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Notes From 2005 Nationals - Portland, Oregon
Copyright 2005 Ann Jensen - all rights reserved

The Exhibition was today. We checked out and left our luggage at the hotel, then went to Typhoon again for lunch. Yum Yum. Had the most amazing Coconut lime chicken soup in the world. Then we MAXed over to the arena and saw the show. Nice exhibition by local portland skaters, in addition to the Nationals winners, special Olympians and such. Then we went back to the hotel and got the luggage and I changed into more comfy travel gear, we MAXed out to the airport and now we are on our plane. Phew. Exhausting week. I really enjoyed myself, but it was a different experience than prior years. Harder to run into people for some reason. The ice storms really made it difficult to get around the last two days and it felt like people were more spread out. The organizing commitee did an awesome job - all of the problems were problems created by the hotels/arenas/restaraunts being dopey about the event schedule- there was a minimum of spectator abuse in switching between events or venues - and that is a huge plus. There were signs when we firt arived that there were no digital cameras at all allowed, then that changed to no digital cameras can be used for video. And they weren't letting in over a 200 zoom, although the way they did that was by saying "you don;t have over a 200 zoom do you" and accepting our answer, so I am not sure that was actually working for them. Certainly worked for me. In reality I did not use my larger soom in the main venue, as my seats were first row. I did use the 300 zoom I have in the memorial arena, but they never asked about it there til the last day. The seating in that second venue is my one big gripe about this event. We were jammed into 1/2 of the arena like sardines and the other side was closed completely. That makes no sense to me - I mean., leave it closed til you need it, but don't make the spectators miserable if you have 1/2 an areana you can open up.

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Last updated: January 16, 2005 8:55 PM