Tonight Adrian Likins and I went ice skating (this was probably my 10th time in total…and the first time in [umpteen] years)! Outdoors (this was a first for both of us)! I only went kaboom once (and it was a sideways kaboom, so no broken tailbones or noses, just a biggish bruise on my hand)!
They had turned the Red Hat Amphitheater into an outdoor rink. It was cute and festive and had Christmas lights and decorations and so forth (and hot cocoa and maybe boozy drinks(?), though I did not partake of either). It was fairly crowded, but not so much that most multi-person pileups couldn’t be avoided (thankfully).
The other skaters came in the following categories:
- really good skaters who had dragged their partner out and were now dragging them around the rink (some of them were backskating. This is fancy.)
- ice hockey players (seriously, you could just tell)
- folks (both children and full-grown adults) who were using the “walkers” for ice skating. I tried one for one lap and decided that it was letting me do things “wrong” and was probably unhelpful in the long run. Also they were sort of scary: poor skaters going too fast with a big plastic snowplow-looking thing in front of them have great potential to knock down several people at once.
- Northerners … didn’t necessarily have their own skates but were cruising around in the rentals like folks on a Sunday promenade through Central Park.
- groups. Usually of four, sometimes of five or six. Unfortunately several of said groups decided that skating (very poorly and slowly) while holding hands (thereby blocking 1/2 the rink width) was a good idea. It wasn’t. It was just as annoying as the folks who walk however-many-abreast on city sidewalks and down airport concourses, but with an added element of danger for everyone around them. Luckily this did not last long (the fact that I was saying “danger danger danger” as I was coming up behind them and trying to figure out what to do — can’t go around ‘cause they are holding onto the railing at one end and stuck out all the way to the middle! Can’t stop because I haven’t learned that yet! — may or may not have helped to persuade them to cease.
- folks like me and Adrian (though putting him in the same category as me seems unfair… as you can see from the videos, his roller skating skills definitely transferred)
Huge bonus: Thanks to the single-most helpful piece of ice-skating instruction1 I have ever received, I became Not Terrible! Not good, mind you (or even consistently competent), but enough improvement that random folks who knew what they were doing2 said “you’re doing great” as they passed. In all fairness this also may have been in response to what I am fairly sure was a constant stream of (intended to be) sotto voce “ayyyyyyyiiii” and “danger! Danger” and “so hard! So hard!” and “uh-oh. Uh-oh!” and “good girl, keep it up. Not dead yet,” etc., but I am choosing to see it as unasked-for compliments on my improving skills. (Seriously, I improved more in this single session than I had in any of the other times I’ve been skating – and none of those in the past 12 years!)
1 Also technically the only piece of ice skating instruction I have ever received, but who’s counting? I had wobbled to a wall and ended up next to the Very Nice Supervisor of the Thing. I think he said “Having fun?” and I said “Trying not to die.” He reassured me that falling on ice was less ouchy than falling on concrete (as you would if you were roller skating), and then asked me if I wanted to know “the trick.” (Always, BTW).
He told me to:
- point one foot straight forwards
- then put the other foot flat on the ice (*not* digging in your toe!) at a 65-ish degree angle with the back of the blade of one skate kinda near the back of the blade of the other
- then push/slide the angled skate back, while keeping your weight on the front, gliding foot.
- He also suggested doing just one side until I got the hang of that before adding the other (weight transfer is a bitch! [my opinion, not a quote], and wise advice indeed).
Between that and some random reel I caught within the past week or so (long before I found out this thing in Raleigh was happening) that explained that when you start to lose your balance think “hands to knees” to lower your center of mass (temptation is to flail and arch, which takes your feet out from under you) and a quick reread of “Things I have Learned About Roller Skating”, which reminded me that Your Feet Do Not Need To Hold Onto Your Skates: They Are Attached so I wasn’t trying to grab the skates with my toes, which *eliminated* the horrible arch-of-foot cramp that I get with roller skates and ski boots (this is a particularly amazing learning as the hard boots of ice skates and skis seem to exacerbate the cramping tendencies). Oh! And that post also reminded me to pre-moleskin my delicate-as-a-f^@&!$%-flower**-feet, so no blisters!!
2 (big clue: brought own skates. Second big clue: not flailing. Third big clue: *avoiding* rather than causing accidents — and sometimes even helping prevent a fall with a quick steadying hand thing!3
3 Adrian does this when we’re roller- or ice-skating. I won’t even know he’s there, but then a hand on the small of my back prevents me from landing on my posterior. I love that.
(If you’re wondering whether I wrote all ^^^^this down to help me remember it for next time…well, yeah.).
And for your enjoyment:
Realm of the Lint Queen 