France-England Trip

Now on to the dart stuff :)

It has been a really busy last month with the run at the PDC US Open to the semis, home for three days then off to the Bullshooter to win the International team for Canada with John Part, Chris White and Shawn Brennamen. Taking 5th in the pro singles after losing my first match and crawling my way back up the draw to 5th place (stupid double ;) ) Back home for four days then off to La Rochelle France to represent The USA and Medalist Darts in the International part of the  INTERPRESTIGE CUP.  It was a good showing with 2 finals and a Quarter final appearances in the three events we were able to play over there.  It was an amazing trip with a lot of history- it was wonderous to walk down streets that were 200 years older then either Canada or America- and a very relaxing pace of life.

After the 5 days in La Rochelle and a day in Paris it was time to head over to the UK to play in Bristol for the PDC Players Championship.  I got a day to travel around the village of Bristol (on foot) and found a lot of interesting things that you just stumble upon like a old graveyard where the local nobility and such were buried.  The grave stones dated the early 1800's and told stories about who the people were which made it really interesting.I was lucky enough to spend the evening with Graeme Stoddart and we found our way down to Steve Brown's (PDC) pub The RED DRAGON (owned by Steve's Dad).  A very friendly place designed to hold a lot of darts with 5 boards with one mini stage to show case the local talent. The Player's Championship was held at the local football stadium in an exhibition hall that was located right downtownBristol.  I was sharing with Gary Mawson so we ended up staying out at a great country resort ( a old country castle) that seemed like a million miles away...11 mile to be exact but in the UK that is a long way :)  We were lucky that Phil Taylor was staying there as well so he was nice enough to let us tag along for the weekend for some free rides (thanks again to Phil).  The only bad part was when I lost in the third round and Gary in the forth we had to wait for Phil who was playing amazing (as normal) take down the final with dominating scoring and finishing.The second day of the tournament did not go as well as I had hoped losing 3-2 to Steve Evans after missing 5 darts to seal the victory in the last leg... but that is darts.  I grabbed a ride with my friend Dave Askew and headed back to London to finally come back home 13 days later(a 20 hr journey home), tired but with a lot of great moments, memories and a heightened thirst for success in the world of darts.