Skating

Yes, I’ve been on the ice with skates!  To call it skating is probably a stretch - I entered through one gate onto the ice, and about 15 minutes later exited via the next gate along. Unfortunately, due to logistics and a lack of skates, that was the full extent of my first skating session, but clearly it was a solid start. Or at least a start.

This was all at the McCormick rink in Waterloo. The plan was to hire some skates from the attached library (that’s how things are done here - they do also have books) and then head on to the ice for a 45 min public skate. Unfortunately, the library only had very small skates that were closely matched to my skating ability but not my shoe size. Nova and I tried another library before determining that all adult skates in the region had already been hired out. That meant I had to borrow the ones that Oliver was himself borrowing to get some ice time. 

By the time I made it back to the rink, Oliver was flying around (this is relative, but it certainly seemed impressively confident to me), but he generously offered to give me a go. I think it was worth it for him just to watch me try to put the skates on, but that was as nothing compared to my entry on to the ice and subsequent slow progress along the boards. This might not be news to most of the readers of this blog, but ice is slippy; getting your balance is not easy for someone starting out at 52 years of age.

I did though manage to stand and begin to inch my way along. I was overtaken by many children, parents carrying children, and other people learning to skate. I tried out a sort of in and out skate manoeuvre, that seemed to work a bit. But I could not get the hang of the push off that Chrissy was trying to get me to do - mostly because my feet seemed glued to the ice. My brain did not comprehend, or consider it a good idea, for me to lift one of my feet up. 

The biggest challenge when a small child approached from the other direction with a penguin (like a walker on ice), requiring me to skate away from the boards. Somehow I managed that, as you can see below. But that was it for my first time on the ice. After that great bit of skill it was back to the side and off for me.

Amazingly, despite having seen my skating performance, Dawn has offered to help me improve. It’s probably because she can’t believe it and really needs to see it for herself. But I intend to take her up on the offer.

Skating aside, a lot of time over the last couple of weeks has been taken up with festivities and Christmas pudding and cake. I’ve managed to keep up with my stretches and walking every day (it was -15C when I went out yesterday, so I consider that quite the achievement). 

I’m also up to date with reading and my chess studies. The former, because I got a few excellent books for Christmas, including Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which is on my #52in52 list. The latter, because I had a few people around who wanted to actually play some games over the board. I managed to beat Jackson (although honestly he mostly beat himself by thinking he’d lost when he hadn’t) and then tried out some d4 openings against Oliver without any success. He’s too good for me to wing it these days. I only managed to beat him when I switched to black and played a solid, unadventurous game.

French and piano have suffered over the holidays, as has my exercise regime. I started out on Elise Joan’s Lava program proper yesterday (having completed the preparation classes a couple of times), and did an indoor cycle as well. Now I need to make sure I get back into the routine of doing some exercise every day.