I had a good weekend. Friday night I convinced myself to go ballroom dancing. The debate is a frequent one. On one hand, I know it will be attended by the same older folks that go every week, playing the same songs every week. I don’t really get anything out of going; it’s just keeping me from forgetting the dance moves I already know. On the other hand, I’m not going to meet new people by staying in my apartment. So I went. One particular odd thing happened that hadn’t happened in weeks past. During YMCA, nobody was dancing, so I grabbed the lady who teaches dance classes and brought her out there with the hope that other people would come out, too. After all, the electric slide managed to fill the floor. Anyway, the opposite happened. Rather than come out, there were cheers and clapping and everybody stopped to watch. Admittedly, I was showboating a little, but I didn’t expect that kind of a reaction. After that song was a hustle, which is one of my favorite kinds of dance, so I couldn’t sit that one out. I did take it easy with my partner and managed to catch my breath eventually. Once I left the dance floor, people kept coming up to me and asking where I had learned to dance like that, amazed that I had made most of it up on the spot, and awed that my movements were as smooth as glass and as on the beat as a metronome (I’m not exaggerating. That’s really what they were telling me). I’m always skeptical about my dancing because I see all the little mistakes and room for improvement, but it’s nice to get confirmations like that.
Since the dancing ended at 9, and I was still ready for more, I went over to another place, where there was a live band playing latin music (salsa, cha-cha, and merengue). I danced with a few people and had some fun. I really have no qualms about asking random people to dance. Even if they’re not experienced I find that I can get them to pick it up fairly quickly.
Eventually the dynamics of the place shifted and I went back to the first place for some younger club music, but was sorely disappointed. It was funny to watch everyone in a semicircle around the dance floor not dancing. The demographic was heavily skewed towards the non-dancing males, so I stayed long enough to justify the cover and left. Besides, I had a big day planned.
Saturday I woke up a few times. Eventually I woke up at 8 and sternly lectured myself on waking up so late. I had to hurry to shower and prepare all my ski clothes, and had to inhale breakfast. I went with Dave and his girlfriend to Bluewood. The hill opened at 9, but we figured that since it was our first day of the season and she hadn’t really skied before that we would be better off not skiing the full day. We arrived at 11 and had a good 4 1/2 hours of skiing. On my first run I got off the lift, my body said “oh yeah, I remember this,” and I bombed straight down. We had some really fast runs and some really challenging powder and tree runs. I think I could have continued to ski, so we might have done better to arrive earlier, but it was probably good that we took it fairly easy. I didn’t try any jumps, and never got fast enough that my skiis started bouncing, and afterwards I wasn’t very sore at all.
So that night I tried to go ballroom dancing again, but the normal people who put it on weren’t doing it that week because of some medical emergency with their daughter.
The next morning I tried to go skydiving, but the ceiling was too low and didn’t get better all day. By that I mean the cloud level was around 800 feet or lower, and the temperature and dew point temperature were equal, so the clouds could form as low as the ground and wouldn’t be going away most of the day.
So the happy feet were from being able to dance and ski, and the unhappy feet were from the actual dancing and skiing. Saturday evening and Sunday allowed my feet to get back to normal.