From: loosemore-sandra
Date: Thu, 1 Aug 1996 12:59:36 -0400 (EDT)
To: rec.sport.skating.ice.figure-news@babyblue.cs.YALE.EDU,
        skatefans-l@UDel.Edu, skaters-l@UDel.Edu
Subject: report on my skating vacation in California
Sender: owner-skatefans-l@UDel.Edu

This past week I went on a combination business trip and skating
vacation in California.  The business part of my trip was a meeting at
Stanford on Friday and Saturday, and Sunday evening I headed to Lake
Arrowhead for two days.  This report contains some fan-type content
and some participant-type content, and you'll have to sort them out
for yourself.

I managed to catch a public skating session at the San Jose Ice Centre
when I arrived on Thursday afternoon.  It was pretty crowded and I was
convinced to leave after about an hour, when about 200 more kids
showed up with some sort of school group.  Star-spotting: Elena Bechke
and Denis Petrov were there, both giving lessons to kids who were
better than I but still fairly low-level.  (It was a little funny
because I couldn't quite place Elena until I saw Denis and recognized
*him*, and then I remembered having heard before that they were
spending the summer in San Jose as resident pros.)

Then on Saturday evening I met up with fellow net.skater Kevin
Anderson to go skating at the rink in Belmont, which Kevin says is
where Brian Boitano hangs out regularly.  Of course, Brian wasn't
there this time.  It was another public session, but there were rarely
more than a dozen people on the ice at once, and most of them were
also adults, so I was actually able to work on some tricks and not
just stroking around.  It took me a while to get warmed up, but I
eventually did some pretty good spins, and even made a few attempts at
my loop jump again.  I've been working hard on off-ice conditioning in
recent months and it seems to be helping with my foot problems, too.
It's great to be able to skate for two hours without being in pain the
whole time.  And Kevin kindly refrained from making any smarmcastic
comments about how rusty I was.  For my part, I will say that Kevin is
several notches better than I am, with an axel, a double salchow, a
double toe, impressive spread eagles, and a really cool spin
combination.

I spent most of Sunday wandering around in Palo Alto and poking around
in various bookshops, and then it was on to Lake Arrowhead.  My flight
got delayed and it was almost dark by the time I arrived "up the
hill".  (BTW, the engineering of that road is pretty amazing.  There
are places where it's actually cantilevered out over the canyon.)
Around this time I realized that I wasn't just hoarse from talking too
much :-) at my business meeting, I was coming down with a cold.  So I
just crashed early and didn't get out at all until Monday morning.

A large part of my motivation for this trip was to have a chance to
see Michael Chack.  I'll post a more detailed version in a separate
message, but the short version is that he's just starting to get
serious about his training for the upcoming season, and things are
going about as well as can be expected.  And I got to see both of his
new competitive programs.

Rudy Galindo also happened to be at Ice Castle this week because he's
the guest star for this Saturday's show.  He was working with Lori
Nichol on what looked like a new short program.  Among other things, I
saw him wiping out while trying to learn that bent-leg inside-edge
camel spin that Alice Sue Claeys does, and doing a donut-on-a-stick
spin with somewhat more success.  Rudy is still skating with that air
of total joy and confidence he's had all spring and summer, and it
*does* seem like he's got more speed and power, too.  Looks to me like
he's still building on his high from Nationals.

I spent most of my time at Ice Castle hanging out with the "skate
moms".  E.g. I chatted with Natalie Vlandis's mom during one of the
sessions where the pairs were practicing.  She said that Natalie has
just started landing a throw triple salchow.  I also observed Natalie
working on a singles short program in another session.  I neglected to
ask what level she's going to be competing at, but she looks like a
pretty stong singles skater, with a triple loop combination.

Natalie's mom confirmed that Meno & Sand have moved to Lake Arrowhead,
although I didn't see them myself.  The other pairs I did spot were
the Stieglers, Ward & Travis, Baron & Alexander, the Ganabas, Lambert
& Palascak, and Grabow & Oberman.  It was a little strange watching the
Stieglers and Vlandis & Guzman, because on the ice they seem really
serious and adult but it's obvious they're still kids off the ice.

Another familiar face I spotted was Meredith Cataldo, and I had a
chance to talk to her mom as well.  Yes, Meredith is moving up to
seniors this year.

Another one of the "skate moms" I chatted with was Danny Kwan.  :-)
Michelle was working on some bits of new programs but I didn't see
enough of them to make much sense out of them.  Danny said that he had
thought last year's short was a better program than her long (I
agree), and that this year it's the other way around.  It was kind of
hard to tell from the bits and pieces I saw, but it looks like
Michelle is getting serious about having a triple/triple this year.
OTOH, she's breaking in a new pair of boots and was having some
difficulties with her jumps as a result.  Danny said she'd only had them
for two weeks and the last time it had taken her five weeks to get
used to a new pair.

Incidentally, having seen Michelle up close in a casual setting like
this, I must say she has grown into a lovely young woman and she
certainly doesn't *need* all that excessive makeup and costuming to
look like one.  Her manner on the ice was quite serious and off it
appeared to be very reserved.

Danny also confirmed the story that Karen will be going to Boston
University in the fall and said she would "probably not be competing
as much any more" (whatever that means), although she does plan to
keep skating.  I saw her doing runthroughs of last year's short and
what might have been a new long program.

Jere Michael is another skater who's recently started working with
Frank Carroll.  I saw him doing several runthroughs of both of his
programs.  He's quite good and pleasant to watch, but I haven't really
been tracking his progress closely.

Fumie Suguri has been hanging out in Lake Arrowhead this summer so I
finally had a chance to see this skater for the first time after
hearing good things about her from others.  (She's the skater who
placed just ahead of Tara Lipinski at last season's world juniors.)
She's really quite good, with a pretty consistent triple lutz and a
pleasant, if somewhat generic, style.  She kind of reminds me of
Kristi Yamaguchi with bigger jumps.  I spoke to her briefly (her
English is very good, BTW) and she said she would be competing at
Obertsdorf and if her results there were good she might also be going
to Trophee de France.  It seems like the Japanese have quite a depth
of women right now, if this is their third- or fourth-ranked skater.

There were quite a few other foreign skaters around, perhaps the
most recognizable of whom was Silvia Fontana.  She was working with
Evelyn Kramer, who was trying to get her to tone down some of that
wild arm-waving and wiggling.  Actually, there seemed to be quite
a large Italian contingent present.

I also spotted Angela Nikodinov but didn't really get a good feel for
what she was doing.  Brian Wright was also around, doing choreography
for several skaters.  I neglected to take note of who all he was
working with, though.

The non-elite freestyle sessions were mostly filled with kids from the
summer program.  They were all jumping like crazy, and most of them
were falling all over the place.  It looked pretty painful to me.  I
didn't see many of these kids paying much attention to working on MITF
or spins or whatever -- only jump jump jump.  (In fact, I was a little
surprised that Ice Castle didn't offer any MITF sessions, although they
still have two patch sessions scheduled early in the morning.)

At the other end of the spectrum, the public sessions at the Blue Jay
rink were totally packed with kids who could barely stand up in their
skates.  The end result of this situation is that there wasn't any ice
time suitable for a mid-level adult skater like me, who skates with a
respectable level of speed and power and needs some room to work on
some easy jumps and spins and MITF stuff, but who wouldn't fit in with
the competitive-track jumping beans.  Maybe it's just because it's
summer, but things were a lot more comfortable at Lake Placid when I
was there last fall, with less crowded freestyles and more of a mix of
ages and abilities, including other adult skaters.

As far as the facilities are concerned, both rinks are really nice.
The public rink in Blue Jay is only semi-enclosed and it's a very 
pleasant place to sit and watch skating with a warm breeze carrying the
scent of the surrounding pine forest.  The private training center rink
has very limited seating for spectators, and its most striking feature
is that there are no boards around the rink.  It's a little intimidating
at first to be sitting in the lutz corner there, for that reason.  I
witnessed some pretty spectacular crashes where the skaters came pretty
close to falling into my lap!

-Sandra