Time Out

It’s been awhile since I have been able to dance, mid August when I was in Portland. I would have been suprised if you were to have told me that I wouldn’t dance again in more than a month.

Time out!

So, I’m sure you’re wondering what the fuck is up with you, I thought you liked ballet.

Well, you are correct there, I love ballet and I try to do it as often as I can. However, I’ve managed to really do a number on my ankle / foot areas. Somehow I kinda twisted / rolled said ankle area somewhere in northern California. I didn’t think much of it at the time and I really didn’t do to much about it aside from the standard ice bags and pills. Then the pain and discomfort just kinda lingerd, and really didn’t go away, not cool, but meh it happens. Plus, I still have the intermentant clicking noise and what feels like a bit like tendonitis both of which I’ve battled for years.

Then I go and crash really hard while cyclocross racing as I’m known to do. Aside from the crash that spit my knee open last year this was the worst crash I’ve ever had the mispleasure to have had. I don’t remember how it happened, all I remember is crawling off the course so I don’t get run over again by the guys who are behind me. All I know is I landed with all my weight onto my knee. It was a wreck that drew a crowd, those usually do not turn out well. I know I’m done immediatly and I might have actually done something bad to myself but nothing life threatning.

FYI Cyclocross crashes are quite common and rarely injure the rider. Trust me, it happens to me all the time.

Long story somewhat short I make an appointment with my doc to get checked out, basically trying to squeeze every ounce of my $20 co-pay. Let’s go nuts and x-ray everything. The knee is fine, just soft tissue damage but nothing that ice and more pills wont take care of. No bone spurs in the ankle, a possible cause of the clicking, but it could be arthritis (I thought that was just for old people). Oh, and a broken finger, a cracked bone in the joint of my left index finger. I’ll gladly take this diagnosis, a broken finger beats a broken knee cap any day of the week.

I’m sure my doctor thinks I’m out of my mind as I attempt to explain cyclocross, how I keep getting hurt crashing and my love of ballet. How many “hobbies” that take a tole on your legs and feet can I get myself into?

Anyway, he suggested that I should take another month or so off from ballet and I should quit crashing during cyclocross racing. It’s hasn’t been easy not taking my normal load of classes every week for the last month, and another month off seems like forever. What will I do?

I’m not in that video, but I have raced in several of the races shown, the US National Championships in particular.

Have Tights, Will Travel

I love to travel and I try to travel as much as I can. This time out, Portland and the San Francisco Bay Area, hellz yeah motha’ trucka!! This trip was loosely scheduled, I had a few airline reservations to meet but aside from those it was completely unscheduled. Go ride the bike (which came with me) ok, hang out in seedy bars, all right, find an open ballet class, okey dokey… I f’ed up in Chicago several month ago, missed a train and missed my class. I was hell bent to not let this happen again, fingers crossed, knock on wood, whatever it takes.

Luckily enough, I found an Int/ Adv class in Portland, and I was able to take the class and still make my train to San Francisco. It was fun, but strange. First off it was at 9:30 am, never seen any class that early. The strangeness crept in when we began doing barre work with our right hand on the barre, that was enough to really throw me. I know there isn’t that much difference between hands, but when you do something for years the same way everyday and then you switch things up it might mess with your head, I can say it did for me. She was so casual about it that I didn’t catch it at first, then it just was really odd and slightly disconcerting.

Then I had all the time in the world in San Francisco, (btw dear readers, don’t call it “Frisco,” they will loose their shit.) however I was never in the right part of town when I needed to be or if I was I didn’t have my magic bag o’ tights.

Not having what you need can really put a cramp in your plans, I suppose I could have just shown up in my jeans. Sure they are tight and stretchy but I can’t imagine wearing them in class, but more importantly I didn’t have a dance belt which means no class regardless of jeans style. There was a girl in a class a year or so ago who wore jeggings to class for quite awhile. And yeah yeah, I know my jeans are snug, some say tight, that’s the way I like them, and I rock the shit out of ‘em, but that’s beside the pointe.

Even if i had made it to a class my legs were already cooked. I had been riding hills (super serial steep grades, crazy steep, like nearly straight up steep) it’s hard not to in San Francisco. I can’t image how awful a class would be with legs that were completely dead and all noodle like. I’ll never bitch about steep streets again for I have met and bested the steepest of streets.

Plans were kinda made to meet up with some fellow ballet bloggers but that didn’t quite workout. It would have been fun, but that’s how things work some days. I will be back to the City soon enough, and hopefully our schedules will work out better next time.

If you should ever find yourself in Portland you have to visit Powell’s Books, it fan-fucking-tastic! It had the biggest dance section I’ve ever seen. The whole aisle, not just a shelf.

I apologize for the less than stellar photography here today, both of my cameras died days into my vacation and I ended up having to rely on my cell phone to record my journeys. Not happy about this at all. All I see are $$$$$ in my future to hopefully get them back up and running. Plus both have been with me more than half way around the globe and are there for me 24/7, pretty bummed.

Please, a moment of silence for my seemingly dead cameras.

Thank you.

 

Tiptoe

Hey California, what’s with road signs that seem to be not so vailed references to ballet (at least to me)? First it was the Turnout signs in the hills between San Jose and Santa Cruz and then today I find Tiptoe Avenue in suburban San Francisco. I got lost while attempting to keep up with my training schedule for the up coming cyclocross season. A teammate and former long time ballet student has given me a training schedule and I think she is secretly trying to kill me. My legs and lungs are burning like the wildfire I saw out my window flying down the west-coast.

Tiptoe Avenue, no sign of Turnout.

I rarely ever hear the word tiptoe unless someone is talking to a small child or someone learns that I’m a wanna be ballet dancer. The conversation usually goes something like this.

“Oh, you do ballet?”

Yep, sure do.

“So do you spin around with your arms raised above your head while on your tiptoes?”

Um, what? Yes, I’ve been known to spin around sometimes with my arms over my head as is done in ballet, from time to time. I’ve been known to jump around as well but not like the song by House of Pain. As for the tiptoes, that’s more of a girl thing. I’m guessing they are thinking of dancing en pointe. However, my faithful readers should remember that I have experimented with dancing en pointe, or “tiptoe” as some people call it, BTW not all that common for dudes, but you probably know that.

Now everyone regardless of chromosome combination will use demi-pointe, it’s as “tiptoe” as most will ever want or need to go, unless you want to learn pointe.

Tiptoe Ave was quite steep, however there were no Turnouts to be found. I guess you could ditch into someone’s yard, but being on the side of a steep hill means yards are super small or just don’t exist at all. FYI just getting around my friends neighborhood ain’t an easy feat, to get to the first major cross street less than a mile gains 434ft with an average grade of 9.3%, thats nuts! For comparison, the climb to the top of the Marin Headlands, you know, the mountains overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge was just slightly steeper with an average grade of over 10%. Crazy steep on both counts. But both are well worth the effort, the view is amazing especially when it is fog or cloud free, which doesn’t happen all that often.

Above the fog, but not for long! It was a foggy and cold ride across the bridge and back home.

Turnout

You never know what you find when you get lost. Well, we weren’t really lost, we were just really late, which almost feels worse than being lost. Frantically wanting to get to the beach before the fog comes in or gets dark, or both. A quick stop to pick out some finishes for my friends new house turned into a multi-hour suck fest. Every loose end raised its ugly head all wanting to be taken care of right then and there.

Finally finished with that were hurriedly headed to the beach through some heavy ass traffic in some mountainish roads in the hybrid Wagon Queen Family Truckster, all twisty and turny as roads sometimes are, I begin to notice signs reading, turnout.

I’m like, whoa what, stop the bus?! Is this some kind of not-so-subliminal message to remind me to work on my turnout? I know it sucks, but OK, I’ll pay more attention to it, I promise! So, am I the only one who sees these signs, are they there just as a reminder for me? Or, are they there for public safety, letting drivers know that there is space to pull your slow ass over and let those who are late and want to get on their soon-to-be sunburned way (I had to actually google that, I wasn’t 100% just what was getting turned out and why. Then again some questions are better left unanswered. Thanks CalTrans.) It’s most likely the later, but dear readers, I’d like to believe it’s the first two.

BTW, we did make it to the beach but the fog decided to roll in early making things a bit brisk. Not much beach time but we stayed and played on the boardwalk, riding the roller coaster that was in Sudden Impact and The Lost Boys, probably one of the better Cory Feldman/ Haim movies.

Ballerina Swan Lake

Looking for a place to stay? I think I have the perfect place for you, they have it all!

What more could you want?

 

You never know what you find along the interstate once you get out of the cities. This was a total WTF, I have to get a shot of that, but damn it I can’t afford to stop right now, but I’ll be passing it going back the same way later on. Got the exit number and hit it up later. Bam, Ballerina Swan Lake Mobile Home Country Club.

Can you imagine if it was full of tutu’ed pointe shoed dancers hanging out by their double wide chatting about how much better it was back when they were still dancing.  These kids today with there internets and high tech pointe shoes.

Putting Yourself Out There

You ever get something stuck in your head and it just sticks, sometimes good other times bad, and often times ballet? Not to bad right? I find ballet creaping into all sorts of places. I’m sure my convo with my friend and teammate on Super Awesome Cycling Team Not Named After Cable Television Networks about how she finds ballet influences her racing. I was like, jeeze why didn’t I think of that earlier, it made perfect sense to me. Not sure what I’m talking about, just read my last post.

Teammate “Some Girl” executing a beautiful cyclocross dismount pirouette.

Anyway, I’m out riding, preparing for a race I which I did horribly on, and more importantly getting ready for cyclocross season in the fall. It just hits me, to be even moderately successfully at both cycling and ballet, you need to just trust yourself and just put yourself out there. You know there is a good chance of failure of some degree and an equal chance of success, as is life. Both will have you eventually in the eyes of everyone, with very few places to hide (most of the time anyway). This can difficult to accept this especially at first. It can run the scale from; what evez (complete with a shoulder shrug and eye roll) to intimidating beyond belief, especially for those who are new.

I know in both situations I started out doing my best to hide and blend in with everyone in the field or studio. I’d get my work in and then fade away. I literally once tried to hide behind anyone and anything while avoiding any eye contact with my teacher because I felt totally overwhelmed in class once because I was afraid of failing a combination yet again. I eventually figured it out a week or so later. But, you know what? I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve learned that I don’t really care about all of those eyes. They may or may not be on me as I race or dance, but you know for sure they will be on you for sure instant you slip up and miss a step or clip another’s wheel and end up at the bottom of a pile of bikes. It’s a bit unfair, but that seems to be the way it is. No one ever sees that double you just nailed or finally getting by you nemesis with one lap to go, but like I said, that’s just how it is, accept it and keep moving on.

I’m out there doing something that I dearly love and I’m doing it for no one else but me. I know I’m far from the best, I know my technique is a bit rough around the edges to put it mildly, I’m not as fast as I could or should be, but so what, right? I know that I’m not going pro with either, but I want to be the best that I can be, and I’m the judge of my success, even if the actual judges and teachers are grounded in reality and all that craziness.

So dear readers, it’s a bit of a cliché, but ride hard, ride for yourself and dance like nobody is watching!

Four more pirouettes with great extensions.

BTW, as of today we have three riders on the team with a background in ballet. I have a feeling that number might rise, haven’t heard back from everyone yet.

A little attitude for you, from me!

Why Didn’t I Think Of That!?

I’m always amazed how something can be so obvious, practically dangling right there in front of you like a carrot on a string in front of a mule and you are completely obvious of anything there. Well dear readers I had one of those moments yesterday while wasting my friends valuable time at work chatting with them on the internets.

Long story short, one of my teammates on Awesome Cycling Team Not Sponsored By A Cable Television Network is a former pointe shoe wearing bunhead and an elite cyclist. (A side note here, my iPad wants to autocorrect bunhead to but head.) Who knew, right? So anyway, somehow we got talking about ‘cross and ballet and she drops some serious knowledge on me, the most obviousness I referred to earlier. She has a complete ballet to bike connection, she breaks her races down into movements and counts.

I’m like OMG! Why the f didn’t ever think of that. Truth be told I do attribute some of my racing skills to my time spent in ballet, my remounting for one (nothing is more enjoyable than the big ass jumps we never get to do enough of in class) It screams ballet, at least to me anyway. I’ve got photos of myself in mid leap with legs in attitude, it’s actually in a post several months back. Or is it vice versa, who know, another mystery for the ages. Anyway, go ahead and scroll down, I’ll wait for you, actually here is a link. No, go ahead, I’ll wait for you.

Found it? Good, back to the story. I also count out things as well, they don’t always work out into neat little groups of eight, but oh well, ya do whatcha’ gotta do. I was a mess at ‘cross until I found a good spot and watched the elites at nationals several years ago make it look easy. That’s where I first figured out a long standing issue, running remounts. I broke it own into a little movement, I figured out the count, marked it and set it to memory and I’ve never had a problem with remounts again. I somehow missed that obvious ballet connection, all this time it was right there. Oh well, I see it now.

It’s all counting and timing, staying focused, keeping that ideal form, keeping your turnout, pulling up that little string on the top of your head… All the while hoping when you screw up nobody will see it and pretending nothing happened.

The coolest thing dear readers, is that we both have this shared interest. We took completely different routes to get to where we are today, but that’s not important, the important thing is we have this shared experience and can build on it. Oh, and I pestered her into looking for classes, I really hope she has the time and gives ballet another shot.