Fun Times At Cactus

I spent the day at Alltel, I was there from 9:30 a.m. or so until 9:15 p.m.!  I will post about my skate separately, but I wanted to write about the day here.

My buddy Jose skated (Adult Silver) at 10:05.  He didn't have a good skate, which was surprising to me (and him!) since he's done this program very successfully many times including AN.  Geez!  Skate buddies Melissa and Tracy were there watching too -- it was good to have some company and really good to see Tracy, I had not seen her in a while.

After Jose we watched the Adult Silver ladies and then the Open Juvenile girls, then I had to get some food and change for my practice ice at 12:30.

Practice ice went well.  It was a "low" session so a lot of basic skills girls.  They had a random drawing for order to play music.  I warmed up my legs and ran through my jumps and various pieces of my program.  I was lucky that my music came up to play about 12 - 15 minutes into the session so I was nicely warmed up.   My program runthrough went pretty well (about as well as it's ever gone), which basically means that I biffed the salchow but everything else went okay and I finished almost on time.

After practice ice I had lunch with Jose at the restaurant there (18 Degrees) and just hung out (the afternoon was all basic skills) and relaxed.  A little before 4 was the Intermediate free skate which was pretty good.  At 5 p.m. I went and checked in, gave them my music.  They were giving out really nice bags that said Cactus Classic Scottsdale, AZ on them and the obligatory bottle of water.   I finished watching Intermediate, then went and found JJ and we conferred on stuff and then it was time to get ready to skate.

After my skate I had a chance to say hi to a bunch of people who had come, it was very encouraging and made me happy.  Then I went and changed out of my skates and went to collect my medal (they offered engraving for $5, how cool!) and pay for my video.

After that I went and watched Adult Silver artistic, and the novice ladies, intermediate men, and junior ladies free skates, and went home and conked out exhausted!