And never a fall…

That was probably the acoomplishment from yesterday I am most proud of.

One of my former interns, RT, was in town to celebrate the holidays with his family. He gave me and one of my coworkers, DD,  a call to see about doing something and somehow ice skating came out on top. Surprisingly of all the things I’ve tried over the years, this was not one of them. I suspect it ha something to do with concern about my ankles. I had my share of problems with them as a running in high school and college. IOh well, can’t back out now.

RT dropped by my house about midmorning and after rounding up the kids, H and C, we were off. L (my wife) was a little nervous too. She took the girls roller skating several months back. C lost her balence (how much can a 4 year old have?) and pulled L on top of her. Ended in a trip to the ER but C turned out to be fine. She has such a hard head. The girls were excited in any case. We stopped at the major downtown shopping mall first to get some lunch which is where DD and her younger son, RyD met us. It’s funny to link of him as young as he is a junior in high school and DD several years younger than me. DD loved watching me deal with the challenges of raising daughters until I remind her that he could have grandchildren before mine even date 🙂 Anyway, I digress….

We got to the rick which was originally built for the Pan-AM games back in 1987. I have walked past it millions of times but this was the first that I ever went in. From the ceiling hung the flags of all the participating nations. Nice touch. We got our skates and got set to go. I never really thought about it but I guess it makes sense that hockey skates are different and was thankful that that is what I got. There was no way my ankles would move in those things. Calling the metal part "blades" seemed pretty funny too. There wasn’t anything remotely close to being an edge on them. Just flat surfaces the width of a pencil. So much for hollywood.

I carefully took to the ice following 7 year old H. She decided that she would try to run on skates but with little success. She litterally crawled along the edge. After one lap, she went off with no desire to try again. No one could change her mind until I whispered something in her ear. She immediately smiled and headed back out. L and DD asked what I had said. It was simple, "I said she made a very cute ice skater." Always appeal to that kids ego 🙂 She eventually shuffled along nicely. C already learned that and as long as she had someone’s hand to hold, she was doing great. As for me, I used the same movements from ancient roller skating days and was able to amble across the ice. Not a lot of speed but I was passing the wall huggers. As I said before, I never fell. That surprised me though; not because I had never done this before but because the ice was so rough. I never expected that. I did find that if I worked toward the middle of the rink, the ice was much smoother.

After 2 hours, it was time for the zambonie to make an appearance and signeled our departure. We all had a blast. Only problem was when taking off the skates, H had a burn mark on the back of her leg. Told her she needed longer socks. Fortunately that drama didn’t last too long.