Vacation Day 8 - Dance Contest

On the last day of our vacation, we checked out of the beach house and drove home. This sounds like a drab day, but as luck would have it, this day provided one of the great Pete stories of all time.

We stopped at Virginia Center Commons for lunch at Sam's favorite restaurant (Ruby Tuesday). After lunch, we walked around the mall a bit. They were having a festival sponsored by a local radio station, with a day full of stage activities, freebies, and concerts. One of the acts was Cheyenne Kimball (sample Cheyenne mall act pictured below)


First we stopped at the arcade to play a few games. Pete and I were watching two people who were very good at Dance Dance Revolution for a little while. They had a Sam-sized skeeball machine, which was nice. Then we walked over to the play area for a few minutes. On the way back to the car, we signed up to get some free ice cream. While eating the free ice cream, Pete apparently heard that there would be a dance contest starting in a few minutes. So he decided to enter the contest.

The contest had about 15 entrants, several "groups" and a few individual entrants, the youngest of which was Pete. Each entrant got to dance for about 30 seconds. When it was Pete's turn, he started doing the moves he saw earlier on the DDR video game. He got a pretty good response from the growing crowd (Cheyenne was scheduled to come out in about 20 minutes). Several entrants got spooked and did absolutely nothing, so all things considered Pete did quite well.

The next to last contestant was a girl, maybe about 7 or 8 years old. She started doing DDR moves like Pete. The emcee started to have some fun with this. He said he should introduce her to Pete. But when he looked over at Pete, he was giving the girl a piercing stare for stealing his routine. The emcee said "there is only one way to settle this - Dance Off!" So Pete came back out and the two of them did their DDR moves side by side for a little while.

When it came time to vote, Pete made it into the final three and then the final two. He did a dance off against the other finalist - two teenage guys who seemed to have an entourage of fans. It was time for the final vote. Of course everyone pulled for the underdog, and Pete won! He got a t-shirt and an orange bag. Someone official also took his picture which was presumably published somewhere.

Sam was very sad because he did not get to dance on stage. It was a long 20 minutes trying to hold him back from running up there during the competition. We couldn't even discuss the contest in the car on the way home, because if anyone said D-A-N-C-E, Sam would demand that we turn around and go back to the stage.

Perhaps Pete's two first place finishes bode well for his karate tournament that he is competing in tomorrow. Either way, he probably now has as many career victories in anything as mom and dad combined.