Tag Archives: circus

#5 – March 18th – Walmart, again, and no sleeping, then circus, then no sleeping

It was our last full day with just the 3 of us – today (the 19th) Ruthie comes to join us in Hawaii! We had no specific plans, so we headed back to Walmart for some staples. Miranda says that Walmart is our favourite place in Hawaii, because we’ve gone there so much. I don’t want Walmart to be my favourite place in Hawaii. >.<

We had yet another terrible meal in Mililani. I think part of the problem is that we’re trying to eat near the Walmart, and it’s all fast food and big box and not really exciting, but we went to Popeyes Louisiana. It’s like KFC, but with different spices. >.>

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Ava, practicing her acro. Look at that toe point and back arch!!

I made dinner, we lazed around, then I drove to the University of Hawaii for some more circus. There is a gym space there that the circus folks have arranged to use along with some breakdancers and trickers, 3 times a week. It’s pretty good! It has a spring floor and mats, and enough space for the people needed…and it was free to me? I don’t know if someone pays for the space, but it wasn’t me.

It was also a bit more formal than the park. Here there were clearly defined groups of people training, and there were 7 partner acro folks doing a variety of partner acro things. While there, Angel and then Dick (I think his name was Dick…I hope I’m not confusing him with another person…) did just a little bit of leading, by way of “oh, you should try this!”.

The first thing was trying a 3 high! I was initially in the middle, because we had a super sturdy base and I was a good pick for middle. Unfortunately, I feel like I couldn’t get the balance right and I didn’t have a good press against the back of Pauls head and it never felt stable.

(I left my GoPro at home, so these are phone photos which are terrible, sorry)

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After some discussion, we decided to put me on the bottom of 2 lighter people who had done it with Paul earlier.

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I couldn’t tell you how much weight Paul on my right (your left) is holding in his spot, but I can tell you that I didn’t actually know he’d let go at the end until I just looked at that photo now!!

Dick (guy on my left in the photo) asked if I knew “baskets”, which I knew was their name for what we call Banquine because I’d had this conversation with someone else a few weeks ago. So we did a bunch of practice throws of that – the other base was about my size, but had only been doing acro for about 6 months so it was good to go slowly.

We built up to tossing Angel, and then Christina, who apparently had a gymnastics scholarship in college. Here’s Christina:

That wasn’t our best throw, but we were getting tired. I can feel my knees this morning. 😛

That will likely be my last circus in Oahu this trip. With Ruthie and then Duke and Jamie and Mia coming this week, I don’t expect I’ll have time to go – we’ll be busy doing things! So I said my goodbyes and thanked everyone for the great practice!

I drove home and arrived around 11:30pm local time, which is like 1:30am my-body-time, because Vancouver had daylight savings while I was away. I was tiiiiired. And wiiiiiired because that happens when I stay up. I’d asked Miranda to look after Ava in the morning so I could sleep in and she’d agreed, but I woke up at 5am anyway and couldn’t sleep any further. I’m really tired, but not sleepy, if that makes any sense.

I think I’m going to make spam and eggs for breakfast. 😀

Cancun on Saturday

We woke up…well, you know the drill. Made breakfast, packed our stuff up, said bye to our host and got moving to Cancun. We’d decided to take a bus downtown Cancun and cab to our hotel a move that saved us $50 versus busing to the airport then cab to the hotel, a shorter distance.

Thankfully, unlike our last day Hawaii last year, this hotel was lovely. Check in was easy, we found our suite quickly and met a really nice lady in check in line up. A quick lunch at the hotel restaurant and we’re off to the pool! And the swim up bar.

I think we swam, read, drank, swam, goofed off for a good 3 hours before we went back to our overly air conditioned room. A shower, an attempt at a nap and we left again by shuttle to a circus show!

Actually, first, dinner at Hacienda Sisal restaurant. We ordered guacamole (predictable), empanadas and tosadas. The food was good, but the guac was brilliant. We finally found the guacamole of our dreams!

The show was Deseo, apparently a new show roughly last year. The production quality was low-to-moderate, but the skill of the performers was all very high. There was one act in particular where the guy starts on a balance board with a ball under it, and by the end he’s standing on… 6 rolling tubes stacked on top of each other. The tubes were all perpendicular to each other, such that he could have fallen off in any direction at all, but he stayed up there for a good 10 seconds before coming down. They had a live singer who was excellent, and a group of acrobalancers who did an amazing set. Great show, well worth the time and effort and money!

I’m going to roll into the next day, since I have an actual keyboard now (home!). Up at 7am again, a quick breakfast at the TradeWinds (hotel restaurant) and we gave our last pesos to the cabby to take us to the airport. The Cancun airport is laid out well, and has all the services you might want near the departure gates.

The plane ride was hectic. Very very bumpy and scary. But we made it. Vancouver is cold, but not as cold as I expected. Brisk. We had Memphis Blues for dinner, and now we’re trying to make it to 9pm. We can do it!

I’ve got a few more photos from Chichen Itza/Ek Balam and a couple underwater photos and photos from the hotel. Hopefully I don’t give up on them! 🙂