Cheryl and Jacqui impart globetrotting adventures In 1993, Cheryl Davis and Jacqui White


started bringing their children to the Detroit Skating Club in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. Like many mothers, they sat bundled up in the stands and watched as their children’s skills and passion for figure skating grew. Then, in 1997, Meryl and Charlie were partnered, and the rest, as they say, is ice dancing history. But a key piece to that history was “The Moms” partnership of Cheryl and Jacqui. Over those 16 years — from puberty to the teen years, from obscurity to international stardom — “The Moms” helped keep their kids emotion- ally healthy, balanced and focused. And these women, who had so much in common even before they met, became friends. Cheryl and Jacqui have traveled the world together, sup- porting their children at competitions and, oddly, staying out of the way. It seems they are busy having their own adventures as well.


By Jacqui White We always have fun on trips with Meryl


and Charlie, but often the crazy and unex- pected occurs. Cheryl and I always check in at the skat-


ers’ hotel to get our credentials before going on the shuttle to our own hotel. On the trip to the Czech Republic, we got in especially late and didn’t get to our hotel until around mid- night. The shuttle pulled up on a dark street, and as soon as the driver dropped our bags on the road, he drove off into the night. Cher- yl and I tried the hotel door, but it was locked and dark inside. After loud and continuous banging, a


sleepy young man came and let us in. Unfor- tunately, he didn’t speak English. (Language barriers always seem to be our downfall.) We convinced him somehow that we had rooms in his hotel and he picked up my bag and signaled for me to follow him outside and around a dark corner. I left a very dubious and frightened Cheryl


behind. The young man unlocked the door to my room and proceeded upstairs with my lug- gage, telling me in his foreign tongue to come on up, I guessed. I noticed that there was a suitcase and some clothing on the floor in the bathroom and yelled up to him that it looked like someone


was already in this room. Suddenly a bedroom door opened and


a very angry woman came out screaming, in English, at me to get out of her room and how dare I come into a person’s room in the middle of the night. She was very brave under the cir- cumstances. I immediately went outside into


Cheryl Davis and Jacqui White have traveled the world together in support of their children.


the dark, and eventually, the hotel man realized I wasn’t going to follow him upstairs again. The young man and I went to the lob-


by, where we had left Cheryl worrying if she would ever see me again. Luckily, Cheryl had a room and offered to


let me stay with her until we could straighten out the mix-up. It worked out great; I ended up staying with her for the rest of the trip. We both saved money and we turned it into a weeklong pajama party! Those who wander really are lost We have gotten so that nothing holds us


back from seeing the sights of the new cities we travel to with Meryl and Charlie. We take the bus, tram, taxi and subway without hesi- tation, but we almost always get lost. Case in point: Korea. A taxi driver, who did not speak English, got so frustrated when we did not know where we wanted to go that he stopped his cab and yelled at us to get out! I admit, we had changed our minds a few times about our destination. Another time, in Russia, we rode the sub-


way with our coach to see Red Square. He couldn’t come back with us, but we were fairly confident that we could make it back on our own. Meryl and Charlie and the other skat- ers trusted us to get them back to the hotel. Needless to say, we made a wrong turn in the confusing tunnels. When we asked an atten- dant for directions (again, the language bar- rier problem), she said something we didn’t understand in a serious voice. We didn’t think anything of it. We thought she just couldn’t understand us. A really nice young Russian man that overheard the exchange walked us to our train. He told us as he left that the at- tendant had cursed at us. We were so clueless, we never would have known. When you don’t speak the language, you


really appreciate kind strangers. Cheryl and I suffer terribly from a com-


mon problem; claustrophobia. We’ve learned that when you’re really claustrophobic, like we are, if you tell people that you get sick when the plane takes off, they will sometimes give you their aisle seat. You should also avoid going into catacombs and caves. Believe it or not, we’ve had those opportunities. In Taiwan, I had an especially hard time


in the elevator at Taipei 101, the third-tallest building in the world. I really didn’t want to miss a chance to see the famous view. Hold- ing my breath until we got to the top was tough, but worth it. However, then I had to face the trip down. While traveling with Meryl and Charlie


in Vienna, we learned a lesson on the impor- tance of not getting too absorbed in the scen- ery, along with a new way to get the attention of handsome young men. We were at the rink watching the ice dancing practice. Sitting at the top of the stands watching practice was a group of handsome young men wearing EMT uniforms. As the skaters were leaving the ice, we


were leaving the stands to go over and give our kids hugs for doing such a good job. Walk- ing along the narrow planks of the stands, Cheryl got caught up looking at the hand- some EMT guys, maybe wondering what they were doing there, when she tripped on the edge of a bench and went flying head first into a metal rod. Of course, the whole group of EMT guys came over to assist. She ended up with a huge egg-sized bump on her head and lots of unexpected attention from some very nice-looking young men. So embarrassing! Here’s looking forward to many more ad-


ventures. SKATING 25


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