The Goddess Rambles

As previously mentioned, I’m a swing dancer. By “swing” I mean “lindy hop” (Google it. It’s awesome.) Well, lindy hop and blues and a tiny, itty bitty scrap of West Coast Swing. I’m by NO means the best dancer (no, seriously), but I’m pretty decent (I think, anyway. But that’s just me.) There are weekly and monthly dances here in Austin, which are fun, but I don’t get to go terribly often because my husband is also a dancer. And a DJ. And a sound guy. And a volunteer for various other aspects of this crazy hobby. And we have kids. And he gets paid a little to be there doing whatever he’s doing and I don’t.

So, every once in a blue moon we’ll hire a sitter, pack our fanciest duds and our dancin’ shoes, and head out of town for what’s known in our bizarre little community as an “exchange”. The point of a dance exchange is to get a whole bunch of people from all over to come to your little neck o’ the woods and, well, exchange dances. It’s tremendous fun, you get to make a metric crapton (that’s an actual unit of measurement, btw) of new friends (this is why I have 600+ Facebook friends, people), you get to do what you love best ever in the world (DANCYDANCE!!), and you get see a cool city’s sights and eat that city’s awesome local delicacies and stay in that city’s finest lodging establishments!

*snicker*

I am such a liar. A bad, wicked liar. That whole last part is completely and utterly untrue. I think this would all be best explained by giving you a sample “dance exchange” schedule. Here you go:

Friday:

5:30 am- Arrive at airport 20 minutes after you intended. Wait impatiently in line to check in and nervously in line for security check (why nervously? Because that’s TSA’s JOB, people. To make you nervous for no reason whatsoever.) Run to gate and board plane. Fall back to sleep during the safety announcements.

10:30 am- Drag your behind off the plane and stumble to the Starbuck’s kiosk to awaken thine self enough to read that book you brought in anticipation of your 3 hour layover in Utah or wherever. Try to ignore the screaming of the infant next to you. Poor thing’s been strapped into a carseat for 6 hours. You’d be screaming too.

1:30 pm- Back on the plane. Try to fall asleep. When that fails, watch the in-flight movie. Unless it’s something like College Road Trip, starring Martin Lawrence. Then read SkyMall and meditate upon how much you really want that handcrafted replica of Hermione’s Time-Turner.

5:00 pm (maybe? Don’t know anymore.)- Land in your host city! Yay! Wait impatiently for your luggage and drag it out to the curb. The event organizer told you there’d be “someone from the staff” there to pick you up. Wait. Wait longer. Bum a newspaper. Wait longer. Call the event organizer. No answer. Browse the yellow pages for cab companies until you realize you don’t have the name or address of the place you’re going. Sigh a lot. Try calling again. Start to cry (or rage, your choice). Then quickly paste on a “Oh, no, I didn’t mind waiting!” smile as your ride finally pulls up.

7:30 pm (Stupid traffic…)- Arrive at your host’s house/ apartment/ hovel. Now, this calls for an explanation for the uninitiated. WCS dancers stay in hotels. Salsa dancers stay in hotels. Ballroom dancers stay in hotels. Lindy hoppers and blues dancers do NOT stay in hotels. They sign up for a thing called “housing”, which is basically a system by which organizers place out-of-towners in the homes of local dancers for the weekend. You grab a bed- *snicker*. Sorry, lying again. You grab an air mattress, yoga mat, bit of sofa, recliner or floor and cozy in. You may know your host and/ or the other 18 people staying in their 1 bathroom studio, or you may not. Regardless, most of the time, as rough as it sounds, it really is fun. Anyway, you find an out of the way place (like the middle of the hallway to the 1 bathroom) to stash your suitcase, and then your tummy reminds you that you should think about feeding it something.

Great! You’re in awesome new (to you) city and you hear it has AWESOME food! You get all twitterpated thinking about the 19 yummy food places you looked up on travel blogs last week, and then your host politely informs you that a) the dance starts in an hour, b) you’re 14th in line for the bathroom and c) there’s only one car.

9:00 pm- You sit in the car (riding bitch with 4 other people) trying to breathe while you shovel down some Taco Hell.

9:30 pm- You arrive at the ballroom/ church basement/ Latin studio and stand in line to confirm your event registration. You get a very pretty purple paper wristband that’s designed to withstand the one shower you might be able to score before you get home on Monday. You check your packet for your t shirt, some samples of whatever the event organizer who works in skin care R&D was able to score, and a carefully written, hastily printed booklet full of incorrect addresses to venues, city maps from 1910 and the locales of all the fast food joints within 10 miles.

But then you look around. The dance is in full swing. The joint is JUMPIN’. The DJ’s rocking out over at the table and looks to have to seriously good stuff lined for you. Suddenly, you spot that guy/ girl you met at the 2nd to last exchange you went to and with whom your dancing immediately raises a notch or five. He/ she spots you too and comes running over and suddenly, you’re swinging out mightily. The floor is spinning and so are you and the music is getting under your skin and into your blood. And you remember why you do this.

1:00 am, Saturday- Off to the late night dance! That’s right, folks. Once the first dance ends, the second begins. And it goes till 5 am.

6:30 am- Die on your bit of sofa.

12:30 pm- There’s an afternoon dance in the park! Get ready! Hurry! We’ll stop at MickeyD’s on the way. Drive through, though.

1:30 pm- It’s 85F and you’re gonna dance all afternoon if it kills you. Which it might.

5:30 pm- Squish back in the car with the other 17 people who all smell exactly the same as you do. Stuff that Subway in your face.

8:00 pm- Time to get ready for the Saturday night dance! You stink. You’ve been trying to get in the shower since you walked into the studio at 6 pm. You spot that girly-girl from Ohio eyeing the shower door while trying to surreptitiously remove her hair dryer and flat iron from her suitcase. But YOU, friend, are READY. You sidle over toward the bathroom, pretending to look for your shoes, the door opens and BAM! You’re IN! Flat Iron Girl will just have to go curly, tonight.

9:45 pm- You finally show up at the dance. Seems Flat Iron Girl was opposed to her natural waves and would not comply.

1:25 am- Yep, you guessed it! Time for the late night dance! Unfortunately, in this part of town (the dance studio is situated between an abandoned warehouse and a field), the fast food joints close at 10 pm. You’re ever, ever so grateful for the granola bars and mushy bananas your event organizers have so thoughtfully set out for you.

7 am- Flat Iron Girl was a little.. um.. difficult to locate (seems she’d rediscovered Rockstar Dancer Boy from DC) when it was time to leave the late night dance. You finally managed to get her in the car and back to the studio. You die, again.

You repeat the Saturday schedule on Sunday, right through the late night dance. After hugging all 250 other dancers goodbye and getting FB info and phone numbers and pictures and your other shoe, you catch the bus/ metro/ cab to the airport. You couldn’t get today off of work so your boss said you could come in at 2 pm. You fall asleep at the gate and nearly miss your flight, except that the screaming infant in the carseat jolted you awake at the last call for boarding. Board the plane, if you can still walk. Promptly die. Spend the next several days sick and in bed.

Now, you who are not dancers may be reading this and shaking your heads in disbelief and going, “This biznitch CRAZY!”

Well, maybe I am. But I love it. I LOVE IT, I tell you. I love the lack of sleep, the failing air mattresses, the fast food and the cramped transportation. I love staying in the home of someone I’ve never met with 17 other people I’ve also, well, never met. I love the late nights and the early mornings and the laughs and the inevitable inside jokes (miss you, Tessa).

But mostly I love the sheer joy of dancing and dancing and dancing to the music I love. I love the energy it gives me. The way it sustains me for hours, nay, days upon end. It’s a crazy, nonsensical, sleep-deprived lifestyle, but I LOVE it.

Thankfully, for this event, we’re only driving a couple of hours. Believe it or not, not having to spend a whole day or two in and out of airports makes a huge difference in how much energy I have to put into the weekend.

But that still doesn’t mean I’ll be doing any sleeping.