Compulsories

I have to post the link to the Vancouver Sun piece about how dressage is putting Olympic spectators to sleep, because it makes exactly the same comparison some of Sunflake's friends and I made this weekend (in a Chelsea cafe, over carafes of wine and a plate of cheese, if you want to get particular): that the dressage portion of three-day eventing is the moral equivalent of compulsory figures in ice skating. Remember when figures were part of the scoring? You'd see some fantastic short routine from Midori Ito, and then the commentators would croon that it was just too bad, she'd done such a good job on her axels but since she'd switched edges in a figure 8 the day before, she couldn't do better than fifth, and people would howl with disgust. Likewise dressage, an engrossing sport to practice but, for most non-horse people and even a generous share of the equine-inclined, a deathly boring one to watch. It lacks the sex appeal of cross-country or stadium jumping, although of the three days you're least likely to do yourself an injury on the first.

The NYC weekend o' skiving, somewhat shortened by traffic around the beach, Delaware, and the Virgin Festival, was good fun. The weather permitted my favorite sport, the 12-hour aimless saunter, so we wandered about chatting and visiting cafes, markets, monuments, shops, stalls, and resto-bars. Pinkberry seems to have paved the way for yogurt-flavored gelato to make it big in the city, and our stop at Cones, an Argentine-style gelateria in the Village, balanced out my disappointment that Rocco's was closed for the week. Mixed-berry and yogurt gelatos (gelati?) mushed together for the late-night-snack win.