2015 ACI Blog #2: The modern Chaz Michael Michaels

Hey all! This is the ginger half of the team, reporting on day 2!

Today started out nice and rested, as Karina and I didn’t have practice until 1:30pm. First thing after waking up, my roommate Alex Johnson and I went downstairs for breakfast. Sitting in a restaurant and hearing 4 different languages in rapid conversation is pretty crazy, but I’m sure by tomorrow I will have gotten used to it. The hotel is hosting a ton of skaters from different countries, and I hope I get to meet many of them before my time in Canada is up. That being said, the event feels just like one at home would, especially being surrounded by Team USA and not having a huge time change. Seeing big international names walking around like Megan Duhamel/Eric Radford definitely keeps me in reality.

After breakfast, I went back upstairs and did a little workout (so I didn’t go the whole day before my practice without moving) and watched Canadian Netflix. That’s something I had forgotten that I had been told about; Netflix has different titles in different countries. Lots of documentaries about maple syrup and mooses. Meese? I’m going to google the plural of moose. Also, I lied about the documentaries. I was watching House. That kept me busy for a few hours, until the time came to make myself pretty enough to go in front of people. Fortunately that takes about 10 minutes if you’re a boy and your hair doesn’t obey you whatever you do to it. I promise if you watch us compete tomorrow and my hair looks unruly: I tried. Or it’s part of the zombie theme of our short dance. The world may never know.

The rink is nice! It’s one of those recreational complexes that has both a skating rink and a pool, and lots of areas to exercise while we’re not exercising. The warmup area is a large room with exercise equipment all pushed to the side, so we can run around and kick our legs up while making sure we look good in the mirror whilst doing it. A few other teams were in with us, and it was fun sharing stories of the various cuts us partners give each other inadvertently. The practice itself went pretty well! As I looked around afterwards, there were many cameras and fans in the stands. Most had been drawn by the modern Chaz Michael Michaels that is Yuzuru Hanyu, but they were a wonderful and supportive audience. We had a draw afterwards (we’ll be 7th to skate) and from there, the day was relaxing and hanging out with the team.

After dinner with the other half, Angela Wang, and Alex, as well as our respective coaches (Patti Gottwein, Erik Schulz, and Tom Dickson) we all went back to the hotel. Angela went to bed for an early practice, while Sean Rabbit joined the other skaters and I for a little movie night. We’re all raring to go, and can’t wait to go show what we can do tomorrow. Until The night after freedance, this is Joe Johnson. Stay classy, ice-dance.com readers.

~ Joe

P.S. I was right on both counts on the plural of moose.