Dinner at Luigi’s before the show. I go with the taglierini con porcini and Dawn with the rigatoni all’arabbiata. We get a very decent carafe of pinot grigio, although I worry that only a 1/2 liter of wine isn’t going to be enough if we’re used to having a regular 750 ml bottle with dinner when we go out. But it does just fine. I pace myself for once.

The Kirov coming to the Kennedy Center and doing La Bayadére is a much bigger deal than I had realized. This is the first time they’re doing the full version in Washington. When we got the tickets I was simply pleased that we were seeing La Bayadére again, having seen ABT’s version a couple of years ago. But this is the real deal, the real thing, with ABT’s being merely some sort of bastard cousin. I’m generally hopeless at remembering what we’re seeing or what we’ve seen, and I’ve often gotten La Bayadére confused with Le Corsaire. I know we’ve seen Le Corsaire as well, although I don’t remember if we saw the Kirov do it or ABT. One of them had boats, I remember. I keep picturing Luis Torres as Conrad, but that can’t be right. Maybe it was Marcelo Gomes.

I will now, though, always always remember the Kirov’s La Bayadére.

It’s funny what a mess it all is, for the most part. Starts out with Solor and Nikiya already in love. Then the Rajah goes and betroths Solor to Gamzatti. Solor just kind of goes with the flow on this as well, even though he’s sworn his fidelity to Nikiya over the sacred fire. Bastard. Then there’s drama. It’s the third act when all the business is all over where the dancing for no reason other than dancing really gets going.

Viktoria Tereshkina dances Nikiya. She’s got kinda big floppy feet and hyper-extended knees for my tastes. The treat for me is Irina Golub as Gamzatti. (That’s her picture there in the dictionary under cup-cake.) She spends the first two acts just acting, in heels, not donning her pointe shoes until the third act. Being a cupcake, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though. And it’s possibly the cupcake factor which makes me more sympathetic to Gamzatti than maybe I’m supposed to be, although in her defense I will point out that she offers fabulous jewels to Nikiya, quite pleadingly, not just once but twice. And Nikiya does try to stab her. And I like to think that Gamzatti doesn’t know anything about the poisonous snake hidden in the flowers.

Is the opening of the third act which is the real star of the show, of course. The Kingdom of the Shades. Hypnotizing, mesmerizing, utterly dazzling, life-changing unforgettable. I’m like a caveman with words here, unable to express how transcendent it is.

Pretty typical for a Saturday morning, we’re up early to go work out. We’re up a little earlier even, a little before 7:30 a.m. Usually we get up closer to eight.

We’re getting ready to leave the house around 9:30, but I notice that the front tire on my bike is flat. I made it home just fine Thursday night; not sure why it’s flat now. So I try pumping it back up before I think about putting in a new tube. It pumps up to 80 psi, but I watch as the pressure gauge slowly sinks. This baby ain’t holding air. I’m gonna have to change it.

As I’m standing there contemplating all this, the tire blows out. I shut my eyes at the huge bang, as I’m quite naturally startled and not sure for the first few milliseconds just what has happened. I figure it out pretty quickly though. Dawn is waiting outside for me. She’s heard it too, but figures it’s just a random gunshot or something from the neighborhood. She doesn’t know it’s come from inside the house. Our cat Evie has been sitting by me, by the bike, this whole time. She seems completely unconcerned. Our other cat Gwen would’ve jumped about three feet in the air and dashed upstairs. Evie is either braver or dumber. Maybe both.

Other thing is, is that this was a puncture resistant tube. Apparently that means it’s filled with goo. And said goo has been flung all over the living room. I notice it on the couch first. It’s a new couch, so I run to get some paper towels to clean up quickly. There’s some sort of stain resistant coating or something on the couch, though. Cleans up easily. Next I notice the TV screen is coated. I clean that off too.

For the next couple of days I’ll keep discovering new areas of goo coatings. Other areas of my bike. The right shoulder of my barn coat. The ooze cleans up a lot easier right away. A day or two later and it’s not so easy to remove.