So after five days of unburying myself from work and trying to catch up (still not quite caught up either), I finally have some time to put up a recap of my recent weekend in Hartford, CT at the Europa.

The trip started early Thursday morning, and by early I mean about 5:30am. Why so early? Well, I chose to drive to Hartford instead of flying and it was an estimated 8 hour drive so I wanted to get a good jump on it. I always have a little competition with my GPS to see if I can beat its predicted travel time and by the time I hit the Canada/US border I was 15 minutes ahead of schedule. Sweet. Little did i know, the sweet was soon to disappear ...

I've travelled a fair amount this summer, and when flying, I just hop over and fly out of Buffalo since it tends to be significantly cheaper. Anyway, I hit the border, and I'm pleased to see very little in the way of a line up. More sweetness! I get to the border guard and I get asked the usual questions:

Where do you live?
Where are you going?
When are you coming back?
Why are you going there? (this came with multiple follow up questions)
Is this your car? (that's a new one)
What do you do for a living?
Where are you going again? Why?

I see him taking some notes, but I don't think much of it. I'm thinking it's perhaps because I'm over the board going somewhere nearly every other weekend. Then he passes me a piece of paper and says go over there and into the building and wait for your name to be called. And I didn't get my passport back. So now I'm thinking, there goes my 15-minute advantage. No, that wasn't my first thought. It was, uh oh, they're not going to let me in the country!!

So I park my car and walk into the building and take the seat, all the while watching my 15-minute advantage disappear. Finally I get called and then the questions start again. What do you do, where are you going, etc. etc. They even pulled up my website and the website of both the Europa and the Team U/NY Pro from two weeks prior. I guess the concern was whether I was entering the US to make money, and since I don't have a work Visa, that's not really allowed. But since my business is web-based, they concluded no issue, and I was free to go.

Now I had to catch up to the GPS!!!

For such a long drive, it was actually not a bad drive at all. Pretty enjoyable actually. I still ended up beating the GPS by 30 minutes too by the way! As usual, I win!

I arrived about 30 minutes prior to Melody (Clere) and Ron (husband) and Alexandra Johnston (National girl to watch out for in the next few weeks) who travelled together and were 'my group' for the weekend. We all got checked in, took a quick look at Melody, who was looking very good from my vantage point and then it was off to Gold's gym to train.

Having my car proved convenient as it allowed us to easily get out and choose where we wanted to go eat. So we hit up the LongHorn Steakhouse or something like that, which everyone kept telling me made the Outback look bad ... to which I say, whatever. I of course, the diligent dieter that I am, stayed on plan with steak and vegetables. Melody the little piglet that she is had something like a steak, french fries, a baked potato and some big ol' dessert thingie. I think Ron was good too. Alex ... not so much. Haha. Ribs FTW!!

Mel also had her first coat of tan put on by Alex on Thursday, who winded up doing an outstanding job with Mel's colour. Very, very nice colour. Smooooooooooth!

Friday was the prejudging, and speaking of which, I really dislike two-day shows, although not nearly as much as I used to, now that I've had a lot of experience with them and know what it takes to 'hold'. So a pretty lazy day with Alex helping Mel out with colour and make up. We got to squeeze in a bit of a hotel workout as there wasn't time to get to Gold's on Friday.

Then we hit up the prejudging. I was very, very  happy with how Melody looked for this show, and more importantly, so was she. I don't think I'm going out too far on a limb here when I say this was the best physique, overall, that she's presented to date. I had high hopes and even higher when I was watching the individuals and the initial comparisons. I figured 2nd callout and an easy Top 10 ... and then I never heard Melody Clere during the 2nd callout. LOL Turns out it was the 3rd callout so rather disappointing, but if you look at the physique, you'll see she's hanging quite well and looks excellent.

Ultimately, you can only control what you bring to the stage, not how you're going to place. If you're at your best, you're at your best.

Second from the right:

Friday night we hit up ... you guessed it, The Outback. Supposedly it was 10 minutes away, but I'm pretty sure it was 30 minutes, in a torrential downpour no less. I was committed! Haha! Now, since there are no more Outbacks where I live, and I am an Outback cheese fries fanatic, as anyone who has known me for any length of time knows, the diet was out the window here. Each US trip has to have an Outback visit. So cheese fries it was ... and then a big ol' burger. I win again!

Notice the EMPTY plate. This was post cheese fries. I think when I said a serving of cheese fries had 2900 calories only Ron and I continued eating them. LOL Oh and I was sitting on the other side of the table, but they were DYING for a picture with their beloved coach. Hehe!

We drove back and hung out in the hotel lounge/bar for the evening and had a fun time horsing around in there. But even better, there was a group of about oh, 15-20 guys and girls who were a part of the hmm, I don't really know what kind of convention it was (some Buddist/meditation thing that had about 5000 attendees also at the Marriot - elevator hogs!!) that were just killing it on the dance floor. It was hilarious!! All sober too of course since they don't drink – must have been the cranberry juice. By killing it I don't mean dancing well either; it was just good ol' fashioned fun and jumping around. No rhythm whatsoever, but awesome nonetheless.

This is me putting big Ron in s Sleeper Hold ... I think. Er, perhaps not. He wouldn't stop tickling me - weird behaviour.

The good looking part of our group:

Impromptu posedown. I won!

Saturday was an early afternoon prejudging – now this is a pretty sweet idea for two-day shows. Done before 6pm with the whole evening ahead. Interesting placings, not sure I'd buy all of them, but there were definitely some nice physiques up there. Melody ended up placing 15th out of 24, which still has me somewhat confused.

Really, I'm only 6'1", not 7'1"

We ventured out to The Cheesecake Factory, which was slammed with well, everyone. I also got to meet up with a girl that I've known on the boards for I think it has to be almost 8 years (Tamara/BigDog), but I was really not good company at dinner since I wasn't feeling well at all. I could barely eat a plate of french fries ... and that is very, very unusual. Not even dessert! Of course everyone else did. So it ended up being an early night as we were all exhausted. I think it was bed by 11:30pm.

Morning we hit up the hotel breakfast buffet, hung out and chatted for a while and then around 2pm we all said our til next time's and headed home. All in all it was a really fun trip, as it's always great to hang out with people/clients/friends I've had the pleasure of getting to know through my business.

And that's a wrap!

 

Posted Jul 30, 2010 by Erik Ledin.
This entry is filed under Contest Prep, Testimonials, and IFBB Pros.