Rene, Jump Rope Goddess of the World

The whole purpose of me going on this Alaska boat trip was to put on a Jump and Hoops workshop for State Coordinators within the Northwest District. Clearly there were additional reasons why I wanted to go to this particular convention, and the perks were numerous, but I tried to stay focused on the "work" that needed to be done.

Rewind back to June of 2007 where I made the decision to hold the workshop on the boat. The decision was two-fold - a) we'd have a nice captive audience, and b) who wouldn't want to come to this convention? I looked up the District Coordinator for NWD and it was a gal by the name of Rene Bibaud. I needed this person to be the primary planner of this workshop. Being relatively new to the job I didn't know Rene, nor had I ever heard of her. Turns out, she's a bit of a celebrity. My assistant, Sharon, noted, "you don't know RENE?!?!," to which I replied, "nope, should I know her?" Well, yes, clearly I should seeing as how she's the Jump Rope Goddess of the World. Upon checking out her website, and doing a little reading it became apparent to me that I should know, and would know, Rene.

Thankfully Rene was all about having the workshop on the boat, and even though there were numerous planning snafus along the way, she did a good job of putting it together. To kick off our workshop session, Rene put on a little show for our session attendees.... and anyone else who happened to be on the boat at the time. If these folks didn't know about her before, well, they knew about her now. She jumped and twirled and skipped and hopped and threw random strangers in to tandem jumps and had a little Japanese girl doing double dutch on a whim as well as one 61 year old fellow who was celebrating his birthday.

I'd venture our session had an audience of about 50+ folks out on the aft deck of the ship, and all were quite entertained and amazed.