Tomorrow morning, bright and early, Avocado and I go off to St Louis for the ISI Synchronized Skating Championships. What the hell is synchronized skating, you may well ask? You can bet I’m not the one out there on ice skates. But Avocado, Ms. Dauntless of 1947, is. She can do things–gossip with friends while skating backward and fixing her ponytail–that I can barely do while standing on two unbladed feet. With the Tremors, her synch team, she lunges, dances, weaves, circles, and makes like Esther Williams–except the water is frozen and she’s on blades. Watching her reminds me of that old saw about Ginger Rogers, who could do everything Fred Astaire did, backward and in heels… The Tremors are actually three separate teams, with increasing levels of complexity in their choreography. Avocado is in the junior-most (I still can’t sort out the ISI level designations, which make my head hurt).  This in no wise reduces the level of skill and potential for chaos inherent in this sport.

The photo above is not the Tremors, though it could be. You get the general idea.

Synch skating, like regular figure skating, is not for the work-averse or the frugal. What with required practice dress, costume rental, skates, team sweatshirt, practice T shirt, required makeup and hair accessories, bits and pieces here and there, we figure it costs roughly the same to have a kid in Tremors as the GNP of–I dunno, Lichtenstein? And yet–there’s the work ethic thing, and team bonding, and working with kids she doesn’t adore, and the exercise. And she loves it. So we sell Lichtenstein; what with fuel prices what they are, we weren’t getting over there as often as we used to.  The kid is missing two days of school, which lends a tone of glamor and urgency to the whole event.

So, if any of you Brains are near St. Louis/St. Peter Missouri this weekend, drop by the Rec Plex and see the kids whiz by.