Sports Acro

My brother pointed me to acro links on Youtube today (this for instance), and it makes me want to get back into that sport or SOMETHING LIKE IT in any case so much more. When I stopped, I was 11 and at about this level, judging by tumbling pass. But my routine was all about fighting with my partner, not about something silly like dancing with him. The skills have changed so much since then; I haven't been able to find anyone doing quabet 1 1/2 (which was my favorite skill, but a bit rare at the time I guesss), and there's this freaky new crotch-catch thing that I find really odd and definitely don't remember. Maybe Daniil just didn't do that kind of skill, who knows. I always felt less artistic and more... gymnastic than the california teams. *shrug*

Point being that there is a group doing sports acro in Chicago, these guys, but they're currently practicing in a makeshift space in Evanston (I think) and I would need a car to get there easily - the CTA is awful about it. Which sucks. And there are these people doing trapeze and silks, but they're way far west at the end of the green line so it comes down to the same thing; semi-reasonable commute if I have a car, but not so much on the CTA. I've e-mailed someone about maybe starting an athletic club at the U of C for circus acrobatics, since the Circus club proper is an artistic organization and therefore doesn't have insurance for crazy shit like that. For a few miraculous weeks in winter quarter, someone was teaching silks through the circus, and I would love to do that again. So maybe if the acro group meets on saturdays, I can dedicate my saturdays to going up to evanston and back to do that, and have this other club to practice with during the week? But it doesn't seem worth it to get a car in Chicago just so I can do that sort of athletics, even though I watch the videos and desperately want to join in. Gah.

It's just... the gymnastics club isn't practicing this quarter so I am high and dry and without a physical activity to do. I should work on flexibility, and I've started stretching every night again, which is good, but not really good enough. If I don't have a goal and a cohort, I'm going to stop before the week is out, just like every other time I've tried.

It can't hurt to give it one more shot though, I guess. And maybe this summer I'll get zipcars and shorten the commute. Really, it would just be one and a half months - and the weekends until the second weekend in june are already scheduled, so one month - of crazy CTA. I could do one month. Probably.

The other option, of course, is to do cheerleading. But the cheerleading here, I think, is more shouting and less pyramids. Maybe that will be my next choice if Tamsen gets back to me in a negative fashion. But for now I'll just keep my fingers crossed.

*sigh* Maybe all of this is a stupid pipe dream. My parents say I should get into Yoga or Pilates or a martial art; something that I can do for the rest of my life. It makes sense; this kind of high-impact sport is notoriously dangerous and hard on people's bodies, especially as they get older. But I know that there were grownups on the Acro team when I was a kid; people with real lives and real jobs, in their late 30s. Which means that I could do this for 15 to 20 more years if I wanted to. That's a long time, and I can cross the bridge of needing to do something lower impact when I come to it. I just want something exciting now, something fun, youthful, and off-the-wall. I mean, I lost one sport because of an injury, and I really want to prove to myself that I didn't lose sports in general, but just one sport. I want to prove that I can be intensely athletic, do things that normal people just can't do, be dangerous and insane and beautiful and not stuck in my room scared to do anything for fear of hurting myself. And I'd like it to be the things that diving was when it was good; and the things that diving lost when it turned bad. I want something incredibly demanding on multiple people, with a strong team spirit and sense of camaraderie. Acro should be like that, if any sport is. And that just takes getting back into. Or something.

*wibble*