a weekend of dance

This weekend was the Hostdans (Autumn Dance) hosted by the SCA group in Umeå. Umeå is about a three hour drive south from Luleå (where I live), and the trip down was made even longer by hitting the one city in between at 4pm on a Friday that also has major road construction happening on the highway in the middle of town. It took a full 25 minutes to get from the place where the signs announced that the two south bound lanes needed to merge into a single lane to the point past the merge wherein traffic was actually moving again. It might have been possible to exit there and go around, but I am told that the other bridge over the river there is far enough away that it would have taken longer (though, perhaps, been less frustrating than just sitting in stopped traffic). It is funny how spoiled I am by normal traffic conditions in northern Sweden--the population density up here is low enough that there are rarely any traffic delays. As a result I really notice them when they come up. How different this is from when I lived in the Bay Area, where I would have considered a 25 minute delay to be a quick one (though still annoying).

We arrived on site early enough on Friday evening to participate in dancing, socializing, and listening to a talk about dancing in the Middle Ages before they served the evening meal (I, of course, was not hungry by that hour, so I simply took one of the bread rolls filled with vegetables and saved it to eat during the day on Saturday--it turned out to be quite tasty). The talk was a good chance for me to practice listening to Swedish--because I have a reasonable background knowledge on the subject I was actually able to understand some of what she said.

Saturday was full of classes--both on dancing and one on the SCA, how it works, and what to expect at court that evening (what the awards are etc.). I had done most of the dances before, so the classes were primarily useful for me to learn how the steps are described in Swedish, and to pick up the local variations of the dances (nothing too surprising, though I love the fact that up here Bransle l'Official has a chain hay passing six people before the ladies leap to the next place. Much fun, though easy for it to go wrong if someone gets confused and tries to go the wrong way). I was able to follow the SCA 101 lecture enough that I was able to contribute a bit of detail once (though I kept my part in English--I may be learning to follow words when I know the subject well, but I am so not yet able to say anything of substance).

Sunday was breakfast and an early pack up. We drove a friend home to her apartment in Umeå, and then spent the afternoon hanging out with her and enjoying a meal before starting the drive north. This meant that we missed our normal Sunday evening Swedish Folk Dance class, but I think I got in enough dancing on Friday and Saturday to make up for it.

We didn't get home till after 22:30, so while we unloaded the car we didn't actually put things away before doing yoga and going to bed. I was low energy all day Monday (which I will blame on the fact that I did the driving on Sunday), but woke up feeling refreshed this morning.

Much to my delight I woke up to an email from my PhD adviser with comments on the paper draft I gave him before leaving Australia at the end of July, so now I need to act on those comments as quickly as possible. I would love to get the draft back to him before my job interview next week. I have already incorporated his edits into my copy of the document, and have a stack of other things I need to do.

This coming weekend is a local SCA craft day, and the following weekend I drive to Tromsø, Norway (about 10 hours from here) for a workshop on rock textures the following week. I am looking forward to that trip because it is a pretty town (they have mountains!) and the course sounds quite interesting. However I am not looking forward to doing the drive--if three hours with a passenger to keep me company wore me out this much this weekend what will a ten hour drive on my own feel like? My plan for that trip is to go during the day and stop often to enjoy the view, rather than waiting till evening and pushing mostly straight through (other than one stop for petrol and toilet).

do I know any SCA folk near Coldwater MI?

Or even anyone who knows folk in that area. I have a cousin who just moved there from the middle of nowhere in Alaska. He tells me his son really likes Medieval stuff and swords, etc. I have suggested that they contact the local SCA, but if I could put him in touch with a specific individual who knows when and where the local events, practices, and meetings are it would probably help.