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Results!
Laurie's
Log
Laurie's
Impressions
Kim's
Reports and Photos
Brenda's
Trip
Carole's
Impressions
Nicole's
Trip
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Nice angle, eh ladies? |
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Well, I knew my first trip to an ISU eligible competition was off to a rousing start when I got to the hotel and the first person I saw that I knew (except for Laurie,
LOL) was Alexei! Thought that was a pretty great way to start things out.
After I got situated in the room Laurie and I decided to see if we could get into the closed practice at the arena (our motto quickly became: "All they can do is say no",
LOL). We were lucky enough to approach someone who had no idea it was part of his job to keep people like us OUT so within a few minutes (and some quick talking from Laurie) we were in the arena. We took our seats quickly (trying to be inconspicuous, you know) and then did the natural thing, which was to glance around the stands. We looked up and then at the same time at each other. There, right in front of us on the opposite side of the rink was
Alexei.
I had been in Colorado less than an hour and had seen him twice already. Boy, was I a happy camper (so was Laurie, of course). Come to think of it I have no idea who was at that practice now. Guess I was a tad distracted (I suppose I should have taken notes like Laurie did all the time and I would remember these things). We ended up seeing Alexei at the rink a lot and not only for HIS practices. He would hang around just to watch other skaters or, in the case of Todd and Tim, to scope out the competition. He attended most of the competition too. It was nice having him there in the stands but like I said, I found it to be extremely distracting. More so the closer he was. It was just too easy to "seek a peek" and so I did, and often,
LOL.
Getting to see four practice sessions was an added bonus (you know, of course, that Alexei skipped one of the sessions and was spotted later that day by one of us as he was leaving the pool all dripping wet---and, no, it wasn't me---I'm still alive, aren't I,
LOL?).
As Laurie said, Alexei's emotions and moods seemed to run the gamut at practices. He was at his most congenial the day after his brilliant SP performance.
In fact, that was that day I finally got to talk to him as he was sitting in the stands. Brenda went with me for moral support and approached him first. I sat down in the seat next to him clutching the folder with my 8X10 photos in it and that darned gift I had dragged across half of the U.S. twice. Alexei first tried to sign Brenda's calendar with one of those autograph pens that I had brought along just for that purpose. Unfortunately, the pen developed a bad case of "diarrhea" and started leaking all over the place. Poor Alexei kept trying to write with it and became more and more frustrated. At one point I took the pen out of his hand (after stupidly asking, "Did you pump it first?" Not a really good thing to say to a MAN. But ya know, there ya are, you're nervous, the pen is leaking all over everything and Alexei Yagudin is sitting next to you. What more can I say,
LOL?) and proceeded to make an even bigger mess. Yep, things were going REAL well at that point.
Finally, Dmitri, who was sitting next to Alexei and observing all this, offered up a regular pen to the cause. By this time I had gotten the two enlargements out of the folder and was holding them in front of
Alexei. Brenda says he said, "Oooo" when he saw them but I can't verify that since I was in la-la land at that point,
LOL. I told him that I had pictures for him too and when I got them out of the bag his gift was in, Dmitri asked if he could look at them. That darned autograph pen miraculously began to work at just that moment (which is lucky because the photos had a black background and couldn't be signed by a regular pen) and Alexei signed both pictures very nicely AND legibly,
LOL. Mission accomplished, Brenda and I then left but were told when we got back to our seats that Alexei had turned around looking for us shortly after we took off. Drat! Had no idea he would look at everything so soon. He was observed passing both the pictures AND the gift around to Dmitri and Roman
(Serov, who was there observing our little encounter too) so I guess he liked them (sigh of relief). Too bad Brenda and I got away so soon though. Would have LOVED to hear what he was going to say.
Alexei was still feeling very sociable the next day and after HIS practice was signing for anyone who came up to him. Then people started taking pictures and, you know me, I decided I had to have one too.
Enlisting someone to come with me turned out to be tougher than I thought though. Finally Laurie felt sorry enough for me and relented. By the time we got to where Alexei was sitting he wasn't in his seat and I thought maybe he had left. Instead he had gotten
corralled by a bunch of people and was now standing up on the walkway. When I got to him there was only a tiny little girl left who was standing in front of him but making no move to approach him. I looked at her for more than a few seconds, and then looked at Alexei and shrugged my shoulders. He obviously didn't know what to do either (I decided not to shove her out of the way---figured that wouldn't have gone over too well,
LOL). Finally he said, "Do you want me to sign something?" but she never did say anything and then just wandered away. Guess she's like a lot of Alexei's fans are when they meet him---too stunned to speak,
LOL. My original thought was to just get a picture of Alexei alone but I couldn't resist the opportunity to get my arm around him again so it ended up being another one of those
"dorky" pictures of the two of us. Well, at least I know HALF of the picture will be great,
LOL.
Kim
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