Las Vegas Lindy Exchange – October 3rd-5th
The Las Vegas Exchange, or “Vega Sex Change” as many people are calling it, was definitely an experience. We decided to leave straight after Lindy Groove and pull an all-nighter. Skip traffic and get there with the day to spend doing whatever we pleased.
Thursday Night/Friday Morning
We left at about 12:30 and headed to our friend’s house. We shoved everything into a couple cars, grabbed food and left. By 2PM we were on the actual road!
There were three cars that formed a mini caravan. While one of the cars, Herbie, is great, we had to make sure it didn’t overheat so kept to about 65mph the entire trip, which slowed some things down but also lead to some interesting events.
While driving, we noticed several classic VW cars go by. When we stopped at a gas station, they happened to stop there as well. We found out they were going to a VW convention, in Vegas! We were tempted to stay with them but decided against it.
At this gas station was also the beginning of our random dancing moments. We saw a double-segmented semi truck, with flat beds, pull up and stop. We really wanted to dance on it. The two girls in our car ran up to the truck driver and asked him if we could. In short, he said yes, for a few minutes.
We quickly hopped on, played some music and danced on a truck bed, had some fun with dips and it was amazing!
Ok, back on the road. We took a stop on the side of the freeway to organize some of the trip plans. While we did, a couple of people jumped out of the car and started dancing along the side of the freeway! We have great pictures. As usual, I will try to post some of them here. They haven’t been uploaded just yet.
Again we got on the road. As we continued driving we noticed it starting to get lighter. I thought it would be a great idea to stop and dance at sunrise, which we communicated to the other drivers. They agreed.
When it became time, probably around 7:30, we pulled off the road and found a little hill. It was freezing outside. Goosebumps were popping out on people’s arms everywhere. We quickly setup music and started dancing, somewhat awkward on the rocks and dirt. That is when we spotted the junk yard.
We knew we had to do it. Quickly packing up our stuff we took our camers and headed towards the junk yard. None of us had been in one before. Rusty cans, car parts, beer cans, broken boats. It was a bona fide junk yard. We danced and took more pictures… and then was saw the sun rise above a hill.
A friend stood there, and her lines against the sun formed a near perfect silhouette. We climbed through a mountain of junk and reached the top of a mini-hill. We took more pictures and found a desert road. The reds, oranges and blues mixed in with the peaceful desert trail and cacti was simply picturesque.
Friday morning was amongst us, and we headed back in to the car for the final stretch to Aruba, the hotel where we were going to stay.
When we pulled in we quickly found that it was not the quality of hotel we expected, but the quality of motel. Three stories up, chipped stones and stairs only. No casino. Our door was jammed, no carpeting, and the bathroom door was jammed. We were disappointed, to say the least. We decided to grab breakfast, shoved the two twinbeds together and took a five hour nap.
Friday Night
We woke up starving (well, some of us were starving). It was 4PM, so we decided to wander and find a grocery store.
Easy task, right? Wrong.
We went block after block, looking both ways. No grocery stores. Finally, we tried using a GPS which got us to a “Circle K” (which it had found under grocery store listings. We didn’t know that it was actually a gas station. Fortunately, there was a mexican grocery right next to it, and they had incredible prices on produce. 5lbs of oranges for $2, it was amazing. We picked up some food there, but nothing we could eat immediately.
We decided to eat anywhere that was food and soon pulled into an Arby’s. While we sat down to eat, a man came up to us and said he would like to sing for us in exchange for a few bucks. We thought, sure, why not? He sang Seal – Kissed from a Rose. He was INCREDIBLE. We had to dance to him.
After giving him a few bucks, he sang another song. It was great fun to dance to him, despite the limited space and dodging chairs. He and his wife loved us and we soon took pictures and got their email to send it to them. It was so much fun.
We got back, got ready and headed to the dance floor. They were having DJ battles, which was a cool idea but got a little bit annoying only because they stopped every 15 minutes and took off 5-10 minutes for a crowd vote of the DJs. Dancing with people you don’t know with and seeing them smile at moves they haven’t seen is always a pleasure.
After the DJ Battles ended, they played a little more swing, but then moved into the Blues. Finally. There had been another Blues room but it was very smokey, which none of us enjoyed. It was probably about 1 to 2 in the morning now, and people were drifting away. We knew we were going to stay until the end… and so we had good dance after good dance. So many people at exchanges it’s always so much fun to find so many great leads and follows.
As more people left early into the morning it gave us the opportunity to really use floor space, and to move across and around the whole thing without bumping into anyone. Finally, they called last song at around 4. While I don’t remember the song now… it was a great last song and the dance was incredible (thanks to my partner).
After we had finished, we started joking with the DJ saying we weren’t ready to end off. So, he threatened to play a really fast song to tire us out. We took his challenge and asked for the fastest he had. I whispered to the others to do the C-Hop (Clientele Hop), a dance we had made up specifically for fast songs. We just started jumping and going around, using all remnants of energy left in our bodies to keep up to the music and made it through the whole song! We were impressed with ourselves, and apparently so were out spectators. It was a good night.
Saturday Day/Night
After getting to sleep at about 4:30-5 the previous night, we woke up at 9. The girls were very excited about a burlesque class they were taking at 12 while the guys were set on food and sleep. We messed around up and through the girl’s burlesque class, which went and hour longer than expected (they got out at 2). We were now going to Dam Dancing! Upon reaching Hoover Dam, we were disappointed to know that we weren’t on a good part of the dam, but a building where you couldn’t see over the edge, or even see the river. While we stayed there for a while, my partner and I decided to walk along the Dam and take pictures of us dancing in two different time zones! Another spot we’ve danced added to the list.
On our way home we stopped at a buffet, where we also danced and finally got to fill our stomachs to our content! So relieving and sooo good. We continued home, prepared and finally got to dancing at around 9 o’clock.
They were continuing the DJ Battle, which we were getting tired of. We ended up leaving back to our room, doing random things until we finally found another room having blues dancing at 3 in the morning or so. Very relaxing, one of the DJs of the event was in the room, and DJing the music, despite that no more than one to two people could dance comfortably at a time.
An hour later we heard they finally changed DJs on the main dance floor, so we headed over there. This was the greatest part of the trip. There was around eight of us. The DJ was AWESOME. He told us he’d be there as long we were dancing and requesting music. We had joined up with another lead at this point, who I was watching to learn his style and my partner gained quite a bit of skill as well.
The guys had a few dances with each other, great dances with the follows, the girls sometimes danced with each other. Often there was only one or two people on the floor. The DJ and his girlfriend danced. We kept dancing and dancing, having no care in the world what time it was. Every dance was incredible by the fact that we were so tired yet relaxed and we were all in the moment. Finally, he called last song at 7AM. This was one of if not my favorite dance for the entire event. It’s an inexplicable feeling, but great.
Once the song finished, he called a second last song. My partner and I were dancing again… and we saw two friends of ours were going to come and try to steal us away. We whispered to each other and decided we would get away from them. I lifted her while running and ran to the other side of the room. The others followed us, and so we danced around, having an incredible dance at the same time dodging and maneuvering around and away from the other two.
That was the night. It was an incredible night. We had finished the dancing for the trip, and so we headed back towards our beds in the early morning light…
Sunday
We woke up at 11, and realized we didn’t know when our checkout time was. We all quickly got up and cleaned out the room. We found out at some point that our checkout time was 12, which we made. We were ready for the drive home. After taking some final group photos, we got in and took off.
The Las Vegas Exchange was now under our belt.
Tags: Blues Dancing, las vegas, Lindy Exchange, Swing Dancing
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