bjarvis | Feb. 10th, 2008

We've survived our 9th Advanced & Challenge square dance fly-in in Washington DC. For as long as I've been helping out, this was probably our smoothest performance yet.

I took the bulk of Friday off work to get the fly-in registration desk set up.

cuyahogarvr came downtown with me, and thank god too: we had two sound systems, stationery for the registration table, signs for the table & halls, check-in lists, misc flyers and our own luggage.

Set-up and sound checks went perfectly although I needed to re-arrange some furniture in the dance spaces. With all in place, I had nearly two hours of time to kill before the dancers arrived.

We had callers

cjsmith, Mike Jacobs, Dave Wilson and

justetthon working three halls from Friday night through Saturday afternoon. I had never met

cjsmith previously and while I had danced to Dave Wilson in the past, it wasn't at C1 --I also don't recall him previously being quite that diabolical in his choreo although I may have simply blanked out those episodes. I recorded approximately 30 tips for transcription and analysis... I have a lot of work to do on that in the near future.

The GCA calling hour Saturday night went well.

kent4str emceed while Osamu Miyabe, Lee Griffiths, Ken Sale and I alternated A2 and C1 tips. There were precious few dancers that late in the evening but we were happy to have them there for the ride.

LJ sightings:

cuyagarvr,

kent4str,

raperez,

lggriffiths,

ann0625,

apparentparadox,

markens,

davidlevine,

kateyule,

deege,

discord35,

greyguy_sf,

zipperbear,

zzbear,

sfbearhoney and

stormecho, in addition to callers

cjsmith and

justetthon.

I also didn't take anything like as many photographs as in prior years but I hope to have the lot on my website some time soon. In the interim, I offer: