on Pyramid, along with a few paddle spins to keep it steezey. I threw a blunt or two, but flushed off while backwards every time…I’m starting to think going to Hartlands regularly is making me worse at playboating, so I might have to stop going.

Overall, Lachine is awesome. I wish I was better at playboating so I wasn’t so discouraged by my rides. And, it seems like I can’t get better at playboating by going to Hartlands, so I’ll probably be headed up to Lachine a few more times before it gets too cold, unless it finally starts raining around here and creeks come back in.

Afterwards, we of course had to have poutine before heading back to the US. So disgusting, yet so good. I personally found the poutine in Havre St. Pierre (at the takeout of the Romaine) much better than the Montreal poutine, but it was more of a real dish up there. In Montreal it was a plate of fries with globs of fat poured on top of it.

The rest of my Romaine TR is coming soon, I promise.