Silver Blades, Findlay Ohio

The Findlay show is a wonderful rink to perform in.  I have a long time history with this club.  I believe my first show was back around 1988...wow that is a long time ago!  It had to be before 1990 because I remember my mother driving me to the show.  It is always nice to see my good friend and fellow coach Craig Perry.  We use to skate comedy routines that would be thrown together last minute.  I have even back-flipped over his parents, wife, and son.  Ahhh....the stupidity of youth.

This year was no different:   good times, good people, and a fun show.  The first run is always a bit rough after being out of spotlights for a while, but then everything came together and smoothed out.

Grant Hochstein was the other guest skater who kicked some serious triple flip butt!  But as always, the best stories happen when not on the ice.  After the Saturday performance, the entire cast goes to dinner at this Japanese steak house.  In order for the owners to figure out who was on what bill, we all had to wear name tags.  Most had numbers on them, but the guest skaters, and show directors had "special bill," on our tags.  We got slap happy and couldn't stop calling each other "hey Special Bill."  The waiter, Brian, who stuck out like a sore thumb in the Japanese joint,  came over and tried his best to figure out all of us "special bills" and to take our order.  It was his fourth day on the job, and you can tell he was really trying his hardest.  He was GREAT!  So our chef finally comes over and refuses to start because three people left the table to go to the bathroom.  It's late, and we are wondering why he doesn't start so we can all get out of there.

Finally the chef starts to get going and he has a spatula and "fork" (the two long sharp skewers) and twirls them around to try and show how cool he is.  The next thing we know his "fork" gets launched across the table like a knife thrower and hits Grant in the chest!!!!  Thankfully it doesn't just stick in him and falls to the ground.  We are all dumbfounded that it just happened, and once we realized he was ok, burst out in laughter.  I honestly thought he should have skated Sunday's show with a fork sticking out of his chest.

Thankfully Grant lived through dinner, and was able to perform the next day!

Be well,

Dan