This post is a bit of an interlude because in February 2011 Mark, Heather and I set off on an adventure. We spent 6 months in North America (3 in Canada, 3 in the USA) and did a lot of roadtripping (pic above is Heather and I, and friends, at the Madame Tussauds in Washington D.C. in April 2011). I won’t go into it too much here but if you’re interested you can read all about it on a blog I kept at the time We stayed with a lot of family (in Ontario, Michigan, New Jersey and British Columbia), met up with a few people we only knew from the internet and did a lot of walking and taking photos.This was our journey:
Heather was 10 when we arrived in Toronto, 11 when we flew back to Scotland at the end of July (pic above with younger cousin Nicky in NJ in 2011). In theory she was happy to come away for 6 months but in reality a good proportion of the travelling and exploring wasn’t exactly her areas of interest. To make up for this perhaps we kept at least one thing consistent – watching the US version of Strictly (Dancing with the Stars). We hadn’t planned to do that it just kind of happened because she watched the first show in New Jersey with cousins (the NJ family are Scottish/Italian/Portuguese-Americans) and then there was no turning back. In 2011 the US version of the show was still running two seasons a year so we were there in plenty of time for her to watch their season 12 that started in March. They are up to season 31 now over there and all I can say is that is one hell of a lot of Bruno Tonioli. Contestants in the show over the years have included Donny Osmond, Marie Osmond, Nicole Scherzinger, Jennifer Grey, Amber Riley, Mel B, Zendaya, Ricki Lake, and Tonya Harding. Heather loved watching the US version (and visiting all the lovely, friendly, welcoming family) and I think all that more than made up for some of the very long days sightseeing and the many, many educational visits.
Dates
March-May 2011 (10 weeks, 11 couples).
That time period in context
In February the movie The King’s Speech won 4 Oscars (and that’s as near to a royal reference as you’ll get from me in this series). In March there was a series of massive earthquakes and a 10-metre tsunami in Japan. In May Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan. Also in May, the Scottish National Party secured election victory, winning an overall majority in the Scottish parliament elections. Big pop songs this year were Adele’s Rolling in the Deep, Katy Perry’s Firework and Cee Lo Green’s Forget You.
Judges
Carrie Ann Inaba, Len Goodman, Bruno Tonioli.
Presenters
Tom Bergeron, Brooke Burke.
Addition to format
We’d never watched the US version so it was all new to us.
Dancers
(celebrities first, professional partners second; couples listed in order of elimination with winners last)
Mike Catherwood and Lacey Schwimmer
Wendy Williams and Tony Dovolani
Sugar Ray Leonard and Anna Trebunskaya
Petra Němcová and Dmitry Chaplin
Chris Jericho and Cheryl Burke
Kendra Wilkinson and Louis Van Amstel
Romeo and Chelsie Hightower
Ralph Macchio and Karina Smirnoff
Chelsea Kane and Mark Ballas (son of Shirley, Strictly’s head judge since 2017)
Kirstie Alley and Maksim Chmerkovskiy
Hines Ward and Kym Johnson
Celebrities we had heard of before the series (and how we knew them)
Sugar Ray Leonard (boxer), Ralph Macchio (actor, pic below, Mark was a Karate Kid era kid), Kirstie Alley (actor, Cheers).
Who did we vote for?
I don’t think we did vote. We had one phone between us and it was working hard enough being the SatNav (remember this was 2011, smart phones weren’t quite as smart and ours wasn't a particulary new one). If we were approaching a new city and the phone rang we were in trouble (“End call! End call!”).
Celebrities we liked more after the series
I can’t say we got that involved. And a lot of the time we were very tired at the end of the day. We covered a lot of ground.
Was it obvious who was going to win?
That Hines Ward fella (American footballer) was very, very good (and he did win). He was a “wide receiver” apparently. Here are Hines and Kym.
Were there articles in the papers moaning about one of the celebrities being good because they’d danced before?
I don’t know if they have that same recurring “scandal” over there.
Did it matter?
It rarely does. There is plenty of real news to worry about.
Was there an obvious “shouldn’t stay in long but did” contestant?
No.
Shock exit?
Not that I remember. Though Wendy Williams is quite well-known over there and went out pretty early on.
The story of the series
Don’t remember, sorry.
And our family - what was going on with us at the time?
Well, the big trip really dominated our time and energy around this time (and that’s all written about elsewhere – peak touristy photo above, it was very hot). To give you an idea of our movements this is where Heather (and sometimes the rest of us) watched this season of Dancing with the Stars – it was quite the east coast to west coast viewing experience:We watched the first couple of weeks (March/April) when staying with Mark’s cousins in New Jersey (Hi AnneMarie, Mario, Nicky and Isobel!). From then on we watched:
on 19th April in Roanoke, Virginia (in a cheap and gloomy Ramada motel, it was very hot outside so actually the gloomy was OK after hours of heat),
on April 26th in Memphis (in the Days Inn near Graceland – guitar-shaped pool! Tornado season!),
on May 3rd in Austin, Texas (in a La Quinta motel on the edge of town – it was all we could get as all the cooler neighbourhoods were booked up, there was a very noisy refuse collection early in the morning, not much sleep),
on 10th May in Taos, New Mexico (in the Pueblo Lodge, nicer than our average stay, very chilled),
on 17th May in Barstow, California (in a Holiday Inn Express – noisy railroad nearby, so loud earplugs were handed out at reception…)
and we caught the final on May 24th in Santa Cruz, California (at the Pacific Inn motel which looked ropey but was actually very nice).
And then it was over (the show) and we could get back to foxtrot-free travel. We left Canada at the end of July so were back in plenty of time for Heather to watch the next series of Strictly Come Dancing on TV at home. So you see, she didn’t miss anything important.
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