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I spent last weekend down in Tysons Corner, VA, at MADJam, a totally completely wicked awesome West Coast Swing, Hustle, and Hand Dance event. I somehow managed to split workshops, social dancing, sleeping, and competitions about equally, although I did run out of steam significantly at about 12:30AM sunday morning and again around 1:30, 2PM. It's a lot of people and a lot of sound. And William, I specifically decided that calling you would be useless since I wasn't going to have any in-between time anyhow. And I didn't -- I barely kept in touch with Paul as it was. :)

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I have a note to myself to do some soul-searching on a bunch of stuff -- being a teacher in Pittsburgh and feeling like I have a solid understanding of dance fundamentals, but being stuck in novice divisions in competition; the prevalence of the performance axis in west coast swing competitions (as opposed to lindy or blues); the role of networking, fame, and favoritism in west coast swing competitions (as opposed to lindy); the different components of a dancer's experience that lend him or her authority, and the associated skill sets that make a good dancer a good teacher; my reluctance to interact much with pros in unstructured settings and whether that has an effect on my credibility. Sleep deprivation sortof compounds the tendency of road trips to make one introspective. :)