Right when I was loosing all hope of setting foot in a rink before the summer shows, the Agorà ice rink organized this nice show... ^_^ thank you!!

I drove there with Silvia quite early, to be sure of getting nice places to sit and take photos. We had just spent an hour painting a crazy banner in my backyard, for the surprise party we're organizing for some friends, and we were already in a very good skating mood (when toponiglio franklin is involved, there's alway fun involved!).

Parking was not easy - we ended up having to walk a bit - but we arrived at the rink before the scheduled tme for the beginning of the club competition that took place before the show. Just as we were mumbling about having to pay the entrance ticket - we spent so many time in there, and helped out so many times, that going in there we feel like going into our living room, and you do not pay to enter your living room... we bumped into the rink's owner, who came up tp say hello, and asked us if we had got the tickets yet - no, because we were just arriving - and he gave us to free tickets! In fact I had quite hoped this would happen, as once he had scolded me because I had paid the ticket for nationals or something like that, as he recognized us as "friends"... ^_^ but of course I couldn't count on it until we were there! If he had not offered it, we surely would have not asked, but as things went, we were really happy! In fact just a few seconds later also Diego (Babi's hubby) arrived behind us, and he had been looking for us to give us free tickets as well (I guess we have to thank Babi for this!)...
Carlo came up next, saying hello and chatting about the location of the party (but he doesn't know it will be a party) - the place is called Gattico (gatti = cats, in italian) and he was joking "we'll meet on Saturday at "Meow"?.... silly boy!

Before the actual show there was a club competition, which I didn't fully understand... first some singles, most of whom did the same program (but not all of them, so my first hypotesis that tit was like a compulsory dance, but with jumps, couldn't be valid).... then some veeeeeeeert young dance couples, quite cute, and with actual programs... then there was a short track demonstration (the rink will host next year's short track worlds!) which to my surprise was quite captivating, the guys were not bad and the speaker did a brilliant job.. I think we'll have fun at worlds...(I have this not so vague suspect that we will be asked to give a hand, hm, Diego??).

Then it was showtime.... well, actually there was a bit of warm-up first...
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