I just came back after an incredible fun trip to USA. During my time over there I visited
- Phoenix, AZ,
- Los Angeles, CA,
- Corvallis, Eugene and Protland in OR.

I met a lot of great people and made lots of new friends. Albert Torres and his wife Maya, Laura Canelia, Liz Lira, the T2 couple known from the Mayan World Salsa Competition 2002 just to mention some.

I first went to Phoenix, Arizona.
Exiting the airport at 1 pm was a shocking experience. I left Norway at the same day as the first snowflakes started falling. Coming to Phoenix dressed for Norwegian climate, I felt like I had come to another planet. Almost 90 degrees, blue sky, palm trees.. I was out of words. All I could think was "wow" and "what the h*ck do I live north of the arctic circle for!?" It struck me that the shoes I was wearing was more suited for walking on the moon than this place, so the first thing I did was finding a shoe store where I could get myself some sandals. I was really surprised to learn that most stores had replaced the sandals with the "winter collection" of shoes(!).

The first salsa experience in Phoenix, AZ, actually happened the same day as I arrived. After traveling for 24 hours with no sleep, I joined my friends Jack and Consuleo to attend a private birthday/after party (with salsa off course).

Jack and Consuelo are members of a dance company called Salvaje, lead by Shawn Sallee. The two are originally from Eugene, Oregon, and I met them last year when I lived there. Most of the members of the Salvaje dance company were at that party and it was a great pleasure to get to know them. During my stay in Phoenix I had lots of fun hanging out with these guys. They really take salsa seriously. Sometimes their practice was more than eight hours! Still, we went to the salsa clubs almost everyday. Even though salsa is relatively new there, the level of the dancers are incredibly high. It was amazing to go out and be able to dance with so many great followers.

Consuelo was my favourite. Not only is she one of the best followers I have danced with, she is also a great lead, and I learned a lot as a follower when dancing with her as well as many new moves.

I was fortunate to be able to take lessons with Shawn Sallee (check out this video [7.1 mb]of him!) and Julian Rodriguez. Wow, that was two awesome instructors. Heavily influenced by the New York style, they had a lot to teach me about dancing smooth and sharp. I have never had instructors who focused so much on details and technique Thanks guys!

Before I left Phoenix I got to see the Salvaje team perform at the most popular salsa club in the city. Dressed as vampires, they delivered a performance based on a mix of tango, walz and salsa that gave me goosebumps! I will not be surprised if I see them perform at the next West Coast Salsa Congress in Los Angeles.

 

Driving to Los Angeles
Although the entire time in USA was fantastic, the weekend in Los Angeles was special. Jack and the others bailed out in the last minute, but me and Consuelo could not be stopped. We were going to dance at Sportsman's Lodge, Club Mayan, and the other famous clubs in LA - end of discussion. So we took the 6-7 hour drive on Friday Oct 25, and stayed until the salsa clubs closed Sunday night.

I really have to thank Dena (aka Tica at salsafix.com) for guiding us on the phone to the best clubs, and whenever we got lost driving in one of the worlds biggest cities.

We arrived at Sportsmen's Lodge at 10.30 Friday evening and found that the place was already packed. Two bands played that evening: Johnny Polanco Y Su Conjunto Amistad and Elaine Y Su Cubaney. The place was awesome! The huge room was real classy, and with the same atmosphere and lighting as at the west coast congress. I was actually not too surprised by that because the man behind it is Albert Torres, the number one salsa ambassador in the world. I met him and his beautiful wife Maya there.

Feeling like a kid in a candy store, I could not wait to get the chance to dance with as many of those awesome dancers as possible. And it was pretty easy, because everybody I met was incredibly friendly. I even got a dance with Maya!

I went to the bar to get some refreshments, and as I returned to the table I was 100% sure that I saw Julian from Phoenix there. Except he had no mustage, and he had a girlfriend. I soon learned that I had just seen Julians twin brother, Julio. Consuelo already knew Julio from before and introduced us. It was really weird to shake hands with a stranger that I felt I already had got to know. It turned out that he was just as nice as his brother, and that he even was just as much into salsa. He is a member of a dance company in L.A (I didn't get the name). Another funny thing about Julio and his girlfriend was that we would bumb into them everywhere we went that weekend.

Later on, while looking for a friend of mine, Miguel, I met the salsa diva Laura Canellia. She is a famous choreographer, performer and dance instructor. I found out she is actually as nice as she seamed the time I attended one of her workshops at the congress. I was lucky to get a dance with her too!
 

Saturday
Consuelo and I spent all Saturday at Hollywood Boulevard, walking the walk of fame and shopping. Before we took off, things got a litle more exciting than we appreciated. When we came to the parking lot, I disovered that I had left some books at one of the stores. We jumped into the car and started driving along Hollywood Boulevard. It was getting dark and traffic was starting to become heavy, so when I saw the store where I thought I left my books, I jumped out and told Consuelo to meet me back at the parking lot. I never found my books, but when I came back to the parking lot I could not find Consuelo either! She had not heard what I said, so after she found a spot near the store to park, she waited for me there. And I waited at the parking lot. Actually i walked back and forth between the parking lot and the street where I thought she would be driving back and forth if she was looking for me. We were both more than a litle worried for a while there. I was worried that I might have to spend the night under open sky, but I was more worried that the plan to go dancing at the Mayan would be a fiasco. To my luck I had $5 in my pocket, and had memorized her cell phone number. So I bought one of those prepaid phone cards and called her from a pay phone. Saturday night we were ready to enter the famous Club Mayan. This was something we both really had been looking forward to.

Visiting Los Angeles to dance salsa, this club is something you don't want to miss. After passing through the strict security check, we entered the main room. It was huge! As expected the music was great and the place was packed with great dancers. The main dancefloor had two levels where the upper level seemed like a big stage. We found ourselves a table and established a home base (left our stuff there). We didn't know anybody there, but everybody we met were incredibly friendly and made us feel so welcome, especially the two salseros Benny and Eddie who introduced us to a lot of people, and made it very easy to catch a dance. Later on we bumped into Julio and his girlfriend.
 

As I danced at the upper level at the end of that night and looked down to all those people dancing, it struck me how far I was from home. I was in a place where it was possible to just walk up to a woman I had never seen before, reach out my hands and have a perfect dance. Sometimes the dance could be so good from beginning to end that exchange of names felt like a unnecessary interruption that could be replaced with a nod and a smile. The first dance would make me high, and I would become so addicted that I would spend the rest of the night trying to get another dance like that with somebody else and almost every song would be a success. Yupp, and some of those salseras were smoking hot. D'em! I liked it a LOT!

Sunday
Sunday we went shopping again in the morning. This time we went to "The Alley". This was a fantastic place to find salsa wear for good prices.
At 4 pm we went to Steven's Steakhouse. Here we first watched my friend Miguel as he, Jimmy Aranda and Miriam Castro instructed a lot of people in salsa. After the class, the social dance started. We hooked up with Miguel who introduced us to a lot of people, Jimmy and Miriam included. Jimmy and Miriam are known as the Terminator 2 couple after they won the 7th Mayan World Salsa Competition amateur category this year(check out the video at clubmayan or download it directly [9.7 mb] by clicking here).

Thanks to Jimmy I got hold of 3 cd's with the most popular salsa in L.A right now. At the social dance, guess who we met: Liz Lira, the champion from both the Mayan and the Conga Room this year (check out the video at clubmayan or download it directly [10.6 mb] by clicking here)! She is not just one of the best dancers in the world, she is also one of the nicest persons I have met. I danced with her a LOT! She moves like a cat! So smooth, so fast, so sharp, with such styling, it blew my mind. She said she looks forward to participate at the salsa festival [INCERT  LINK] in Norway may 28-june 1. 2003.
 

Me and Consuelo posing with Liz Lira at  Steven's Steakhouse.  Check out her own web site by clicking here

At 8.30, we went to"Sagebrush", the salsa cantina hosted by Laura Canelia and Albert Torres. The plan was to meet fashion designer Teresa Gordon, but the place was so crowded, and it was so much fun dancing, that I did not find Teresa before she had left. Still we had great fun, and I had a chat with Albert Torres, his wife Maya and Laura Canelia. Later on we headed back to Stevens Steakhouse. That place is BIG, and there are two rooms. I really liked how it was arranged. In one room they played slower salsa and some cha cha cha, and in the other room they only played fast slamming salsa. It seemed like all the best dancers in L.A were there. Fransisco Vasquez, mr LA style himself was there and he gave an awesome performance dancing freestyle salsa.

We had a great time. Well passed midninght we said goodbye to our new friends and started the almost 8 hour drive back to Phoenix.

Oregon
After the incredible weekend in Los Angeles, we headed up to Portland, Oregon. My friend Lupe from Corvallis had one of his friends handing us one of his cars at the airport. That man really knows how to make people feel welcome.

We had a great time dancing in both Eugene and Portland. Most fun was the salsa Halloween party at the Rumba Room in Eugene. I decided that it would be proper to dress up as a Viking, but at the costume store I learned that most of the costumes for guys was sold out. Since I have taken a couple of classes with ladies styling, I decided to dress up as a sexy Norwegian maid in stead. The party was hillareous, and i danced 50-50 as lead or follower.

At the end of the evening a costume contest was arranged, and guess who won: the sl*t from Norway!