Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

There is always something kind of goofy about the World Championships of Figure Skating during Olympic years. They're always held just a month or so after the Games, and they invariably feel a tad anticlimactic, especially since just about all of the skaters use the exact same programs with which they competed in the Olympics, and some of the newly-crowned Olympic champions or runners-up end up not competing at Worlds. Notable absences this year include America's Sarah Hughes and Russia's Evgeny Pleshenko. (Not that it matters in the latter case; Alexei Yagudin right now is the skating equivalent of the 1990s Chicago Bulls.)