We’ve decided for our mental well-being we desperately need to get back to the rink. So we’re going to go—and we’re going to be careful.
Farewell, world! [going back on the ice]
by CJ | Nov 5, 2010 | Journal | 14 comments
14 Comments
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Good. I’ve gone back to water aerobics this week. Well, I got there 2 mornings out of 3. Classes at 8am are early (for me, anyway).
We have officially survived and my derriere is announcing it’s going to be sore from the workout it gets—tomorrow, I’m going to be moving more slowly.
Neither of us fell. Neither of us even had a close call. We didn’t pull any moves, just plain-skating ‘off the wall’—though ‘on the wall,’ I found my 3-turn answering well enough. We’ll try 3 days a week from now on and see how fast it comes back. We were all there but Larry and Colleen and Dawn and the pair from Minnesota. There was OSG and Stacy, Joan and Hank and Trevor. That’s the normal noon crew on an average day. Felt good.
Tomorrows class is at 9am – a much more civilized hour. Better instructor, too.
My favorite skating-scared trick is getting down properly on the right foot, pushing with knee bent and from the inside right under the ankle bone. —All ok. If you get your weight squarely atop that position, with momentum, you won’t fall, no matter what you hit, and your toepick will stay out of trouble.
My left foot is a perpetual problem: if I don’t watch it I’m standing up on that stroke, and completing it from the forefoot with my center of gravity about 6″ to the center, never engaging the part of the edge under the ankle at all. This results in a lurching stroke, like a limp, and very bad posture. So…I have to get that left foot under control, push sideways at the heel, get ALL my weight 6″ to the left of where it’s tending to be, shove down and sideways, extend, sway to the other foot, and keep your toe the heck out of any engagement. Long as you’re gripping the ice with the traction of that inside heel edge, right around the ankle, and keeping your knees bent, you’re good. EVER start letting your toe or your extreme heel get into the act and you better have a plan for what you’re going to do next. 😆 Fast.
Oh yes. Beware the “Click of Death”!
So happy to hear that you are getting the exercise you need without doing a ton of yardwork to get it. I know you and Jane really missed the skating. Give our regards to Joan, she is such a special lady judging from the short time we met during ShejiCon 2.
Brave, brave folk, there. Going out on frozen water, perfectly good frozen water, mind you, and scritch-scratching it all up. LOL, better the ice than the skater. Or is that SK8ER, these days? 😉
I’ve never, ever been ice skating, and only rarely roller skated. I’ve never been rollerblading, how tragically unhip. 🙂 (Rollerblading looks like fun, though.)
Now swimming, I miss. I miss the time to go swimming, and the fun of swimming. If our distant ancestors were indeed water-loving apes, then hey, count me in. — I do not, however, miss the unholy cost of pool maintenance: water, the pump, chemicals, etc. Let someone else maintain the pool in pristine, aquamarine perfection. As long as I can put on swimshorts and dart around or laze tranquilly, yay.
This, however, is not having much effect on you up there in the frozen north, and we have finally, *finally* gotten below 50. (It’s supposed to get down to 37 tonight, if the weatherman was not lying, fibbing, or devoutly wishing.)
However, best wishes at making graceful curves upon the ice. If you chance upon a skating beagle or a luckless smart kid, or some handsome fella in a skating competition outfit (or some pretty young lady, similarly, for all I know) then hey, enjoy. If that includes a Zamboni rolling around, fine also. — Does the beagle get top billing on Dancing With The Stars?
Quite bemused, doubtless, would be several aliens, to see a few writerly type humans, skating on the ice.
(firefox’s spellchecker is equally bemused by “writerly,” poor thing.)
😆 rollerskating scares me…there’s no ‘bite’ on those wheels.
When I was a kid, I was a good street-skater, on the old clip-on foursquares. I could pull a spread-eagle-style turn and we regularly shot driveway-slants to get momentum, sort of the 1950’s version of a miniature half-pipe; but no padding, no helmets.
The end of my street-skating career came when a street sweeper (we had never experienced one, and the town had a shiny new one) went down our street, rearranging the normal areas of grit. The machine piled up sand at the bottom of the drives, and when yours truly thoughtlessly shot the drive for a good speed-boost that should have carried me a couple of houses down the street—my skates met sand and sent me airborne. I landed on my side, thank goodness, on the center tar-strip of the street, with those heavy skates flung this way and that, thus doing a job on my ligaments…and jamming my shoulder and pretty well knocking the wind out of me.
My friends look down at this tangle of human limbs and Connie asks, plaintively,”Are you hurt?”
I didn’t even have the breath to answer. I just started trying to figure out how to move my feet out of a Wile E. Coyote type tangle. I skated home, once I got my right skate put back on, but I was pretty well a wreck, and paid for it in iffy ligaments for the next decade of my life, until I took up fencing and managed to stabilize my knees. (Excellent exercise for knee-tracking problems.)
My attempt to go back and skate on a regular rink—hopeless. It’s worse than any ice, with a central downhill to boot. I swear they’d oiled the floor.
Ice—you have blades that dig in.
that is very good news! enjoy!
The first truckload of ice-rink pieces showed up at Pershing Square on Monday. Yesterday they were laying the upper decking, the one that bears the weight. It’s supposed to open on the 18th: Downtown on Ice.) It’s fun watching people skating in t-shirts under palms, and some of the skaters are quite good.
Oh, what fun!
Our outdoor rink at Riverfront Park is rated nationally as one of the best (ice over concrete, on what during the summer is a carnival venue)—but budget doesn’t let the city maintain the Zamboni very well. One of the funnest things is skating in the snow. The place has a roof, but no sides, and watching the snow come down thick and magical, while you skate, is just wonderful.
For the record, I’m not that sore today. This is good!
The rink at Bryant Part, behind the NY Public Library, is going up even as I type. They have it surrounded with kiosks that sell seasonal things in December, which gives the block a very festive air. I wonder if Sk8er ever sk8ed there on any of her earlier visits to NYC. I am sure the isce is terrible.
Koki, I’ve never seen Bryant Park iced up. I have skated on Rockefeller & in Central Park though — both great memories!!
No…I’ve skated in Oklahoma City, Edmond OK; Dallas/Plano, and Casper WY, besides Riverfront and Eagles. Nowhere else. Ooops, at Castle Ice in Seattle, and in Peoria AZ, next to the field the Mariners use.