Well, I've been sitting back, enjoying reading everyone's accounts of the weekend, and decided that this shall be my strategy from now on, 'cause waiting to 'fill in the blanks' leaves me so much more time to think! LOL!
It was a great weekend of skating - I told Mtnme and Wags that I just may opt for skipping World Cups in the future (sorry, Charles
) in favor of the more lightly-attended National events. AmCup1 was
absolutely my favorite of the 3 events that I've attended. Kudos to Greg Oly and the Plymouth-Wayzata Speedskating Club! (Though I think Wags was ready to fire the starter - she thought he was 'teasing' the skaters by waiting too long to fire the gun.)
Being partial to my SoCal skaters, I just have to brag. They did so well this weekend! We have
JR and
Maria who made the WC team, but in addition there were
Lezleigh (9th overall) and
Tina (11th) for the ladies;
Joey Lindsey (11th) and
Eddie Alvarez (12th) for the men.
Walter Rusk, who crashed, cut himself and had to be taken away for stitches on Saturday, finished 14th overall, despite being unable to skate at all on Sunday.
Kyle Uyehara and
Julian Wood just missed the top 16...
Wilma Boomstra was a busy lady, but her hard work sure paid off!
As for the Pee Police - trotting along after JR for 45 minutes as he celebrated being on his
first World Cup Team was priceless! If first impressions mean anything, he's as admirable a young man as he is a skater, and he’s a strong addition to a formidable team of both men and ladies - congratulations, Cowboy! We’ll miss you in SoCal!
On that subject, I'll add a quirky memory - when we finally finished up with the USADA people, they told us that we could keep our pens (they had given them to us so the athletes could use them to sign their consent and so we could log in the time that we notified them that they would need to be tested). We tried to leave our pens with them, and the guy kept saying 'no, you keep them.' After the scoldings and admonitions all of us had gotten before the whole thing started, I was truly afraid that if we didn’t take those darn pens we were going to get arrested for defying a direct government order!
Hmmm, Mtnme, maybe we could auction 'em off for TRF funds!
Also, Mtnme, you can say 'I told you so' about the Baver's Bada**es pins. They were tastefully done, and were definitely a hit! And thanks, too, for egg-ing me on to post the doggerel in the first place. Only YOU know how long it took me to work up the guts.
Now you have work to do, 'cause we're gonna need lots of those pins for the World Cups!
Sadly, we didn't get much sightseeing done - we never made it to the Falls, we never made it to the Mall of America (though we did do some shopping at the Mall of Malone - Jordan has some cool stuff for sale, and we'll get a link to y'all as soon as one becomes available). We did spend some time at the skating equipment table browsing the 'tips' that were for sale (the skaters put them on the fingers of their left gloves to skim the ice in the turns). I was musing about how I could adapt them as fake fingernails, but decided they might look a little odd at my next luncheon
(though they could sure scoop out a lion's share of guacamole - who needs chips when you have 'tips'?). There were some really cute ones - 4 ants with 1 cupcake... a set with 'no right turn' symbols, etc.
I'll second what Mtnme said about Allison - bubbly, friendly, and stunningly pretty. I think people sometimes mistake Game Face for Inapproachability. ALL the skaters were friendly - common sense says just don't mess with 'em when they're doing their job.
As Mtnme said, a highlight was definitely the long conversation with Jordan. After Mtnme and Wags went ‘where no fan had gone before’ in the airport, I was worried that if he saw them at the rink he might call security
, so when I saw his mom, I took the opportunity to ask her if Jordan had told her about the 2 ladies who tried to ‘pick him up’ at the airport, and she said “Oh, was that YOU?” I said no (I was actually
hiding waiting in the car… well,
somebody had to be the Getaway Driver… )
She told me that Jordan thought it was really sweet, and shortly after I had relayed that info to Mtnme and Wags, Jordan made his way down to thank them in person!
Anyhow, I left Minneapolis with many great memories, several new acquaintances, and without my wristband (the wrist is healing nicely, Wags…) –
but I got a pen! 
And as a final gift – here’s my ‘money shot’ (the only decent one I got all weekend). Jordan and his two new
stalkers friends.
~Lori
Hey Levi, as long as you're not falling DURING the race, that's what counts!