Day Three

Still having frustrations with our hotel—still no wireless in any rooms. Plus, we got back late last night (due to transportation frustrations), so I decided to blog this morning and went right to bed. The skating’s been great, though!

We decided to start things a bit later, since things didn’t really get started until 10am, so we slept in and hung out in the hotel most of the morning. Yesterday was all about ice dancing.

10am: Watched the junior original dance at the Convention Center. We weren’t sitting in a place where I could see the scores well, so I wasn’t able to look into my theory about the judges cracking down on point deductions. It didn’t seem to be the case, but I’ll research it when I have more time and internet. (There wasn’t the kind of deductions we saw with the novices with the seniors, however.)

12:30pm: Ditched out on the junior men’s pairs short program to go have lunch. Also, we figured that if we wanted to eat lunch and go see the senior compulsory dance at 3pm, we’d miss some of the men, anyway. Ate at Chili’s, a sentimental favorite of mine because I used to eat there with my buddies in college. We got to the Spokane Arena way early and hung out, watching the junior girls’ warm-up.

3pm: Seniors compulsory dance. My favorite ice dancers, Belbin and Agosto, kicked butt! My mother-in-law, who isn’t as familiar with Ben and Tanith as I am, but who has watched figure skating for forty years, could tell they were far and above much better than anyone else. I can’t really say much more than that, since I haven’t had much experience watching the compulsories. They’re fun to watch, though—so pretty and elegant. I wish that I had more opportunities to watch them.

4:30pm: Early dinner at the Ticket.

5:40pm: Got back to watch the junior women’s long program. One of the things about this competition is my assumption that the lower level skaters perform at, well, a lower level. That’s only somewhat true—these girls do triples and the intricate spins and footwork as the seniors, but much better than I assumed coming here. And the drama’s just as exciting. It’s my intention to write a more extensive article about the juniors at a later time.

8:30pm: Senior original dance. Again, we were treated to excellent skating. Ben and Tanith blew everyone else out of the water. They’re almost a full ten points ahead of the next-best couple, Gregory and Petukhov (who did a great skate anyway). I want to compare these scores with previous ones; I believe that Ben and Tanith might have made their personal best; if not, pretty close.

At the end of Ben and Tanith’s program, Ben did this uncharacteristic little slip. While they were sitting at the kiss and cry, Tanith was gesturing—probably explaining to someone what had happened. It was very cute. Man, I love those guys.

I don’t want to describe the struggle we had getting back to the hotel last night. We’re driving in and paying for parking this morning.