September 15, 2009

Hi everyone,
 
We competed our long program Saturday night.  It went okay but it wasn't our best skate; we made a few mistakes. We ended up 7th overall. We are fairly pleased about our final placement in the top half because it was our first international event and our first competition of the season. We know there is room for more points! 
 
After the long program, we stayed up because we had to take a 1am bus to the Gdanks airport for a 5:30 am flight. This first flight took an hour and then we had a 6 hour layover in the Warsaw airport; at least we had time to get some souvenirs! After the layover, we had a 10 hour flight into Chicago where we waited for 3 hours to get onto another plane for the flight to Toronto (another hour and a half).  Finally, we landed in Toronto and drove for 2 hours to get home. Our total travel took 30 hours! We couldn't wait to get home and into our own beds.
 
Torun was a beautiful place and we had lots of fun ! It was a great opportunity and we got to meet and watch some great skaters !
 
Mike and Margaret

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September 11, 2009

Hi Everyone,
 
  Thanks for your messages of encouragement!  We had a great short program last night and are thrilled to be sitting in 6th place.  Our only major error was the back outside death spiral which, is admittedly our weakest element in our short program...last night, we didn't get any points for that element which gives us a 3 to 4 point deficit right off the bat. 

We are looking forward to the long program (where we get to do our strongest death spiral - haha!)  Last night was a very strong event, both the Japanese team and the Russian team were extraordinary.  It was great to see world class skating in an event that we were a part of.  It felt great to start our season off with such a strong skate and we were pleased to have started our first international competition so well. 

  This morning we went for a tour of the city of Torun which, as it turns out, is the cultural capital of Poland!  We saw some very old churches, a statue of Copernicus who first proclaimed that the Earth was in fact round, and a beautiful river that we cannot pronounce the name of and thus will not attempt to spell for you! 

We've had excellent weather all week, sunny and warm.  This afternoon we practice for the long and we are going to cheer on the other Canadian team members in their events.  We will skate 8th for our long program tomorrow night.

Hope all is well at home, bye for now!
Margaret and Mike

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September 9, 2009

Hello from Poland!

 

  We arrived in Poland yesterday (Tuesday) after a very long trip from Toronto to Warsaw, Warsaw to Gdansk and then a 3 hour bus ride up to Torun!  Torun is a beautiful city.  We walk through cobblestone streets surrounded by beautiful old buildings to get to the arena.  The arena is bright and clean and has huge windows that let in sunlight all the way around the top of the building.  We had our first practice this morning which went really well.  It's a lot of fun to see competitors from different countries in all of the disciplines here.  We drew 13th to skate our short program tomorrow evening (Thursday) - good thing it's not a "Friday"!  We're heading back to the arena for our practice tonight and then to dinner - Mike is hoping for some authentic Polish perogies!  We'll check in again tomorrow! 

Bye for now!

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