oh man, its been a really great, and really exhausting day…

Last night was a funny one though - I went to the start of the Friday night skate here, to do some slalom, and found myself completely incapable of human interaction… everyone is sometimes outgoing, and sometimes shy - I tend to oscillate from extreme to extreme, but usually I can muster up ’sociable & outgoing’ when needed. Not last night. Man, my jetlag was so bad, I just kept on slaloming becasue even though it was exhausting, it was less frightening than the possibility of someone actually trying to start conversation with me in that state…  It really sucks, because there were loads of nice people there that I’d love to have had the chance to chat with & get to know.

Today was awesome though - the mornings workshop was great fun, and we had a really great location. The afternoons workshop was something else though. It was like ‘cone camp’ or maybe ’style workshop’. It was 4 skaters, from Seattle, Philadelphia and Massachusetts, most of whom have already done 2 workshops with me, and 2 of who have already entered international comps. So, I got to do something a little different. Today, all we did was style. Or, as I put it, ‘maintaining dignity in competitions’. Basically looking good in cones. So we took some basic moves, and made them look stylish. We looked at how to achieve a fluid look, how to make your slalom more dynamic looking, what to do with arms, how to keep good posture etc etc - its amazing what you can do with moves just by working on the style with which you do them. We all agreed that its the difference between ‘meh’ and ‘wow’ when you see them done.

We also discussed the importance of wearing unzipped jackets or unbuttoned shirts…