Let's do something that doesn't even approximate dancing

[davidn]

On the weekend we first met, Whitney and I were out at the now-dead (and rapidly expiring even at the time) Megabowl in Dundee. I had made an impression on her by climbing over two rows of seats in the cinema to sit beside her the night before, in the belief that you shouldn't let a guest to your group of friends be left on the end of a row, but since that moment I had failed to receive any and all signals that she had been giving in return. And that night at the bowling, I couldn't have helped the situation, because when she found out that I played Dance Dance Revolution she nearly went off me entirely.

Which makes the gift that she arranged for me with her parents even more of a surprise. This year, I received a Cobalt Flux pad a few days after we arrived back from California, after someone had sent it to Michigan by mistake, and it is completely enormous. After leaving university accommodation, where regularly playing it at the Union was probably the only thing that stopped me from becoming a nondescript heap of shambling chip fat, I hadn't played the game in years, but there's only one thing to do when you get an expensive metal dance pad - you start getting back into DDR again!

On starting up Stepmania, which I still had lying around, I was sort of horrified as to the sheer horrendousness of the music that I'd been responsible for putting into it - in stark contrast to my very metal-themed iTunes list, the soundtrack is mostly made up of manic J-pop songs which were named (and apparently recorded) by putting a stick of dynamite in a bag of fun-pack marshmallows. But somehow, like karaoke, they rapidly become acceptable to listen to again in the right (private) setting, and once you reach the stage where you're bouncing around to It's Raining Men (Almighty Mix), you don't give it a second thought.

As you might expect after five years, the days when I was at the top of the Union leaderboard are well behind me, and it's sort of unthinkable to me that I used to be able to do stages like this without ending up dead halfway through. Indeed, I attempted Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori Nori on Expert and only just managed to flail my way past it despite it only having a difficulty of 7 feet instead of the 9 that I was apparently able to do five years ago. But maybe, with practice, restarting this war between man and machine may be able to get me past MAX 300 yet. As long as it doesn't involve any minor conflicts between my head and the ceiling.

I'm going to have to start making DWIs again, now, too...

Comments

[davidn]

I wonder if your keyboard playing might have helped in some way with the translation of arrows to movement - I used to see only a deluge of arrows on the harder songs when I first started out, but like sheet music, you quickly learn to sight-read the individual arrows and the patterns (and this with only four "notes" to worry about). Of course, you still have to translate that mental plan into actual movement, and after not playing for five years, I had forgotten just how exhausting that could be. I can still read the arrows on the "stages like this" example above, but physically being able to get through it is something that I will have to gradually work towards again.

And when's that, next month?

[kjorteo]

February 20. I'm a little nervous because the training for it has been going... not as well as I had hoped. Standard problems for how impossible it is to fit "slower runs over more stupidly long distances"-style workouts into my schedule (I liked the high intensity/short time "kill yourself in a 20-minute time attack" mode specifically because I actually had the time to do it!) aside, I've managed to skip the last four running days in a row for one stupid reason or another--it's always something new and different but it's always something. First I was just to slammed with too much weaving to have the time that day, then it was too cold outside and both treadmills in the weight room were simultaneously broken, then I had to do grocery shopping that day, then I was sick. After having exercised regularly for a little over two years, now, my outlook has changed to the point where it seriously bothers me to miss a workout, so naturally I'm looking to break this streak and get back into it just as soon as humanly possible. If I'm feeling even remotely not-dying (still having a bit of a cough is fine, I'll just power through it) I'll make the next one, but we'll see.