The frustrations...

Oh the joys of being an aerial artist! Once again we've had a superkeen group of people wanting me and my girls to do a routine for a national conference. Just when we thought it would happen the organisers realised what we were going to do and came back asking us to get insurance. This is really difficult as the two girls I have trained to perform with me are under the age of 18, which means they can't get insurance. I asked my insurance broker to do some inquiries to find resonable (price wise) insurance cover. He came back to say everyone balked when they found out what it was for and quoted me for thousands!

Fortunately through my circus contacts in Melbourne I have been able to find a broker that is specifically for circus performers. This has brought the cost down substancially to two hundred. Much more reasonable! But it doesn't include cover for the girls as again, they don't provide cover for underage performers. Will have to do some more investigating.

On another topic, the organisation I teach and train through up in Darwin have asked me to take on another two classes to cater for the interest, this will include adults. Myself and the other tutor have both been explicit saying we only want to dedicate one night a week (in which we currently have two successive classes on) to teaching as we both still want to train and have other things on during the week. The problem with this organisation is they have no experience with aerial circus arts. They are only interested in expanding the number of teaching opportunities without considering the implications. They even suggested that we could teach during the one night a week we've dedicated to training ourselves! We'll stay firm in our decision though, we both consider ourselves as artists before teachers so our priorities will not change!

Another new toy

I finally did it, I bought a brand new car! It's a 2008 Mitshubishi Lancer ES manual sedan. I never thought I'd buy a new car mostly because of how quickly it's value depreciates, but after much consideration I figured this car actually was a good purchase with the extras included plus a 10 year warranty.

The hard thing is having to let my old car go. It's been such a good car, 100% reliable, taking me through flood waters and up and down the Stuart Highway across the NT and interstate for work and uni. It never complained and soldiered on. If it were human it'd probably be wondering what it did wrong. It's sitting in the spare car park at the moment right next to the new car and I feel guilty every time I see it waiting there. The only reason I got the new car is because I figured I can afford an upgrade and my old car was about to hit 300,000kms - I thought it was timely to find a new owner.

One of my collegues who's a committed bike commuter was the only person who raised her eyebrows when I mentioned the proposed new purchase, mostly because I live and work in the city and I ride to work. I think she's worried I'm going to want to drive to work again. But I'm still excited about the new bike so I'll be keen on riding to work for a while longer.

So long since my last blog!

There's just been so much happening I completely forgot about my blogging space. I think I was in the zone when I was writing regularly since I had so much to report on regarding circus.

Anyway I've got something new in my life - triathlon! It's fantastic. Well I haven't actually competed in one yet but I'm spending a fair bit of time training. At the moment I'm aiming for sprint distance: 750m swim/20km ride/5km run. I haven't been able to work too solidly on the run bit as I've only just reached the point where my foot fracture is supposedly healed enough for me to do any impact activity like road running.

So this is my new toy - an Avanti Corsa road bike and I love it! It makes such a difference to ride a bike designed to go fast. I'm a complete biking convert - I even spend my spare time checking out the bike parts websites, what a nerd!

So stay tuned for both circus and tri updates. I did my first aerial circus training for the year tonight and it made me realise just how conditioned one needs to be to do this stuff! I resume aerial circus teaching tomorrow night. After training tonight it makes me think I should take it easy on my poor students!