From: loosemore-sandra
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 1995 20:09:19 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: I skated with Scott Hamilton (well, almost)

I've just gotten back from a couple days in Lake Placid.  My timing on
this trip was lousy because I had been hoping to spend the whole
weekend watching "Stars on Ice" practices, but it turned out that they
had today (Saturday) off and wouldn't skate Sunday until late in the
day, so I came home a day earlier than I thought I would.  That's what
I get for doing this sort of thing without taking the trouble to make
real plans in advance!

I did get to see them practicing on Friday afternoon, at least.
Michael Siebert was choreographing an ensemble number with pretty much
the whole cast present, and after that I saw Roz, Kurt, and G&G
working on new choreography for solo routines.  I didn't recognize
Roz's music, but Kurt was skating to a medley of tunes from "Singing
in the Rain" and "The Wizard of Oz", and I think G&G's music is a
piece of "The Seasons" by Glazunov (it's the same music that Anne
MacWilliams and Phil Dulebohn were using last season, at any rate).
And Scott also came out and did a run-through of his "Sabre Dance"
program.

I had a chance to talk to Paul for a few minutes after he came off the
ice from the ensemble practice.  He says he's only an occasional
lurker on the net, and he didn't recognize my name or connect me to my
web page when I first introduced myself, which was kind of embarassing
to me because I wouldn't have bugged him otherwise.  He was very
gracious about it, though -- he's a real sweetie.  :-)

Well, if I couldn't watch SOI practices, I was going to skate myself.
There is no "public" skating at this time of year but there are lots
of walk-on freestyle and MITF/dance sessions.  They hassled me a bit
since I'm not a USFSA member but in the end I talked them into letting
me skate anyway.  I did one freestyle session on Friday evening and
another on Saturday morning.  Fortunately, I haven't been having too much
trouble with the tendonitis in my feet lately and I managed not to
make a total fool of myself.

So when I was coming off the ice after my Saturday morning skate,
there was Scott preparing to skate in the next session, and I got up
enough courage to talk to *him* while he was standing around waiting
for his skates to be sharpened.  I remarked about him skating on what
was supposed to be his day off and he said there *are* no days off
while he's got a competition to prepare for.  We talked a bit about
busy schedules -- he says that some skaters like he and Yama thrive on
it, and as far as the eligibles like Todd and Nicole are concerned
they're either going to be in the best shape of their lives or totally
burned out by the time worlds roll around!  I asked him about his
triple axel and he said he hadn't been making as much progress on it
as he'd wanted, and now he's too busy preparing for shows and
competitions to do much work on it.  Anyway, I stayed to watch Scott
skate and he did another run-through of "Sabre Dance".  Then it was
time for lunch and the 5-hour drive back to New Haven.

Lake Placid's a nice spot and they have a real nice facility there.  I'm
thinking I'll go back to spectate at Adult Nationals in the spring.
But next weekend, I'm off to Boston to see the show at Harvard....

-Sandra