Anyway, since I won’t be able to come to practice this Friday, can anyone bring a laptop/netbook?

The annoying but loud enough metronome software is called Desktop Metronome (http://www.desktopmetronome.com/dm/dm.htm).
And I just realize it has 14 days trial period????

Please allow me to stress on the “push with your feet” part, in my view it is so important, but often only mentioned at the end, and with all the details of proper techniques we tend to forget of the major importance of pushing with our feet. Let me explain why….

Imagine you are in a small boat but instead of in the water you are on the sand, if you are to sit on your butt and paddle hard, all you’ll do with the paddle is grab some sand from the front and scoop it to the back but the boat will not be really going anywhere, so what is the most efficient way to move the boat on the sand?
Of course it would be to just jump off the boat and push it ….

This is exactly what you need to do while sitting in the boat.
So jump off the boat is basically to transfer all your weight to the paddle through your top arm by leaning outside (remember when Melissa says face and chin and lean outside the boat) anchor yourself as far in front as you can by twisting and reaching,

Now you just need to push the boat, and you do that with your feet not with your butt since the feet are anchored further in front and lower in the boat, think about it …
if you are to push the boat with your butt it would not be efficient, plus you actually use your leg muscles to help out, they are in fact parallel to your arms muscles, so the arms are pulling and the legs are pushing while the main power is coming from the untwisting of the core.

If you are doing this properly half your butt will not be touching the seat since you are leaning outside, and your legs would feel the stress and even get a cramp as Kevin does sometimes and btw (if you can) two feet will push harder than one.

If we all do this together, I assure you we’ll be flying and maybe get Melissa to lose her balance Something Nancy always wanted to do.
Thanks for listening… Have a great one everyone.
Ramy

There’s only 300 signatures on the petition at the moment… if you’re seriously against it… sign-it… we’re hoping to present our points again in May… here’s the link:

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/parc-jean-drapeau/signatures.html