Top 10 Events of My Swing Dancing Life
This is actually in a particular order. I was originally going to do it in chronological order so it would make more sense reading it, but decided to do it in order of significance to me. However, here's a timeline for your reference:

March 1998: First time swing dancing (Derby)
Winter 1998: First time to Rhino Room
Winter 1998: First Partner, First Contest (Angie)
Spring 1999: Meeting Second Partner (Sheri)
Feb 2000: First "Serious" Contest (Sheri) @ Jitterbug Jam 2000
May 2000: Second Contest (Sheri) @ Monterey 2000
Oct 2000: Third Contest (Sheri) @ ALHC 2000
Nov 2000: Fourth Contest (Sheri) @ WLHC 2000
Jul 2001: Our "Last" Contest (Sheri) @ NJC 2001
Aug 2002: Our first workshop @ Orlando
May 2003: Our Wedding
Jul 2003: Entering Camp Hollywood Jitterbug Contest
Oct 2003: Our Return to Competition @ ALHC

Before we get to the top 10, there are two honorable mentions for highlights of my swing dancing life. The first is being asked to be one of the lead couples in the PBDA snowball dance. For you locals, you know what I mean. After attending PBDA many many times, and always seeing the great dancers that led off the snowball dance, I felt so honored when Erin Stevens one night came up to me and asked me to be one of the 5 couples to lead off the snowball! To me it was like a sign of arrival! (Is that hokey?).

The second was being asked to both demo and teach at the Derby. After dancing at the Derby so much, it was a great honor to start performing in the classes and to later take a regular teaching spot at the Derby for a few months. And this is all because of the lovely Ms. Molly Shock. She has always been fantastic about promoting us and especially encouraging me to dance. I really owe her a lot for where my dancing is today.

Onward!

10: My first time to the Rhino Room (Winter 1998)
The Rhino Room had swing dancing on Wedn nights. My friends that I had gone dancing with thought it was way too far to drive to. So this was big in that it opened my eyes to dancing outside of the Derby and PBDA AND going out on my own. Also:

• Introduced me to the teaching of Shehsa Marvin and Audrey Wilson. I never took weekly swing lessons from anyone, but if I were to, I would have taken from Audrey.
  
• It also introduced me to a fella named Tom through whom I found Memories which was the start of my dancing 4 to 6 times a week.
  
• It was at Memories I met two very close friends of mine: Jamie and Angie.
  

9: Meeting my first partner (Winter 1998)
Angie Braccini (now Angie Winkler) was my first real partner, meaning we actually took time outside of dancing to practice. It was with Angie that my Lindy Hop really developed and that I started dancing about 5 or 6 times a week. Also:

• My first pair of dancing shoes were bought with Angie.
  
• My first aerials were practiced with Angie (just for fun).
  
• My first ever contest was with Angie.
  

We competed in the "Blast From The Past" series of contests that took place sometime I believe in early 1999. We competed at the prelim @ the Derby and got 3rd place!! I couldn't make it to the finals so we never did compete after that. My next contest (first "serious" contest) was to be with my next partner Sheri.

8: Our second contest (me and Sheri) (May 2000)
It was memorable and forgettable. It was our second contest (Monterey: Swing By The Sea 2000) and Melinda Comeau and Sylvia Sykes suggested we do the amateur level contest again. Sheri suggested the same. I went against "better judgement" and entered us into the ALHC qualifier instead. We set a goal of just making it to the finals which we did! It was forgettable though since we knew we could have done a lot better in the final round. We tend to do better in "Go for it!" mode. When I find out that the judges actually think highly of us I start to think too much about our dancing. Case in point here. However, it was great to know we actually were dancing where we belonged and we got great commendations for this from both Sylvia and Melinda after the contest.

7: Our first workshop (August 2002)
Took place in August 2002 in Orlando, CA. We had quite a bit of experience in presentation and sales from our business and carried that over to our workshop. We hadn't told the folks in Orlando it was our first workshop, and I don't think they could have guessed either. We got many many compliments on our workshop, some saying it was the best one they had ever attended. It was definitely a big thrill for us to finally do one and definitely gave me a huge huge high.

6: My first time swing dancing. (Spring 1998)
You only get your first time once. In this case, it was Sunday March 28, 1998. I remember the date because it was the same day as the Los Angeles Marathon which I had run that year. Some friends from college wanted to go swing dancing the same night and had said "Geez, if you can't go swing dancing after running a marathon, you're not really in shape are you?". I don't remember much about that night except for watching in amazement at all the people dancing. I was fascinated by all the spins, kicks, steps, and fancy outfits. The same night also I was very puzzled by the basic (east coast) which was in 6 counts though music was in 8 counts. I also kept questioning my friend that there was no way all this could be improvised. So many complex spins and turns... She assured me that it was.

5: Our first contest (me and Sheri) (Feb 2000)
Our friends started encouraging us to compete, so Sheri and I started practicing aerials on our own (which resulted in many a fall and tumble). We included a small bit of this "fall and tumble" footage in our wedding slideshow by the way which you can view on our site. The blooper footage is at the end of the slideshow. You can view it here. We finally competed at our first contest in early 2000 (Jitterbug Jam Amateur Couples). It was a nervewracking experience for me. I've never been to a weekend camp before and all the contests were a bit overwhelming, but it was definitely fun to be out in front of people. (View Our First Contest Here).

4: Our "fifth" contest (Oct 2003)
After our success in our first year of competition (2000), we had started 2001 thinking "Okay, this is our year!". We started practicing much more seriously at this point (up until then, we actually did not practice much at all . Most of our practice was on the social dance floor). The year 2001 ended up being a bad year for us as we both went through a lot personally, eventually leading to our quitting competition after NJC 2001. Starting in 2002, we started becoming much closer off the dance floor. We started dating in 2002 and then became engaged in July 2002 and married in May 2003. For our wedding, we put together a choreographed performance to show our appreciation for our guests which ended up being a lot of fun! After things settled down after our marriage, we decided on a whim to compete at the Camp Hollywood Jitterbug contest to see how it would feel to be out in front of people again. It felt really good (though we didn't make the finals) and this prompted us to decide to compete at ALHC 2003. We put together our most intricate routine to date (The Moses Supposes Number). We received quite a nice "Welcome Back" from a number of folks and capped our return to competition by placing 3rd in the Open Showcase. We were satisfied with our performance (though we had some technical errors), and definitely happy at all the great feedback and compliments we got from both dancers and judges! As well as the standing ovation from the crowd after our performance!

3: Our third contest (Oct 2000)
We hadn't liked our dancing in the previous contest at Monterey (see Item #8 above). However, as the ALHC 2000 approached we said "To heck with it!" and decided to fly out there and compete in the ALHC Last Chance Round. It was a bit intimidating considering we were flanked by dance legends David & Kim and Shawn & Debbie. However, we were in that "go for it!" mindset and ended up doing very well, winning the Last Chance Round. And it was from this contest that Jack Carey had come up to us and said how pleased he was to see us dancing and competing! A huge huge compliment that made our day (and weekend!) We went on to place first in the semi-finals, which unfortunately got me thinking too much again and I ended up not performing as well as I know we could have in the finals. However, we did give all our hearts out and I think it showed (View it here). Considering our goal was simply to qualify for ALHC and hopefully make the finals, if you had told us before the event that we'd get in the top three, we would have said that you were nuts. This is definitely one of the three biggest highlights in my dancing career (on the awards ceremony video you can see us crying when we go up to get our award).

2: Our fourth contest (Nov 2000)
Placing in the top three at ALHC qualified us for the Worlds in Germany. Placing fourth was definitely not something we even considered, especially considering how bad we felt about our dancing after the Monterey/Swing By The Sea "failure" (again, Item #8). And had anyone told us that we'd do 3rd at ALHC and 4th at the World's, yeah we would have said you were nuts. This definitely had to be the biggest moment in our swing dancing career. If you want more details about our experience in Germany, we wrote two lengthy emails to our friends while we were over there with our friend Doc Mike. You can read the emails here.

And the number one (1) top event in my swing dancing life ...

Meeting Sheri (second partner, and eventual wife) (Spring 1999)
Meeting Sheri, dancing with Sheri, eventually dating Sheri, and marrying Sheri has got to be the best thing and number one thing that has ever come out of swing dancing. How could this NOT be the number one top of the list event? (You can read more details about this on our personal website. Here's a link to it).

There you have it! Hope you enjoyed reading --