Friday, August 03, 2007

World Champion X 2

Another log rolling season is under way (and almost over!) and it was quite a success.

The log rolling and boom running world championships were once again held in Stillwater, Minnesota. Fiona, one of our awesome log rolling instructors from Madison, came with me for the weekend. Olivia was nice enough to let us stay in her room, on terms of us not yelling at her about her mess. :)

Thursday in Stillwater the amateurs competed. Kevin and I started off announcing with a world of enthusiasm for our "Kevin and Shana Show" but after a day of standing in the hot sun on stage it tuned into the "Kevin and Shana laying down Drinking Frozen Smoothies Show". But hey, we still managed to keep the audience entertained. Fiona rolled for her first year in the semi-pro division. Although she didn't win any matches, she got some falls on some pretty amazing rollers! She also had her first boom run experience. For most of the kids and semi-pros, there was a lot more "boom" than "run", in fact, on this particular boom run, that was the case for the professionals too! The Stillwater tournament most definitely wins the award for the closest to impossible boom run. That night all of our exhausted selves almost got Tanya fired from Famous Dave's by bringing in a group of 25 right before close. Hehehe. It was some good eatin' though!

Friday was the first day of competition. I had a very hard match against Maggie Bulk, who by the way, is the most AMAZING log roller to compete without training. She gets to relax and live the good live in Cali all year, then comes back to Wisconsin in the summer to beat the crap out of all of us on the log. Pretty amazing lady. :) Olivia had some pretty outstanding matches as well. Also with little training, she was able to stay up on the log for quite a while with Jenny Atkinson, and won a match against Crystal Salzman! Yeah Olivia! After a horrible meal at Applebee's that night, we all went over to Kevin's for a hardcore game of Apples to Apples. Did I mention my client John Kovalic is one of the creators of that game? Well he is, and I will continue to be extremely proud of him for that and all of his other accomplishments.

Saturday I didn't have much to do other than cheer on the other competitors, which is always fun! When I arrived at the venue I was greated by Josie, Bonnie, and Daryl Salzman. I was happy they were able to make it, but it didn't quite occur to me that JR might be there too. Sure enough, I finally got to see him. If you are unaware of JR's story, scroll down a few posts, or visit: http://www.jrsalzman.com

It was so wonderful to finally get a chance to see him log roll again. And he did it like a champ! We are all very excited for him to be back in competition again next summer. Saturday night Fiona and I laid low and went over to Jamie and Jill's house. We played a game called hammerschlager (everybody gets a turn to pound their nail into the wooden table) which was surprisingly really really fun. Fiona and I played with our favorite pups Jack and Dino, then we were off to bed early.

Sunday, with support from Olivia, Fiona, and JR I was able to beat Jenny three falls straight to win the world championship. It was an amazing feeling, and I'm still riding high from the experience.

The next weekend... Lumberjack Championships in Hayward, WI. I will write about that later, but I will tell you this... Jenny got me back.