Necessary Roughness

I do believe I said I was taking a week off…

Housekeeping: The Airport Report has been updated with Cincinnati’s airport, located in Kentucky. I believe that’s 34.

I neglected to mention that on the last trip to Houston I rented a Dodge Magnum. This Magnum only had the V6, not the Hemi engine. I stomped on it once and it barely survived a Houston on-ramp. This time it’s a Chevy TrailBlazer, and Enterprise made us wait in a nice long line while it was handling our rental pickups. Wish it would have said that on the corporate travel web site. No wonder it was the cheapest.

<tongue-in-cheek>
If the Sunnis don’t vote in Iraq, what’s the big deal? There’ll still be a higher percentage voter turnout than in the USA no matter how you calculate it. At least they won’t beat Massachusetts for elected official with the highest BAC.
</tongue-in-cheek>

Outpost.com sells a combination of a Dance Dance Revolution Extreme software and dance pad for $60. We ordered it because of the relatively cheap price (newer PS2 games can be $40, and there are dance pads that can cost hundreds of dollars) and because various advertisers are advocating the game as a workout option.

The game has instruction levels, a training mode where you can preview the steps in a song, and over 30 songs ranging from J-Lo to Duran Duran to YMCA, with some original Japanese fare for good measure. The Workout Mode keeps track of how many kcal you theoretically burn given an input weight and maintains a diary of your weight and workout results on a daily basis. According to the Workout Mode’s calculations, I burn more kcal on a treadmill in the same amount of time, but this is a fun way to engage the brain while I work out. It took me about 30 minutes to learn the basic steps in instructor mode, but I was repeating stages to get them right.

There are 5 levels of difficulty: Beginner, Light, Standard, Heavy, and Challenge (which needs to be unlocked by playing the game enough). DDR involves muscle memory, similar to learning how to touch type. Each performance is graded, on an A-E scale (E is the worst). I can manage a B on most Light levels, but The Reflex on Standard difficulty has me going to the Training Mode to review the steps. The Training Mode lets you block off parts of a song where you can practice difficult steps without having to go through the entire song. As more songs are performed, other songs and characters are unlocked, and the Information section shows what has been recently unlocked.

I’m no Michael Flatley, but I found this game a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the requisite jumping means it can’t be played while the kids are napping. If dancing is done too close to the PS2 the CD will skip, and the game will pause, messing up what little timing I have. The dance pad isn’t the most expensive, and it does slip on carpet. Sticker pads are included for wooden floors; someone must have gotten seriously hurt. There are metal pads like in the arcades, but I can’t see how they’d be friendly to our carpet.

The next three weeks I’m in Houston (hopefully to be interrupted next weekend with a brief weekend home) at one of the Hiltons. The Sales Manager promised me free Internet (I do have some negotiating skills), but it’s behaving like it wants to charge me. Wonder if she has a gift certificate or coupon or something.