Sch3lp’s Blog

Introlude
Tomorrow me and a small crew of 3 good men will be parting our boring lives in Belgium and taking up on a journey to Andorra.
We hope to find wisdom, courage and spiritual enlightenment over there, by means of participating in the Kendo seminar.
Once we arrive at the camping, we will be welcomed by the remains of another party that took their leave for Fontenay a week ago. They have already been on a kendo seminar, where three of them have gained a well-earned new level in their career as Kendoka.
Times of togetherness and bonding approach and I will welcome them.
I will welcome them and embrace them, for the times are of a short duration.

Sorry if I got a little too carried away there So yeah, we’re leaving for Andorra tomorrow and we’ll be back sunday next week with stories to tell and experiences to share. A group of 10 kendoka’s of our club will be participating in this Kendo seminar. I won’t be bringing my laptop this time, so you’ll just have to wait until we return for a report and pictures of the trip.

Wish us luck and pray for our succesful return.
May the Gods smile upon us.
So Say We All !

There are already some video’s on the internet of the event.
More particularly here:
http://cultureinline.free.fr/dotclear/index.php?2007/07/16/40-etape-ifsa-a-bordeaux
Vinz’s Personal pics
I uploaded the coolest of the videos I took on YouTube. Watch them all here. (I’m too lazy to link every single video separately)

By the way, if someone knows the entire songtitle of the track that Baptiste Joie (Babou) does his tricks on, please e-mail me.

So, the finals are up for today and it promises to be a very exciting day for many of the skaters. The sun is once again beaming its scorching rays down on Bordeaux leaving weak human tissue defenseless.

The women started at 11h, after getting some practice in of course. One thing was clear in review of everybody’s run, they all did better in these final runs than in their qualification runs. It was very enjoyable for the crowd and for the judges as well. The winner in the Women Style Slalom competition was Chloé Seyres, and not Caroline Lejeune (she won in Barcelona). Chloé made an almost perfect 2nd run, and Clochette had some mishaps in both of her runs, but she got second place. Third place was for the italian girl Sarah Veronese.

Then at about 14h the competition area was to the men to show off their skills in the finals. Tiziano Ferrari, already surprised everyone with his qualification runs, but he amazed everybody even more with his first run in the finals. Near to perfect. It would be hard to top that. Vinz also knew this, and perhaps this is what made him flinch a couple of times. He missed a few high scored technical tricks and I guess this is what screwed him.
The judges kept the ranking secret until the last moment, and when Vincent was announced second place, everyone looked to Tiziano, because everybody seemed to know that if Vinz wasn’t first, then certainly Tiziano was to be first. The look on his face when Vinz was announced, was priceless. He just stared in front of him, his friends had to shake him up to get back to reality. As they did that, the announcer, Monique from the RollerBug skate club, declared Tiziano to have first place, and the italian crowd went wild.
The kid deserved it, there’s no doubt about that. His style was great, excellent combination of tricks, nice transitions. Simply put, a winner’s run.

As for the unofficial competitions, the entire stage was filled with italian couples for the Synchronous Style Slalom competition. With two girls (the one with the hat and the one with the glasses) in first place, the boys Luca and Enrico in 2nd place, and the other two girls (I think they were sisters as well) in 3rd place. The Style jump was won by Yohan Fort, 2nd was Martin Violeau and 3rd place was for Marc Fremond.

Congratulations to the organisation, thanks to everyone for the welcome (especially Igor), the good times and the experience in general. I hope we’ll see each other again sometime. Also thanks to the IFSA judges for correct judgement and making the right decisions. (Like when the cones went flying because of a sudden gust of wind)
To me, this was a succesful first IFSA World Cup, eventhough I did finish last

Pictures are updated for the last time:

Maybe I will post some of the movies on YouTube when I get back home tomorrow. Depending on how tired I am and how much time I have left. There’s also the RollerParade in Hasselt and the weather promises to be suitable (or so I was told).

Tim, signing out.

Ok I’ll just start off with the bad news today.
I’m still sunburnt, and there’s a nice new layer added. I finished last again in the speed slalom, Thomas did better than me and technically I’m not really last because Vinz didn’t show up so his score got defaulted. That seemed to have been an organizational mistake afterwards, so I stay last.

The speed slalom competition was, however, very exciting to watch. Romain finished first in the qualificiations, and Yohan Fort as his runner-up. But in the knock-out stage, Romain had two bad runs and got knocked out of the brackets pretty early. Leaving Yohan to take home the gold for “Team France”. And he did, in a spectacular final versus Joie Baptiste.

In the women category, Severine Thomas took gold (also “Team France”) with Chloé Seyres as the runner-up.

Overall it was a very nice competition, eventhough there were some problems with the automatic chronometer.

In between the qualifications and the knock-out finals for the speed slalom, there was the free jump competition. Of which I sadly didn’t see a lot, because I was looking for shadow in sunny Bordeaux. I don’t know who got first place in the women’s category, but Hakeem won the gold by jumping over 145cm in the men’s category.

After the finals of speed slalom there was synched style slalom, where we got to see 3 couples from Italy and 2 couples from France duke it out. Thomas has videos of practically all of them. I thought the run of the 2 Italian girls (I’m bad at remembering names so it was the one with the glasses and the one with the hat) was looking the coolest. They were almost constantly in sync and they matched the music perfectly. Very nice to watch. Igor and Chloé had fabulous and incredible moves they were showing, but it was out of sync most of the time. But not bad at all for not practicing sync skating…not bad at all.

Then, they rolled out the ramp, to amaze the public with the Style Jump event. There were some amazing tricks, the skaters pulled off. I don’t know the names but I did hear the commentator, Jeff (who is also the Judge Manager for this event), announce Yohan’s “Regal 180″. It’s too hard to explain, and I’m not going to bore you with a deep and thorough description of the jump (*ahem*).

A bunch of us stayed even after the sync slalom and the style jump, because there was going to be a fireworks display on the bridge at 22:45. So we put down some cones and went back to slalom again. I must say, the crowd alongside the “Quai Des Chartrons” is much bigger in the evening than it is during the day. Although it could’ve had something to do with the fireworks to celebrate the French National Holiday.
The fireworks were magnificent, especially at the end where they lit up the biggest and brightest of their rockets. To see shiny sparkles in the night sounds so simple, but I think it still is fascinating.

Tomorrow the event continues with the Style Slalom for men and women. There are some real strong candidates and I look forward to see the winners unfold. This is the last day I’m going to take pictures, hopefully the battery of the camera will last some longer this time.

Pictures in the webalbum are updated again:

Today is the first day of the actual competitions. On the program is Qualifications for the Style Competition of both Women and Men. The women are up first and start at 12h with their first and second runs. Afterwards the men do their first and second runs and then we know who goes to the finals and who doesn’t. Those who ended up in the four last places don’t, it’s that simple.

There were a total of 16 participants in the womens category and 19 participants in the mens category. Every run of each skater takes 1 minute and 30 seconds, so in that short time you have to prove what you’re worth. Do the coolest tricks, do them stylish, and don’t knock over any cones. It sounds so simple, and if you see the great slalom skaters do their tricks, it looks so simple as well. But believe me… it’s not

After everybody finished their run, the judges took 30 minutes give or take, to put up the results. You can see the pictures of the result sheets in the webalbum. I took last place, and those who have seen my run know it was correctly judged. Then again, I didn’t expect anything more than last place, so the disappointment wasn’t great at all By the way, Igor and Chloé if you’re reading this: thanks for the applauding in my first run, I could use the support
Surprisingly, an italian newcomer, Tiziano Ferrari took second place. Before Skali and Igor. But it’ll all come down to how they perform in the finals on sunday.

On the way back from the event area to the hotel, I pass by a “refreshing area” where there are small fountains on a large field. Check it out in the pictures, it really adds to the atmosphere here in Bordeaux.

Also, because tomorrow’s the French National Holiday, they’re setting off fireworks at the moment, and also tomorrow at 22h45. Eventhough I can’t see any of it, it sounds pretty large.

Tomorrow will be the speed slalom competition and free jump competitions. Thomas and myself (the belgians) will only be competing in the speed slalom one. Hopefully I can get better results in this discipline.

Anyway, check again tomorrow to see how it went.
And now, I’m gonna enjoy “that burning sensation” some more and hit the hay.

Check out the pictures:

Alright, after having to switch gates at the airport, I stepped into the plane that would take us to Bordeaux. This was my first time flying so I was a little bit nervous. But everything went pretty smooth. The plane took off nicely and before I knew it we were up in the air, above the clouds.

After about 1 hour we landed safely in Bordeaux. As I said, the nice people of RollerBug would be picking me up there, but at first I couldn’t find anybody. So I logged on to the local hotspot and looked up Guyoms phone number, called him and told him about my problem. He told me there should be 3 other people already there. Gregory, the driver, Lenka, from Slovenia, and Carlos from Spain. But none of them were to be spotted. (not that I know any of them by face )
Then suddenly Gregory came walking down the stairs with a skate in his hand. This had to be our driver I thought to myself, and indeed…

*Gregory has joined the party*

We were talking a bit about skating and how there should be 2 other people that were going to be joining us. Lenka came up in the conversation. Guyom mentioned on the phone she was a very pretty girl with long blonde hair. As we were walking the hall, I spotted a lonesome girl sitting on the benches with just her suitcase next to her. I looked at her and said to Gregory, “maybe that’s her?”. Because I pointed slightly, she started to smile a little bit and waited for us to come closer. Then she noticed the skate Gregory was holding and smiled.

*Lenka has joined the party*

After a short introduction, I gathered the information that she’s here as an IFSA judge (one of my colleagues ), and Guyom was completely right, she is indeed very pretty.
So now the only one left was Carlos, we chatted a bit until Carlos arrived. Another IFSA judge. I remember Matthias mentioning him.

*Carlos has joined the party*

We hopped on the RollerBug mini-van and Lenka and Carlos got dropped off at their hotel and I got dropped off at mine.
I was hungry and the hotel didn’t seem to have anything to eat (it’s just a Formula 1 hotel, so I guess I shouldn’t have expected that). So, I put on my skates and skated to the place where the competition would be at.
The place is about 1km from the hotel and I had to cross an annoying bridge.
Finally I spotted it, thanks to the obvious skate-park next to it. They were still setting things up, but the bleachers were set up already.

Then I went to look for a restaurant or tavern of some kind. After being told thrice that they didn’t server food at this hour anymore (it was 14h at the time), I tried my luck in the next salad bar and hit the jackpot.
The “Plat du Jour” was a salad of smoked salmon with prepared vegetables. I’m not usually a salad-guy, nor a fish-guy, but food is food and for 8 euroes, it seemed alright. It was delicious and fresh. Excellent food for a sunny thursday afternoon in Bordeaux at the bank of La Garonne.

After I finished my meal I went to look for a hotspot of some kind, and here I am now, typing away in a cybercafé in a quiet side-street of the Quai des Chartronnes. The next three days are going to be extremely exciting, I hope I’ll still find some time to make a little blog post about the day’s experiences. And hopefully I’ll find a free hotspot somewhere…The one in the hotel is payable (this one is too, but I bet it’s cheaper)

I already took some pictures, you can view them all here.
I’ll just add the pictures to that album, so you can either check that album’s site, or check here to see if there are updates.

So, see you tomorrow!
Greets from Bordeaux, France.

So I guess I should mention that thursday, I’ll be leaving for Bordeaux. I’m taking the early flight in Brussels Airport, and I’ll arrive in Bordeaux at around 10:45, where the very friendly people from RollerBug will provide transportation to the hotel.

Aside from a little vacation, this trip has another purpose as well, competing in the IFSA competition. I decided that, since I am in fact an IFSA judge, I needed to know how it feels to be a competitor as well.

I’ll be participating in the Freestyle Slalom and SpeedSlalom competitions. Most probably fail miserably in both, but like they (the losers) say: “Participating is more important than winning”.

The flight back home is next monday at 14:30, and we’re supposed to be arriving back in Brussels at 16:00.
If there’s internet available in the hotel I’ll most probably be posting pictures/blogging everyday, if not you may expect pictures/write-up as soon as I get back.

Currently listening to: Amon Tobin - The Killer’s Vanilla (this song is amazing, but sadly about the only good one on the album :s)