Postcard from Indy

Your intrepid Portland ice dancers (Tim, Terri and Bob) are reporting live from the 20th annual Indianapolis International Ice Dance Seminar. After an interesting redeye trip here (more on that later), we arrived to thunderstorms.

After a brief nap at the hotel we headed to the rink and skated for a couple of hours on beautiful ice with only a few other skaters around. We had a lesson with Master Rated Coach Sandy Lamb on the Viennese which fixed quite a few things. Then, after a tornado warning where we had to leave the ice to go to the basement (this was later found to NOT be a tornado warning so we returned quickly to the ice), we did the 2-hour Ravensburger Waltz clinic with Donny Adair (also Master Rated). Wow, did we learn a lot, and were we sore after 5 hours of skating!

When we finally got off the ice we found that someone had stolen Tim's (only pair of) shoes. Since he works for a shoe company that isn't really tragic, but we did have to trek late at night to the 24-hour drugstore to purchase some flip flops for him to wear.

After dinner, which we spent discussing all that we had learned, we headed back to the hotel. At least we thought we were headed toward the hotel ... but somehow we took a wrong turn. Then the rain started to pour down. We were carrying our skates, dressed in shorts and Tim's brand new wonderful shoes ... not a cab to be found.

Of course we are used to rain from home, but this rain (which was warm) included a sound and light show which was a bit scary. The lightning was spectacular. When we finally made it to our hotel, drenched, we were more than exhausted.

Since we had taken a redeye here we decided to sleep in today and skip the Midnight Blues clinic since we hadn't worked on it beforehand, saving our energy for the Cha Cha Congelado this afternoon. This morning we found out that the lakeside town where Sandy lives was flooded and the highway was closed so she couldn't get to the rink! I'm sitting in the hotel room now, watching the lightning storm. We'll go skate this afternoon as long as there is not a tornado.

Some interesting pictures, and more about our plane travels here, coming soon.
Terri