Pittsburgh, PA

Pittsburgh, PA: Land of the cold, home of the frostbitten.

Pros:

• Cost of living is cheap
• Southwest Airline City
• Trader Joe's is awesome
• Small dance community
• Opportunity to teach
  
• Kevin and Jo are here
• 2 hours from Cleveland, 5 from DC

Cons:

• Ridiculously cold (it's snowing today, it snowed yesterday, and the day before)
• Isolated, quiet city
• Small dance community
• Kevin and Jo won't be around a lot
• Not a ton of stuff to do

This is my impression so far. And, it's probably more objective than it could be, as my experience has been a bit different than I thought it would.

On Monday, Kevin St. Laurent and Davis Thurber picked me up from the airport, and we made our way to Kevin's place - a sweet 3 story house on Woodstock Ave. In its previous life, it was a barber shop, but now it is the place where he and his partner Jo live, train, and base operations.

Unfortunately, a couple days before I arrived, Davis and Kevin decided to practice dive rolls, and Davis took a bad fall, directly on his tail bone. By the time I got here, he had been bedridden for 30 hours. So...needless to say, he hasn't been able to dance above 180 bpm for extended periods of time. Grr...

Overall, the trip here has been comfortable and pleasant. I've enjoyed getting to know Kevin and Jo, and the dancing Davis and I have been able to do has been fun. We went and helped out at K&J's local classes last night (Basic Lindy, Big Apple, and a Performance Class), and as a teacher, it was interesting seeing how they taught basics and jazz movement, along with their choreography choices.

Back to Nashville on Friday, for fun and frivolity for a week before Rocky Mountain Bal Blowout!