Bloggerpalooza Went Bloggerkaplewie

Bloggerpalooza (sound of air rushing out of a balloon). The idea was to have as many ashtanga bloggers as possible meet up out here in San Diego. We had all kinds of acting up planned: video pose offs, tequila tastings, a party or two, sleep overs. it was gonna be fun.

It started when I harangued Boodiba into coming out here for a relatively cut rate ashtanga vacation when it looked like her usual winter Mysore trip wasn't going to pan out. Her shala mate Annabelle also bought into my pitch and they made plans for a week out here. Pretty quickly, the wisdom of spending a normally frigid week in February in balmy San Diego doing yoga and hanging out with previously only imagined web personas struck a few other bloggers and it grew into a near event.

But. What would the world be like without buts? But the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Unfortunately, these plans for the gathering of ashtanga bloggers weren't that well laid. First crack in the dike was the fact that most of the San Diego bloggers already had out of town plans for that week. Mike (laproxdoc) was going to Costa Rica, Tiffany had to go to Vegas for a work thing, Julie, the ashtanga.net head mofo, had a week of skiing planned with her family.

Just me and the out of towners? No probs. I can handle that. I'm tons o' fun. (stifled snort of derision from my wife). Anyways, turns out, I didn't have a clue what I was doing. Literally. After years of promising but not delivering, I had promised my son we would finally go snowboarding together. They get out of school for a week each winter for this, so we were going to go then. Never occurred to me to check and see if the dates overlapped with everyone else's trip. Why would they? So, when I finally got around to sitting down and making the ski trip arrangements, imagine my surprise. Well, I could handle that. We were only going to go for four or five days. Maybe I could split the week I had off, half skiing with Jake and half hanging with the ashtangis.

Then things really turned south. The day the ladies were supposed to fly out from NYC, a fire occurred in Annabelle's apartment and she had to cancel her flight to sort things out at home and throw together a flight out the next day. Boodiba, who doesn't drive, had to come out alone and make her way from the airport to Del Mar on her own. I have no idea what that kind of taxi ride costs but I’m sure it was enough to put a damper on the mood of an already darkening trip.

I wasn't there for the first four days of the week that everyone was here. When I got back in town late Tuesday night, I quickly read over the blogs. Somehow, it had gone from south to shit. A couple of unsatisfying/unpleasant experiences at the shala seem to have turned the ashtanginis off to practicing there. Plus, this was a working holiday for Annabelle. She was commuting to LA to meet with her bar exam advisor. So she ended up opting to practice at home or at studios up in LA. I'm really bummed out about Linda's experience here. I've known people whom Tim didn't hit the right chord with, but reading things over in her blog, I can't help think that things would have gone better if I had been here like I had originally talked up. I enjoy my shala so much. And I enjoyed studying at her shala too. It just doesn't seem right that she and Annabelle wouldn't get the same kind of enjoyment at our place that I have.

Things sort of dominoed into everyone else's experience, because at least a part of the anticipation for this kind of get together was about the potential interaction with each other. When I went to practice Wednesday morning, only three bloggers were there: Eeyore, Carl and JLaffite. Eeyore finished up ahead of me, so I went over and said Hi as he was rolling up his mat to go. He gave me his number to try later that day but he was flying out at 4pm so we didn't manage to link up for a real talk. It's too bad. He's definitely one persona I really wanted to get to know as a person. He even had the cajones to sign in as Eeyore. Maybe the next time I get up to San Fran. Maybe we'll get around to doing that weird naked yoga he goes off about.

I have been able to spend some good time with Carl and JL. We had pizza and some wine at our place last night (more guilt on my part, I poured with a heavy hand). They wanted to try surfing but today was rainy and windy, so we just hung out at my place after practice. Carl got suckered into playing Halo after watching my son and his friends spend hours zomby-ing out with the Xbox. My daughter, who is pretty good at guitar hero, wanted me to get JL to play her. JL has a masters in music performance. He has played professionally and now teaches guitar in college. "Guitar Hero is nothing like playing a real guitar. I'll kick his ass!" she said. He did give it a go later today, and did reasonably well, but she would have kicked his ass.

Not sure if anything will develop tomorrow, the last day most of these folks are here. I'm a little reluctant to push on getting everyone together because I can't tell if that's what everyone wants to do. I feel a bit guilty and pretty bummed that the trip didn't work out as originally planned for all the people who came so far.

I'm going to practice in the morning and then I'm going go-karting with the kids. I had told JL and Carl I'd try to help get them a surf lesson if the wave conditions improved but Kiran, my wife, is now in bed sick, so I'll likely have all of the kid care responsibilities tomorrow.

Funny how far afield things can get. It's the nature of expectations I guess.

What am I supposed to do with all this tequila we were going to taste?

Late addendum: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, our house didn't burn down.