Dance! - The Road to Heavies: lesson 72, August 21, 2015.

Back in the Chasséstraat

As Sail-Amsterdam is in full swing and the NDSM-wharf and surroundings has turned into one big chaos, our teacher decides to hold class at the Chasséstraat.
My journey knows a bad start when my bus is cancelled and I barely make it to catch the other service. That bus is already crowded, far more crowded than I'm used to. I really wonder if we will be able to make Amsterdam without people having to stay in the aisle. Well, we don't. If it's not down to the bus that has been cancelled, it's down to the interest in Sail itself.

Getting into Amsterdam isn't such a big problem, until we leave the IJtunnel. The city-center is in major gridlock due to the Sail-madness and I just know I won't be able to make it in time.

Adding to the chaos is the request made by police to not call at the Prins Hendrikkade stop: The clock has struck 8 but I'm still on the bus. 5 minutes past 8 I enter an extremely crowded Central Station. Below the busstation a crowd is surging like no tomorrow.

I hurry towards the tram, which fortunately doesn't feature severe delays and arrive at the studios around a quarter past 8.

In short: we don't really dance much. We talk alot about the vacation (for as far you already had one) and joke about things that happened in the past weeked.

Personally, I'm lucky I kept practicing. My heavy-shoe dances work out well and only my soft-shoe stuff is a bit rusty. I hardly practiced the Primary Reel and I did not even think about the Hornpipe: I knew that one far too bad to practice it and I didn't want to learn something wrong.

I do know that my new job is taking it's toll. I'm walking all day long, lift a lot of stuff, get on and off the forklift-truck and reachtruck a lot and I'm just done. Halfway through class I start to feel a little sick and I'm on guard to run for a toilet should things go wrong.

Fortunately, my stomach upset goes down when I take a bit of rest. Just before I want to ask if one of my classmembers can bring me back home, she already offers me the same. I'm really not looking forward to a ride back per public transport and thus accept her offer.