!SOI 2011
So as some of you may know, the 25th Anniversary of Stars on Ice kicked off their tour this weekend. The first show was last night in California - San Jose, to be exact - and I dragged my mom along with me for my first live(!) skating event.
We had a three hour trek to get to the HP Pavillion arena, and the drive was a bit of an adventure in and of itself. Between the driving rain, slightly faulty GPS, and almost dying via big rig (we barely missed being run into the guard rail), by the time we safely arrived in San Jose we couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. We took a quick detour to grab dinner, then drove around for another fifteen minutes trying to find parking -- we ended up paying $15 to park across the street from the arena, since Mom didn't want to walk too far in the wind and pouring rain.
After shaking off the rain and having our tickets scanned, we wandered down the aisles to our seats, and got a pretty sweet surprise when we found we were only a few feet back from the ice! Yay for fourth-row seats :D We even saw Kurt skate by before the stands started to fill up too much.
They kicked off the show with a cool group number to "I Like It", followed by a message of thanks from Scoot on the big screens. They kinda rotated through all the skaters/pairs for most of the performances, although there were some great colaborations too -- Sasha with Todd and Kurt, not-really-orange-bro!Evan with two of the girls, and ofc the big 50's-themed group number in the middle of the show. They did another round of solo performances after intermission, and wrapped it up with yet another fun group skate.
The biggest surprise came just over halfway through the show. I figured that, since it was opening night for the tour, they might have something special planned, like a previously-unmetioned skater in the show or something, but no such luck. We were, however, graced with a familiar face in the audience -- Kristi Yamaguchi! (She's originally from the Bay Area, so technically not too shocking.)
In all, I had a great time, and seriously can't wait to see another show :D
[On a related note, Nationals will be at the same arena next January, so I've already started planning! Any _skaters already thinking about going?]