Last year around this time I went to the World Figure Skating Championships in Helsinki and generated a whole bunch of posts about it. I went to Worlds again this year, in Milan, and bookended that trip with train travel in Switzerland. This time, I was accompanied by my parents (who, now both retired and with the big house sold, have more freedom to travel) — which worked out reasonably well, but meant that I wasn’t burning the candle at both ends and couldn’t slam through the photo editing to get some blog posts out during the actual competition. (In all honesty I would rather have been accompanied by one person, for the whole length of the trip, but since that person has yet to be identified, the ‘rents will do, and having someone else worry about the arrangements in Italy made the whole trip a bit less stressful.) The arena in Milan was somewhat inconveniently located relative to our lodging, a short-term private rental apartment, and my impression overall is that Helsinki 2017 was far better organized in addition to being more conveniently located and having better transit access. I finally got back home late on Tuesday evening, and I’ve been spending the last few days digging out from the accumulated backlog resulting from a 13-day vacation. (The folks being retired, they got together with my mother’s older sister and her husband, and are spending an extra week in Italy.)

The practical upshot of this is that I still have about 6,000 photos to edit down somehow into something more like 250, and this process will take a while — starting with working through my shooting logs and hopefully correctly identifying all the skaters this time — but over the month of April you should see photos appearing both here and at Wikimedia Commons where appropriate. Anyone interested in accompanying me to other international sporting events is welcome to apply. ;-)

PS: I’m already planning on not going to the 2019 Worlds in Saitama, but 2020 will be in Montreal, which is well within driving distance for me. Last year I also went to Worldcon, again in Helsinki, but this year’s Worldcon is in San Jose and I’m inclined to skip it as well. (Worldcon 2019 will be in Dublin and Diane Duane is GoH and I’ve already bought a full membership; 2020 isn’t decided yet but will likely be in New Zealand.) Other sporting events I’m considering, besides the usual baseball and hockey arenas, are the IBSF World Cup stop in Lake Placid, maybe some ISU Grand Prix skating events, and perhaps the 2020 Winter Youth Olympic Games in Lausanne — all of this is very speculative right now and might not come to anything.