Club Med-Turks & Caicos, day 6

I mentioned in one of my other posts that I'd write more about running into Colby one our trip. This is the craziest small world story, I just can't get over it. On the first evening there, I was sitting at trapeze when I noticed a guy walking around who looked very familiar. Sure enough, it was Colby! Colby is the first person to to teach me anything on the trapeze! He worked for George back when he had his school running, and was working that wonderful night in August 2012 when I tried trapeze for the first time. He was the first person to call me off the board, pull my safety lines, and the person who caught my first knee hang and my first front end split. He was also there a month later when Dave and I went with our friends. When George closed down the school, Colby moved on, and is now living in Georgia. He's very well known in the trapeze world. He was in Turks for the ExGO reunion that was happening that week, and it's the first time he's been there in 10 years. I couldn't get over how crazy it was that he was there at the same time as us. It's like this a trapeze full circle--from being the first to catch me, to flying together thousands of miles away 3+ years later.

Here we are together in 2012...safe to say I've changed a little bit since then!

...and here we are just before he left to head back to Georgia. It was fun to fly with him, and I appreciated his feedback on my flying. The trapeze world is very small, and this is the prime example!

This was the fist of our rainy days. The morning was nice, but after a little while on the beach, the rain started. We hung out there in the rain for awhile, hoping it would stop. It wasn't heavy at first, so we sat there and wished it away.

Not exactly a great beach day....

Here's a view of the village near our room. Those little houses are the GO rooms, and our room was up on the 3rd floor of D building.

The rain stuck around for a couple hours, and even though it stopped just before trapeze, it was too wet to fly. When they can't fly, they do indoor circus stuff during class time. They use the theater and teach GMs to do things like juggling, Spanish Web, silks, lyra, single/double trapeze, and straps. Today they had up the Spanish Web and the single trapeze. I was really excited to try Spanish Web, and I think I did pretty well for my first time. I did, however, get totally beat up by all this stuff. I came home with rope burns on my left and right leg and the top of my right foot--all from climbing up this rope. I was getting a private lesson from Marifer because there wasn't really anyone else there interested in (or able to) do Spanish Web. She kept sending me back up to try new moves, and every time, I climbed the rope the exact same way, rubbing my skin raw. I have several videos of the different things I was learning. Here's one, here's another, and this is a longer one that combines most of the stuff I learned.

Some of my favorite pictures from last year were of our balancing poses we did on the beach. This was the pose that I wanted to do this year, but we waited too long to learn it, and never had another sunny day. This photo will have to do for now, and next time we're somewhere cool, we'll try it again.

Dave did a few things on the static trapeze that day, but I was too busy on the web to take any photos or videos of him. After we were done, we went back to the beach to watch the sunset before heading back to our room to get cleaned up. It was a beautiful evening now that the rain cleared out.

Here's a time lapse video of the sunset that night....

I had to throw these pictures in here to show some of the bruises I have acquired by this point in the week. Both or my arms were covered in bruises from my 6 days of trapeze. Dave also had quite a few bruises too (from that pullover shoot trick he learned).

I think this big one above my hip is from rolling off the net every time I came down. The belt pushed into my hip in the same spot every time. The other scrapes are also from the belt. Circus hurts--but it feels so good!

Sunday night was the circus dinner night. They invite everyone who has been hanging out at the trapeze to join to circus team for dinner in the dining room. There were about 20 or so of us there to eat together. I don't remember a circus dinner last year. It must be something new this team does.

The dress code was "black and glow," and the show was "Twisted." This is actually our 3rd time seeing this show. We saw it twice last year since we ended up going back to Club Med the night we got bumped from our flight. It's sort of a combination of various fairy tales "twisted" together. I have two videos from the show. This one is pretty funny, and this one is the romantic dance at the end. It was a good show! After the show, they open up the back stage area and invite everyone to come back for the "Underground" party. There were blacklights and other crazy stuff for the glow party. Marifer and Brandon had neon orange face paint, so Marifer snuck some from backstage and painted my face and Bethany's. This was one of the funnest party nights for us.

Mike actually hung out with us for awhile, but Bethany closed down the bar with Dave, Brandon and I. The 4 of us also went for a late night dip in the ocean on our way back to the room. It was awesome! The water was super calm, the sky was full of stars, and we even saw a couple shooting starts. It was a late night, but super fun...I think we got in around 3:30 am. Yikes!