SSW Fundraising Drive Day #3, It's A Blog Rich Net (Shu, Love, Slembrouck, Plender, Hegarty, Ziegler), USA News (What's New, Records, & Regionals)

SSW Fundraising Drive Day #3: Welcome to the 3rd day of the SSW Fundraising Drive. Things are going well so far with the drive. I was quite lucky yesterday as someone donated $200. This brings the total raised to $343.98. I never realized how encouraging it would be to have people donate their hard earned dollars for my cause. It is truly appreciated.


I thought that for today’s entry, I would take you on one of my adventures that I had 10 years ago. I’ll write the story in point form because otherwise it will take me a long time to write and it will take you a long time to read.

This story (poorly edited- sorry), which I think I wrote about a long time ago on my site, takes place 10 years ago- in August 1997. It partially chronicles Aaron Arndt’s and my trip to the Pan American Championships in Ecuador. The Pan Am Champs serve as the qualifier for nations to attend the Pan Am Games. The Championships usually take place 2 years prior to the games and are held for each sport independently of the other sports.

Aaron and I arrived at the airport. I was 19 and Aaron was 16. We were travelling without a team manager of coach.

Once at the airport, we found out that we had too much luggage. Our rides had already left, so we had to creatively re-pack all our supplies. Our guitar cases were crammed with toilet paper, wheels, nutri-grain bars, socks, and other things.

We arrived in Miami and transferred over on our flight to Quito, Ecuador. We were on the same flight as the American team, so we figured everything would be fine. While on the plane I ate a half a huge bag of candy and fell really ill for a few hours.

Once the plane landed, Aaron and I happily and hurriedly got off the plane, excited that we had beat the Americans (Derek Downing, Fourth Lacey, Jonothan Webster) off the plane. We made our way to the luggage collection area. We grew concerned when no skater bags were coming out of the luggage conveyer belt. We then asked a lady if this is where we were supposed to collect our luggage. She said we were in the right place. Then she said that maybe our luggage went on to Quito. ‘WHAT?’ we said ‘On to Quito?’. She explained that our flight had stopped off in Guayaquil, and the next stop was in Quito. As soon as Aaron and I understood that we had gotten off the plane at the wrong airport, we darted back through customs and onto the tarmac. What we were treated to was a regular airport scene, which included men wearing big ear phones, luggage being pulled in long trains, and the plane we were supposed to be on- taking off for Quito.

It was late, very late. There were no more flights to Quito that night, so Aaron and I got a taxi to a hotel in a dingy part of town. The taxi first took us to a fancy hotel with people dressed in tuxedos and beautiful dresses. Needless to say, it cost too much for Aaron and I to stay there. Once settled into our ‘hotel’, Aaron and I realized that we were starving. Thank goodness there was some coca cola in the hotel and I had my bag of candy. That was our dinner.

A few hours into the evening, after watching some shows that we had no idea was about, Aaron realized that his wallet had gone missing. After a few frantic phone calls that involved cancelling credit cards, we went to sleep. There was a knock at our hotel room door- sometime around 3am- and it was a man who had brought back Aaron’s wallet. No money inside, but at least he had his wallet.

We made it to the airport the next morning via taxi. It was one of those taxis that is falling apart, you know? The ones that go around a corner really fast and the door opens and you almost fall out of the taxi. Yeah, one of those.

Once at the airport, we had to buy new plane tickets. I cannot describe the chaos of trying to figure out how to get a plane ticket, and later how to get onto the plane. Let’s just say there was a mad-dash for the airplane, and we managed to get some seats. Once in the plane, we knew everything would go well. We were treated to a sandwich- white bread, bologna, and cheese. We met a young man- about 20 years old, named Gato.

Once arrived in Quito, Aaron and I realized that we didn’t have any contacts in Ecuador. No hotel information, no escorts from the federation. We then realized that we didn’t have our luggage either! After some searching, we found our luggage stashed away in storage. Gato, the man we met earlier, took us to his house. He made some phone calls, found out there was a roller skating rink, and took us there. Once at the rink, we met up with the Canadian artistic skating envoy! They told us where our hotel was, so we made our way there, eager to settle in.
Once at the hotel, we were informed that A) we had to pay for the night we missed, and B) our room was now booked for someone else. ‘They’ did manage to make a reservation for a room at another hotel. We took a taxi to this ‘new’ hotel and we were thrilled that there were skaters from Argentina staying there, including Andrea Gonzales. The hotel was very nice, with a great big pool and a sweet restaurant.

Prior to going to Ecuador, Aaron and I were informed that we would each be paying something like $50 each per night for the hotel room AND food. Once we arrived at this new hotel, they told us it would be $60 for the room per night. Aaron and I confirmed this- in many different ways. We asked, so if we stay for 1 night, we each pay $30? The man said yes, that’s right.

A girl from the Ecuador federation brought us somewhere so we could train. We arrived at a half pipe/ skate park. The lady pointed to the half pipe and skate part, looked at us, and ordered ‘train’. Aaron and I looked at each other in disbelief. We tried to let her know that we cannot train there. She seemed somewhat angered- she said again ‘train’. Eventually, we made all sorts of gestures, and she understood that we needed a track. She brought us to a cycling track- a 400-meter banked track. It was sort of skate-able. Aaron and I explored the facility and found that there was a 75-meter track in the middle that we could use to skate on.


This is one of the tracks the girl had us training on
The racing action was great! The first time we arrived at the track, it was still under construction. The construction of the track was finalized right before the first race of the competition. We did have the opportunity to practice on the track a few times- and I crashed during practice. The first race- the 20km elimination race, was on August 26th- my birthday. I got a couple of warnings, Aaron skated well, and Julio (I forget his last name) form Ecuador was a fan-favourite, with the crowd chanting Julio! Julio! as he staved off elimination after elimination.


Racing action
The highlight of the Pan Am Championships for both Aaron and I was when Aaron won the bronze medal in the 500-meter sprint on the track. It was just beautiful to see the Canadian flag raised along with the USA and Colombian flags. And each country was allowed to have 2 skaters in each race, so Aaron beat some pretty good skaters to reach the podium!


Aaron Arndt- 3rd place 500-meter sprint
On the day off between racing on the track and racing on the road, I got really sick. All I remember is barfing over and over again in the toilet while Aaron snickered and laughed at me!

The road racing was a whole lot of fun. Aaron went flying into the crowd in the 500-meter semi-final, I placed 7th or 8th in the points race, and Aaron finished 6th in the marathon.

After the racing was completed, we went go carting with Julio. It took over an hour to get to the go carting track. It was in the middle of nowhere. I ran over one of the track workers. On our way back, one of Julio’s tires went flat. It went flat in a town that had no electricity. I was scared. It seemed like a deserted town, and at the same time, I knew we were being watched. Julio managed to score a tire from someone. This was great. We could high-tail it out of there in Julio’s car (it was a great car! You can see the road through the holes near your feet).


Aaron Arndt and I in the hotel's tuck-shop
When all was said and done, it was time to pay for the hotel bill. A man from the Ecuador federation came to visit Aaron and I. We were pleased to get some attention from this seemingly important man. A few minutes earlier, Aaron and I had settled our hotel bill, to the tune of $us120! We didn’t ask any questions. We paid. We were thrilled! After a few minutes of conversation with the man from the federation, we excitedly told him that the hotel bill was far cheaper that what we originally thought. The man seemed confused. He asked us to see our receipt. He examined it and seemed relieved. He informed us that what we had paid for was the orange juice that we had with our meals and some long distance bills. He was here to settle the real hotel bill. ‘Oh?’ we wondered. He said that the bill was something like $us1400. Aaron and I laughed, thought he was joking. He was serious. It ends up that the price we were supposed to pay for the hotel was severely misquoted. The federation had paid our bill and we had to pay the federation back. We pooled our money and we had just about half of the money. We negotiated, pleaded, and begged the man from the federation. He said he trusted us and we could send the money by mail (which we did). Before he left with all our money, he asked us if we had enough money to leave the country. What? There was a $us50 to leave Ecuador. We had to borrow some money from the man to leave the country. He was nice enough to give us $100 and a little bit of spending money.

We made our way back home. We made it back though without Aaron’s medal. He left it in the hotel room. Canada’s only international medal in years and year, hanging on a picture frame above the bed that Aaron slept. We called the hotel, but the medal was gone.

It's A Blog Rich Net (Shu, Love, Slembrouck, Plender, Hegarty, Ziegler): It seems that everyday I hop onto the internet, there's a new skater blog to read, catch up on, and find out all the gossip and trends. I'll take a few moments to direct you to a few skater websites that have been updated with all sorts of stuff to keep you up during those wee hours of the night. What I put below is not a even close to being a fully comprehensive and complete blog list-

Passion on Wheels (Jacky Shu) has a couple of new entries including What Changed?, Canada Day Marathon, 2007, and RSO Outdoor #2, 2007.


Jacky Shu at the 2007 Canada Day Marathon
We all know Andrew Love's website- his latest inspirational entry is called Skating down a dream and features a good video full of super good action and great scenery.

Maarten Slembrouck's blog is more and more active and is becoming a great source of information that I have a hard time putting into SSW- partially because I don't have much time to translate what's written. A quick scan of his site though gives me pictures, results, and videos like the one below (or click here) (from the Belgium champs). Note that his blog's address has changed.



Another blog that could be of interest to you is Geert Plender. He's one of the animals that eats races, criteriums, and skaters like me for breakfast.


Geert Plender himself with Sigrid
To some people, Andrew Hegarty and Sigrid Ziegler come as a package. They went to Europe together and they're living the WIC life. Their blogs though offer quite different perspectives on their racing and life in Switzerland. You can read Andrew's latest entry (Sursee [2] - Post Race) and Sigrid's latest entry (You can’t always get what you want). Something to keep your eyes open for is an FAQ that Andrew will be publishing later.

USA News (What's New, Records, & Regionals): I'll post these quickly; What's New- week of June 29th, USA Outdoor National Speed Records, Southeastern Regional Speed Championships results, North Central Regional Speed Championships results, and Southern Regional Speed Championships results.