Ice skating memories

Late this afternoon, a few co-workers and I had a chat about ice skating. At some point, someone brought up the topic of ice skating and that triggered a couple of very funny memories of two incidents I had when I was younger. I had to share it with them.

The first was when I must have been about 10 years old or so in the mid 70's. My class at school was going ice skating at an indoor hockey arena in our town. I think I had only been ice skating once or twice before that.

Anyway, we got to the arena. I laced up and made my way down to the rink, and stepped onto the ice.

Instantly, my ass met the cold ice surface. I grabbed the boards and pulled myself up, pushed off, and took a few strides.

Once again. Down I went.

Remember, I was a noob skater.

I continued like this, all the way around the entire rink.

A teenager, who must have been watching me struggle, skated up to me and said, "You know, it's easier if you take your skate guards off."

Oops.

The second incident was in the late 80's. Rather than sit in my friend's basement, drinking, listening to music and shooting the shit -- which is what my friends and I usually did every weekend -- someone decided that we should all go skating for a change. Since Winterlude was in full swing, it seemed like a cool idea.

We grabbed our skates and bussed it downtown. The canal was pretty busy. We went to one of the change huts, put on our skates and took off down the canal.

We didn't make it very far. I hit a crack in the ice and wiped out. No big deal. I stood up, took a few strides and wiped out again. The first thing that came to mind was "WTF? Are my skates that dull?" I had my skate guards in my hand, so I knew that wasn't the problem. :)

I persisted, but something didn't feel right. The lighting was poor, so it was a little difficult to actually see my skates. I stumbled over to the edge of the canal and had a look at them. Just as I was checking the blade on my right skate, one of my friends came flying up on his skates laughing and said "Hey check this out -- someone lost a skate blade!"

Yep. It was mine.

I had those all-plastic Micron skates, and the plastic supports that held the blade on had totally cracked, and the blade came off. In fact, the remaining plastic was crumbling between my fingers. And it wasn't even that cold! I guess over the years, the plastic just got weaker or something. Piece of shit.

Needless to say, our skating excursion was over. They tried to convince me to rent skates, but I was bummed out and pissed off. I wanted to go home and drink, listen to music, and shoot the shit. :)