Solitary skating
Apr. 29th, 2007 07:09 pmThe huz and I have been taking group ice skating lessons since January. It's a fun - and much less expensive - alternative to fencing, which had been our primary form of 'fun' exercise for a couple of years. Lessons are held on Saturday morning, and we try to go once some time in the middle of the week between lessons (usually Thursday mornings).
The public session Thursday morning is usually fairly populated. There's generally between eight and twelve other adults, and often a handful of kids of varying ages and abilities. Usually someone has the CD player going so they can practice their routine for an upcoming performance or competition. Oftentimes a staff member is giving a private lesson to a child, complete with portable boom box playing some entirely different piece of music from whatever's in the sound system. With all these things going, the rink is generally sort of noisy.
The first ten minutes of Thursday morning this past week were different. For starters, there were only three people on the ice: me, the huz, and another adult. All three of us are still in fairly basic levels, so none of us had music in the player. And we all traveled at about the same rate, so we each had our own fairly sizeable piece of rink.
The sounds that I could hear were the whirr of the cooling fans overhead, the slight scratching noise my blades made as they traveled over the ice, and the whistle of the air traveling through the gaps between my blade and shoe as I moved. It was a lovely and almost magical experience.
Then a couple of little kids dressed in hockey gear entered the ice along with their parents. So much for silence! ..But the experience was great while it lasted.
The public session Thursday morning is usually fairly populated. There's generally between eight and twelve other adults, and often a handful of kids of varying ages and abilities. Usually someone has the CD player going so they can practice their routine for an upcoming performance or competition. Oftentimes a staff member is giving a private lesson to a child, complete with portable boom box playing some entirely different piece of music from whatever's in the sound system. With all these things going, the rink is generally sort of noisy.
The first ten minutes of Thursday morning this past week were different. For starters, there were only three people on the ice: me, the huz, and another adult. All three of us are still in fairly basic levels, so none of us had music in the player. And we all traveled at about the same rate, so we each had our own fairly sizeable piece of rink.
The sounds that I could hear were the whirr of the cooling fans overhead, the slight scratching noise my blades made as they traveled over the ice, and the whistle of the air traveling through the gaps between my blade and shoe as I moved. It was a lovely and almost magical experience.
Then a couple of little kids dressed in hockey gear entered the ice along with their parents. So much for silence! ..But the experience was great while it lasted.