Wilkes-Barre, PA -- Day 2

Wow, I haven't slept as badly as I did last night in months. Let's hope it's not a trend. It's not that the bed wasn't especially comfy: it's just that the pillows were so sumptuous that my head would sink in so deep it would wrap around me to the point of suffocation. I should have brought my own pillow from home.

Despite that, we were up and dancing in time for the morning workshops. We started with the Advanced workshop with Tom Miller, working particularly on "peel & trail" and "trail off." At the beginning, there was one very strong square and another entirely composed of newbies; in the next set, I intervened to distribute some of the newbies around the floor: workshops work best when there is a blend of experience and the squares are all evenly matched. The rest of the hour worked vastly better than it started.

We moved to the C1 hall for the next hour of workshops. Betsy Gotta drilled on "little", "plenty" and components thereof. I dropped out half way through the hour as my right knee was starting to feel uncomfortable but I can confidently report that I acquitted myself very well. In fact, nearly all of the C1 squares I participated in throughout the day were extremely fluid, confident and precise: each one was a delight.

Betsy called two tips of class-level C2 for us by special request. At C2, she reads pre-written material but she was able to translate several calls we haven't yet learned in class into calls or components we could manage. Again, it was fun and we C2 newbies didn't embarrass our ancestors unduly.

Dinner in Wilkes-Barre proved to be more difficult than we thought it would be. It seems everyone in this part of Pennsylvania goes out for dinner en masse: we tried three restaurants in sequence to find enormous crowds waiting for tables. We finally landed at a Ground Round with only a 20 minute wait for a table. Even once we were seated, however, service was slow and the food took 45 minutes to arrive once we had ordered. We were late returning to dancing but I still took a few minutes to get a slice of chocolate cake to go. :-)

With my knee still twinging, I restricted my dancing to a couple of C1 sets but got a stack of photos, soon to be posted here. My purchase of 50/50 tickets and basket raffle tickets were in vain: I didn't win a thing.

We're now back in our room, resting & relaxing. I still need to sort & label my photos but I've transferred them off my camera to make space. More soon.

Wilkes-Barre, PA -- Day 2

Wow, I haven't slept as badly as I did last night in months. Let's hope it's not a trend. It's not that the bed wasn't especially comfy: it's just that the pillows were so sumptuous that my head would sink in so deep it would wrap around me to the point of suffocation. I should have brought my own pillow from home.

Despite that, we were up and dancing in time for the morning workshops. We started with the Advanced workshop with Tom Miller, working particularly on "peel & trail" and "trail off." At the beginning, there was one very strong square and another entirely composed of newbies; in the next set, I intervened to distribute some of the newbies around the floor: workshops work best when there is a blend of experience and the squares are all evenly matched. The rest of the hour worked vastly better than it started.

We moved to the C1 hall for the next hour of workshops. Betsy Gotta drilled on "little", "plenty" and components thereof. I dropped out half way through the hour as my right knee was starting to feel uncomfortable but I can confidently report that I acquitted myself very well. In fact, nearly all of the C1 squares I participated in throughout the day were extremely fluid, confident and precise: each one was a delight.

Betsy called two tips of class-level C2 for us by special request. At C2, she reads pre-written material but she was able to translate several calls we haven't yet learned in class into calls or components we could manage. Again, it was fun and we C2 newbies didn't embarrass our ancestors unduly.

Dinner in Wilkes-Barre proved to be more difficult than we thought it would be. It seems everyone in this part of Pennsylvania goes out for dinner en masse: we tried three restaurants in sequence to find enormous crowds waiting for tables. We finally landed at a Ground Round with only a 20 minute wait for a table. Even once we were seated, however, service was slow and the food took 45 minutes to arrive once we had ordered. We were late returning to dancing but I still took a few minutes to get a slice of chocolate cake to go. :-)

With my knee still twinging, I restricted my dancing to a couple of C1 sets but got a stack of photos, soon to be posted here. My purchase of 50/50 tickets and basket raffle tickets were in vain: I didn't win a thing.

We're now back in our room, resting & relaxing. I still need to sort & label my photos but I've transferred them off my camera to make space. More soon.