2008 U.S. Nationals: Land of 10,000 Blogs by Karen

Wednesday, January 23, 2008
I think I may have reached skating overload…

I think I may have reached skating overload … that point when there are so many things to think about and mention that I can’t remember any of them specifically. My brain is a vessel for random skating thoughts pinging around, occasionally bouncing off something else — the something else generally either being useless information, like algebra, or a daydream about George Clooney.

So, here’s some random:

*I’ve been watching skating long enough to now remember when the coaches of some of the skaters competing this week were competitive skaters themselves. Ryan Jahnke is here with a junior lady, Jenni Meno & Todd Sand are here with a pair team, Aaron Parchem & Zuzanna Szwed are here with a pair team, Natalia Mishkutenok has a junior lady, Renee Roca has a dance team, Angela Nikodinov and Ivan Dinev have a pair team, and Brandon Forsyth has a dance team.

*Also, Rohene Ward, who will be competing later this week, was coaching a junior lady earlier this week.

*The junior men were amazing today, and while Adam Rippon was, as many expected, the leader, I also enjoyed seeing such skaters as Grant Hochstein, who moves beautifully across the ice, and Max Aaron, who has a fun program to “Drum Line.”

*If X=(Y/2)-(Y(Y/1.175), what is Y?

*The arena staff is incredibly nice — keeping up the “Minnesota Nice” reputation.

*More skater sightings: Pamela O’Connor and Jonathan O’Dougherty in the audience to watch the CDs; Ben Miller getting his credential, Ben Miller getting coffee, Ben Miller walking around the arena (hmm, this is a running theme at events I go to. I always seem to run into Ben Miller, even when he isn’t a competitor).

*I am NOT stalking Ben Miller

*George Clooney, George Clooney, George Clooney

*Watched senior pairs tonight, and for the first time in a while, I didn’t once worry that blood would be shed (with the exception of the exact moment when the woman sitting next to me finally had enough out of the four men who ceaselessly chattered throughout the event). Hooray U.S. senior pairs!

*I imagine that the only thing more stressful than being the parent of a skater at Nationals is being the parent of three skaters at Nationals, and the only thing more stressful than that would be to be the parent of three skaters at nationals while you have a broken leg. So cyber hugs to Bonnie Gilles for surviving this week so far, and my suggestion is that people should send her chocolate.

* If X=(Y/2)-(Y(Y/1.175), then Y must equal George Clooney
posted by IDC Staff at 11:58 PM

Monday, January 21, 2008
I learned a few things today…

I learned a few things today. The most important thing I learned was actually a mathematical formula: If X=25, then MDK(t) must = 61 +27. Or, if the time to get to the Xcel center equals twenty five minutes, then the time to get Michelle, Daphne, and Karen to the Xcel must equal 61 minutes of intended time plus 27 minutes of actual time.

This was something we did not know 24 hours ago.

Last night, the three of us sat down and figured out what time we needed to leave the apartment in order to get to the Xcel center in time to watch the novice CDs. Then we subtracted the minutes we would need to accomplish certain tasks in order to make getting out of the apartment at that time possible. Basically, we had a reverse auction.

*bangs gavel*

“Karen can drive to the arena in twenty-five minutes, 9:05 going once. Over in the corner we have Michelle needs to find out a few more things about credentialing, and thinks getting to the rink 20 minutes earlier would be better. 8:45 going once, going twice. No, wait, build another ten minutes into that in case the car is reluctant to start. 8:35 going once, anyone got anything earlier to think about, 8:35 going twice, 8:35 sold to the lady with the Mazda Protege.

The next item up for bid is alarm clock setting. Daphne opens the bidding with a six minute shower and a granola bar. 8:29 going once. Michelle wants time to boil tea and toast bagels, and a ten minute shower of her own. 8:19 going once. Anyone want more time, ok, now I need a shower too, and today, also make up, as I looked like death yesterday (death is not a good look for me). 8:00 going once, twice … What about setting the VCR for the “Amazing Race” finale? Gotta tape the race, 7:58 going once, now the little lady in the corner bids an extra ten minutes for packing up camera equipment, do I have a bid for fifteen, yes there we have it, fifteen for equipment pack up, 7:43 going once, anyone want to bid 7:34, yes we have a bid of 7:34 for snooze button maximization. 7:34 going once, twice, 7:34 SOLD.

Ah, the best laid plans. . .

We got on the road at 9:02.

We’ll have to remember to pad the bids with actual time (that includes email checking, door sticking, key losing, and soothing the hurt feelings of the cat whose tail has been stepped on) … and then on the back end adding in time for those unexpected things at the arena, such as a long line of cars going into the Xcel parking lot.

Were all those people going to watch the novice CDs? That would have been pretty awesome. But the hats and gun racks quickly clued us in: these were more of the Pheasant People. I had no idea there were so many pheasant hunters in Minnesota. In fact, I didn’t even know we had pheasants.

We left the Pheasant People at Rivercenter, sped through the skyway to the arena, and I managed to get to my seat in time to watch the first CD. There didn’t appear to a huge turn out (there were more Pheasant People in Rivercenter than dance fans in the audience), but a lot more than might have been expected at that hour. My regular seat is up in the club level, which means that while I can’t see facial expressions, I can see the dance patterns really well. And after all the teams skate, there’s an amoeba carved into the surface. Not that I get to watch CDs very often in general, but watching them from above is quite a different perspective. You can see which teams have huge watch-out-for-the-wall patterns verses those who have a skinny amoeba.

Later in the day, Michelle and I shared an elevator with a Pheasant Vendor, and we learned that there is some pretty intense Pheasant politicking going on. There are Pheasant Lobbyists, even, and they want to recruit people to their cause. Although, I’m not exactly sure what that cause is. (Michelle’s comment: We were shocked to learn that some anti-Pheasant Official was in fact (*gasp*) a Republican! We then learned that Evil Urban People are the biggest threat to Pheasant People. Therefore, sticking with Karen’s math formula theme: (R)+EUP < (D)+GRP where G = Good and R = Rural.) Perhaps the Pheasant People and the ice dance people should become allies. The Pheasant People could bring in more audience for early morning CDs (seeing as they’re up in the morning anyway), and ice dancers could create a new CD in honor of the Pheasant, a Pheasant Dance, if you will. (Michelle’s comment: As opposed to the Peasant Dances that we have in this year’s original dance.) However, it would have to be a CD with music that people don’t mind listening to over and over. Even though it’s now 15 hours later, I still have the Kilian tune in my head. I think it might have a mental half-life of at least three days (just in time for it to be replaced by the Yankee Polka). Yesterday, during the Kilian practice, one of the novice men competitors exited the locker room, stood and listened for a moment, and then said to his friend, “I want that to be my program music next year.” I’m relatively sure he was kidding, but who knows? If not, the obvious reply is, “if you like it, switch to ice dance!” I’m all about ice dancer recruiting, especially for those with affection for CD tunes. I just hope the Pheasant People don’t get to him first. (Michelle’s comment: Perhaps Johnny Weir can loan his Swan outfit, which then can be adapted with real pheasant feathers, blood, and a dog’s head clamped onto the wrist. Oh, and a camouflage headband.)

posted by IDC Staff at 8:14 AM

Sunday, January 20, 2008
Half an hour later, I was still in the Skyway.

You know how when you have something you don’t want to lose, you put that something in a safe place so you won’t lose it? And invariably, that safe place is not a place you normally put things, which means that three months later, when you are trying to find that something, you can’t remember where you put it.

Exchange “All-Event Ticket” for “something” and you’ll get an idea what my morning was like.

My Nationals ticket was not in the bin where I put my bills. My Nationals ticket was not in any of my desk drawers. My Nationals ticket was not in my file cabinet. It was also not:
*in any bookshelf
*in the freezer
*under the bed
*stuck between the bed and the wall
*in the box where I keep all the warranty cards that I’ve always meant to send in, but haven’t
*in my backpack
*in a bag full of used books
*in my skate bag
*in a purse that I use three times a year (however, if I wanted to know where my Skate America 2001 ticket stub was, I now know)
*under any of Daphne or Michelle’s suitcases
*under a cat

I was beginning to worry that I had accidentally thrown it out during this week’s cleaning frenzy, when Daphne located it in the magazine rack.

OK.

Not sure why I ever thought that was a good place to store anything (except magazines), but fine. Ticket found. We were on our way. I had downloaded directions to the Crowne Plaza where Daphne and Michelle were to pick up their credentials. Of course, I put the directions in a safe place so I wouldn’t lose them.

Ten minutes later, I had to search through all my coat pockets and car compartments before finding the directions in my backpack.

What else did lose today?

My car.

Sort of.

I knew where my car was. It was in the parking garage of the Crowne Plaza.

I just didn’t know where I was.

After leaving the ice-dance crew in credentialing, I walked outside over to the Xcel to catch the novice men’s practice. Following a full afternoon watching practices, I went back to the Crowne Plaza. Given that it was dark at that point, and it was also that four-letter word that I promised I would not use any more in this blog, I decided to take the Skyway back to the hotel.

Half an hour later, I was still in the Skyway.

The skyway is a Habitrail … a Habitrail without any useful maps. Eventually, I gave up and went outside, only to discover I had gone so far past the Crowne Plaza that I had to walk pretty much the equivalent distance of what I would have walked had I just gone directly from the Xcel.

Oh and guess who got lost getting from St. Paul back to my apartment?

That would be me.
posted by IDC Staff at 11:42 AM

Saturday, January 19, 2008
No visitors are going to crystallize on my watch!

Until this week, I’ve always “just missed” skating championships when they happened to occur in the city where I was living. Granted, there would never have been a skating championship in my hometown of Vienna, WV, because there was no arena. In fact, no ice rink, either. And while I might have wished to see skaters competing on the city park pond that occasionally froze (once every ten years), I realized that maneuvering around the cryogenic lily pads would have necessitated too much creative choreographic improvisation. Nationals did come to Pittsburgh when I was a teenager. And we did take a family weekend up to Pittsburgh … the week before that Nationals. I wanted to come back. My parents said no. Later I moved to Cincinnati … a couple of months after Cincinnati hosted Worlds. I missed Minneapolis’s 1991 hosting of Nationals by about the same time period. Finally in 1998, Worlds came to town. That same week, I came down with a mystery virus, and the doctor insisted that my 104 degree fever and lack of white blood cells needed to be treated inside the confines of a hospital room. I was all, “come on, give me a mask and an I.V., and I’ll just drag it around the Target Center,” but they didn’t go for that plan.

So yeah. I keep missing skating Championships. I’ve gotten to see cheesefests, Skate America, Regionals, and Sectionals. But nothing like a Nationals, and I’ve been counting down the days for St. Paul 2008 for two years. It’s kind of become “my” Nationals, and I want St. Paul to come across as a very cool place to visit.

I said: “cool.”

“Cool” as in slang for fantastic, not cool as in, “damn it, hell froze over again.” Native Minnesotans pride themselves on being immune to the cold. And when they complain, that’s when you know things are getting bad. Yesterday my co-worker–my co-worker, a native Minnesotan–came up to me and said, “I got an ice cream headache this morning from the wind chill.”

I guess I should have framed my request for “cool,” a little more specifically. There are many times when a Minnesota winter includes reasonable temperatures in the 20s and 30s, with light fluffy snow drifting (or sometimes, a more active verb than drifting, like, “avalanche” but that’s just a matter of intensity) down to create Christmas postcard street scenes. That was what I wanted for the week of Nationals. That would have been “cool.”

Note to the state: if people coming off the planes at the airport are flash frozen, it will not do much for the tourism business.

This kind of weather means several things (aside from the obvious temperature issue). It means:

*It’s all anyone will talk about.

*It’s all anyone will blog about.

*Strangers on the street will ask, “cold enough for you?”

*When they find out you’re visiting, you’ll get stories like, “Yeah, it’s cold now, but you should have been here in 1996, when it was minus 40 for three weeks, and the weather guys on TV were illustrating that by taking pans of boiling water outside, tossing the water up in the air, and showing how it instantly crystallized in mid air.” (Note: yes, really. No, I didn’t kill myself, but I thought about it). Then they’ll nonchalantly unzip their coat, hand you their gloves, saying that you’ll need it more than they will, and walk off whistling in the wind (until they get out of sight, at which point they’ll run into the closest Caribou, swearing).

When I heard my coworkers complaining about the weather yesterday, I started to get concerned. My houseguests are going to freeze. At which point I ran out to Target and bought some extra furry socks, gloves, and more blankets. Electric blankets. I made a crock of soup. I have lots of tea, and two tea kettles. My cats have decided to get into the act, and have stayed glued to laps. No visitors are going to crystallize on my watch!

Welcome to St. Paul 2008.

It’ll warm up.

Then we can talk about the skating.
posted by IDC Staff at 9:20 PM