...at the end it was all about APOLO!!

Well peeps ,,,, so much to say ,,,, but one thing fer sure is that Nationals has been one of the most exciting events I've ever attended! From having the 'flights' from hell to Apolo posing with us with our AMAZING hoodies ,,,,,,, just priceless. I'll start from the beginning, so grab some munchies and enjoy the read.

I was supposed to arrive to Cleveland on Thursday around 8:00 a.m., but as you might have heard, Kalifornia's weather was out of control that week. Well, unfortunate (for me of course) my flight from Fresno to San Frans was cancelled at the last minute. It seemed that I was NEVER gonna leave Fresno. Fortunate enough, the people from United and NWA worked with me. They re-routed me through LAX (which was my first choice from the beginning) and got to CLE around 10:00 pm. But wait, do you thing that's all, well not really. My first connection was LAX to Memphis, TN and the Memphis to CLE ,,, well just because the LORD is soooo good to me, I was able to make the last connection, I ran like there was no tomorrow, made my connection, but my luggage was not lucky enough. I got my bag on Friday and that was the end of my flight from hell. Phew, just to think about it ,,,, makes me want to barf.

Ok so, first day of competition, as always Apolo gracious and beautiful to watch skate. Peeps, let me just say that National are as exciting as International Cups, just for the mare reason that we want all of our skaters to place 1st, and here, well is just hard to watch how good most of them are, but for split seconds,,, they don't make it to the final. Apolo looked very calm and ready to skate his heart out. On the ladies said, what can I say, Huy Jung aka 'Halie' my God, that girl ,,,,, I hate to say it, but she'll start bringing some medals to the USA women team. Don't get me wrong, Caroline was amazing as always, and Maria has improved a lot as well, but Halie is just a natural, kind of like Apolo. So, first day went by, as good 'enthusiast' we waited patiently for Apolo to come out ,,,, to see the result ,,,, please refer to the post prior to this one ,,,,, that image says more that 1000000000 X 485849999 words.
We thanked him and left.

Second day, hmmmm the controversy day ,,,,, well 500 races are soooo exciting by nature ,,,, but to see Apolo and Rusty to go at it ,,,, can it get better!!!!! I'm not a Short Track Speed Skating 'expert' and not trying to become one ,,,, but on my opinion ,,,, and I swear I'm being very NEUTRAL ,,,, that 500 was a clean race ,,,,, now lets have in consideration that I was watching the race from the side ,,,,, so maybe the peeps that saw it from the front, had a different perspective ,,,,, now did Rusturs had to go and wash the dirty laundry in front of the media ,,,, in my opinion he should have not ,,,,, but as an out spoken person he is ,,,, well you know what he said. On Saturday I was able to give Apolo the hoodie ,,,,, he was signing autograph when I called him like 384692747 to get his attention ,,,, all of the sudden ,,,,, the annoying guy ,,,,, ya know the 'short track speed skater expert' told me that I might had to refer to him as Mr. Ohno ,,,, on which I responded with a 'NO' ,,,, kept calling Apolo until he turn to my way ,,,, told him I had something for him ,,,, and with that kind smile he has, said "for me",,,, I nodded my head affirming ,,,, he ask me to throw it to him ,,,,, he opened up and thank us for the gift ,,,, April was EXTREMELY thrilled that the golden one like the hoodie ,,,, who wouldn't ,,,, that baby is off the hook!!! We did not stay till the end ,,,, instead we found a Starbucks and got us a nice treat from our favorite place ,,,,,,, later on that night, we learned that Apolo came out to great fans as always ,,,,, and also asked some of our girls if they were gonna attend the last day of competition ,,,,, which of course,,,, our girls responded to a very positive and enthusiast YES ,,,,, is he the best or WHAT!!!

Third day of competition ,,,, well as every competition ,,, you don't want them to end up ,,,,, but Sunday is always an excited day ,,,,, you have the 1000, the 3000 and the relays ,,,, which amazes me for the enormously strength these athletes have to have to complete the races,,,,, but let me tell ya ,,,,, or actually ,,,,, I'm pretty sure you heard that Halie stole our hearts ,,, not just because she won both the 1000 and 3000, I think she got second place with her relay team ,,,, but the most exciting part was when Rusty brought her back to the ice to compete with the guys ,,,,,, she is sooooo natural ,,,,, anyhow ,,,, when Apolo learned Halie was going to be in Ruster's team ,,,, he busted in laughter ,,,,,,, yeah Apolo ,,,, Halie will give you some competition so get used to her!!!! The entire rink was screaming from the top of their - our lungs ,,,, and every time we had a chance we chanted Halie's name ,,,,, at the end ,,,,, her team; therefore, Rusty's team got second place ,,,, it was awesome ,,,,,, that was the highlight of the day ,,,, maybe even the highlight of the entire competition!!! Oh but wait ,,,,,, there is more ,,,,, according to our good friend Rusty Smith - 500 m Bronze Medalist (teee heee heee) Halie skated NOTHING compare to what she really can skate!!! It was no surprise to me ,,,, considering that this was Halie's first competition ,,,,, incredible!!! We went through the entire award ceremony ,,,,, which was very, very, very LONG!!!! At the end of everything ,,,,, the USA team posed for our cameras ,,,, and shortly after ,,,, some of the fans had the opportunity to take a pic with them ,,,,, most of them were young kids ,,,,, I took my extra Nike poster for him to sign it ,,,,, I asked him to autograph the postr,,,,, which was going to be donated to Zoutou ,,,, and as gracious as he is ,,,,, happily accepted ,,,,, I asked him if he could write something like "thank you for supporting Zoutou" or something like that ,,,, and certainly wrote that ,,,, left the Zoutou out ,,,, but still wrote some words ,,,,, I think this is the first time I see Apolo write and entire sentence ,,,, tee hee ,,,,,,, I thanked him and left.
We chilled at the rink's lobby were we had the opportunity to congratulate many of the skaters ,,,, in some point ,,,, Rusty came out asking for a ride to the airport ,,,, and with no hesitation I offered the ride ,,,,,, as relax and coolio Rusty is ,,,,, he appreciated the ride we offered ,,,,,,, meanwhile ,,,,, we had the chance to talk to Joanne ,,,, Caroline's mom ,,,, she is such an interesting person to talk to ,,,, our chat was just delight ,,,,, once Caroline came out ,,,, we chatted a little bit with her as well ,,,,, but let me tell ya ,,,, that Caroline had her own 'corner' of fans ,,,, Joanne told us that the club dared Caroline to point at them if she won the competitor ,,,, which she did ,,,, but the coolest thing ,,,, was when her skating club stood up and did the 'Standing O' ,,,,, lovely ,,,,, Caroline even did a 'Standing O' on top of the podium on Saturday ,,,,,,, they still have a tough time trying to understand why we (fans) follow short track ,,,,, I guess she couldn't believe that people were really paying $$$$$ (and lots of them) to see ST ,,,,, Caroline asked us what we did for a living ,,,,,, not until then ,,,,,, I guess she realized that we were NO rich, spoiled brats that have easy money ,,,,, she stressed how expensive ST can become ,,,, for what we certainly agreed with her.
At that time ,,,, Apolo came out of doing his anti-doping ,,,,,, he was caring a box or something ,,,,, when he saw us ,,,, said that he had worn his hoodie for his warm-up that morning ,,,, for which I responded that we did not see him ,,,,,,, he insisted he did ,,,, for which I asked him if he could go put it back and come out to take a pic with us ,,,,, and the rest ,,,,, ya know how cute we all looked with those hoodies!!!!! After the pic ,,,,, we thanked him 38452093740974 X 0340273427 ,,,,, and with a warm hug ,,,, we concluded an OUTSTANDING well balanced weekend!!!!
Minutes later, Rusty came out looking for his ride (who were us of course) ,,,,, Rusty is sooooo Rusty and I thank God for having such a great guy representing the USA as a Short Track Speed Skater ,,,, for those of you that have had the opportunity to talk to Rusty know what I mean ,,,,, if you haven't ,,,,, please do so ,,,, he is soooooo easy to talk to!!! We joked around ,,,,, got a different route to the airport ,,,, but a the end ,,,, we were able to deliver the Rustinator in one piece to the car rental's place. He had to drive to Michigan since he was meeting someone there. We all got off the car ,,,, thanked him ,,,, he thanked us ,,,,, he loved our hoodies as well ,,,,, so had no choice but to turn it in to him ,,,,, I asked if he minded ,,,, he said 'NO' ,,,, so he went on with all his equipment and a hoddie. We got back to the hotel ,,,, grab some dinner and as unique 'Uncle Kimo' is ,,,,, he introduced all of his fellow club members to us ,,,, these kids are ADORABLE ,,,,, they came into Julia's room to say hi and us as big fans of STSS ,,,, we gave them a rand of applause to most of them ,,,, since a couple of kids from Kali got the overall title of their category ,,,,, we kicked it for most of the night at Julia's and Sooz 'Oscar Party' ,,,,, let me tell ya ,,,, Tatie is the best host ever!!!! Even though I couldn't drink (alcohol) ,,,, she had sodas, water, munchies ,,,,,, everything ,,,, and it was fun seeing how LOTR whipped everything!!!!

With much sadness ,,,, we had to depart on Monday ,,,, all of us had different flights with different airlines ,,,,, Molly and Tiasha were the first to leave ,,, April and myself had an later flight ,,,,, so we dropped them off at the airport ,,,, and Apes and myself got back to the hotel to finish packing up our stuff. On our way to check out, Tatie was at the lobby and we chatted for a little while ,,,, we hugged each other ,,,, and with many memories ,,,, Apes and myself parted to the drop off the car, and then to our respective gates to wait for our flights. We got a glimpse of Apolo and Allison at airport ,,,, but not sure which airline they were flying with ,,,, not mine for sure ,,,, everything seemed going on scheduled ,,,, which at least with my flights this time did ,,,,, but guess what??? As you might have read ,,,,, a lot of people got sick in CLE due to food poisoning ,,,, well call it what you want ,,,, but on my flight from Detroit to LA ,,,, I got soooo sick on the plane that I swear to God that I felt I was going to faint ,,,,,, I sweated like a pig ,,,,, luckily enough, after a little while ,,,,, I felt asleep for the rest of the flight ,,,,, did not make my connection to Fresno ,,,, so had to wait for the 8:20 pm flight ,,,,,, came back to Kali with the same weather ,,,,, raining, raining ,,, and did I mention rain ,,,, ok ,,,, got me some tea ,,,, waited for my flight ,,,,,, flew to Fresno on a nasty storm ,,,,, thank God landed and my parents were waiting for me at the International Yosemite Airport aka FAT ,,,,,, and that my friends, readers and lurkers was my exciting weekend in Cleveland.

I want to thank the academy for this trip,,,,,, tee hee hee j/k ,,,,, I want to thank my sistas for rooming with me at the last minute ;) ,,,,, those girls can talk for HRS. ,,,, and when I say HRS. ,,,, yes HRS. ,,,,, I think that is the beauty of our friendship ,,,,, love ya girls!!!! To Anita ,,,, girl you kick ASS big time ,,,, those VIP seat were the BOMB!!! To Tatie and Julia for hosting the 'Oscar Party' ,,,, you ladies better have the best time in Gothenburg!!! To Tiasha ,,,, girl ,,, you are our super HERO ,,, those pic you took of Apolo with the hoodie ,,,,, God bless your camera ,,, btw ,,,, NICE camera sis!!! To Jennie, Mel, Janie, any body cares for a cha cha cha chia!!!! Ohhh sweet Lord ,,,, the rest of my fellow STSS peeps ,,,, it was good seeing you again and meeting you for the first time ,,,,,, the ones that could not make it ,,,, you guys were missed as well!!!!!!! and for last but not least ,,,,, The Skaters ,,,, Apolo, thanks for being so kind, so inspiring and sooooo leading us to become a better fan ,,,, does that make sense???? ,,, I hope cuz I'm tired and will like to post this encounter ASAP ,,,, Rusty ,,,, dude you are the best ever in the world!!!! ,,,,, What would STSS world do without ya??!! You are the heart of the sport!!!! To Caroline ,,,, girl you have a new follower ,,,,, expect some 'Standing O' from me now on ;) ,,,, Next stop ,,,, Vegas!!! Can it get better ,,,, ST + VEGAS ,,,, bring it on!!!!! Till next time ,,,, tata

....and here my dear peeps ,,,, some of the shots that you have been waiting patiently for the past 2 weeks or so ,,,,, I learn how to make thumbnails ,,,,, just love it ,,,, I hope you love them too!!!!!