Friday's Fantastic Flops

It's been a wild weeks of ups and downs for me at work, but I'm so happy to say that the week ended on an up. There is a problem person at work and they were dealt with; it's been a long time coming, but it has made for a fabulous start to the weekend. It also made for a slightly messy start to the weekend because this good news was greeted with an impromptu social outting with some of the work colleagues I do enjoy. Add to this that I had agreed to another skating session with AB. Apparently alcohol and skating are not the best combination, who knew? At least I wasn't actually drunk, just pleasantly buzzed, and the cold air helped me sober up pretty quickly.

AB had bought herself pretty new hockey skates and, and as I laced up my fabulous rented skates with one lace too long and the other not long enough, I felt that twinge of jealousy creep over me. I want new skates! No, scratch that, I want skates! Alas, being a student and being cheap, this is a purchase that will have to wait until the summer when I'm working fulltime and can justify it (and by justify, I mean 'pretend I have money to burn'). I looked around at our fellow skaters and felt a bit disappointed. Last week there had been a few older people, parents with younger kids mostly, but this week I was the oldest person by a dozen years, maybe even a baker's dozen. Great, just how I wanted to spend my Friday night when I'm buzzed.

Part of the problem with the group skates like this is that you have a collection of the following:
1) Really bad skaters who hang onto the board, and step-step-step
2) People who can go forward and look like they know what they're doing but can't stop (me)
3) People who are decent skaters who can stop among other things (AB)
4) Little sh!t kids who dream of becoming professional hockey players who zip in between people with the speed of a hummingbird but without the awareness that not everyone can change direction as quickly as they can.
Tonight's skate was full of #4. FULL! There was one particular kid who was an amazing skater, but he must have measured all of 4'6"; he would just pop out of nowhere, give me a heartattack, and then continue around the rink. I may have made a snarky comment about tripping him up on purpose, and AB may have agreed with and even encouraged it on a few occasions. But all this was forgotten when the MOOA arrived (Men Our Own Age.)

Unlike last week where the few men our age were with a cow girlfriend, there were five guys around our age all without a girlfriend in tow. Now I'm not assuming that one doesn't have a girlfriend just because she's not there, but if I can't see her then she doesn't exist until you tell me otherwise or she comes racing from the shadows and slaps me.. So here I am, happy that there's finally some eye candy which doesn't make me wonder if I should be on some sort of registry, and I make a complete fool out of myself. This wasn't a surprise to me; as I once said to a friend "my game's so bad it doesn't make it out onto the pitch for a warm up session" and I wasn't joking.

Two of the guys caught my single eye and I kept casually glancing around the rink to see where they were just so I knew when to look like I knew what I was doing. During one of my casual glances, I missed seeing the big divet in the ice. When I say 'big', you could lose a Cadillac in that thing! A Smart Car? Tonka Truck? Fine, a matchbox car. At the very least, it was big enough to lose the front of my pick into. I was going with such speed that I flew forward doing my best angel imitation, came crashing down on my left knee, bounced back up (I know, knees bounce?) to land on my well-padded chest and then slid forward about two feet before my skates reconnected with the ice's surface and stopped the forward momentum. I actually slid foward on my chest; my legs were in the air! And who comes sailing by after this moment of grace? Why one of the hot-hot men. He was laughing... at me. It wasn't an evil laugh, just a 'that was awkwardly awesome' laugh as he cross-stepped away from me. I looked over my shoulder at the divet, trying to figure out the quickest way back to it so I could crawl inside.

I get up and get over myself. So some rather hot but nameless guy watched me make a fool of myself, so what? I've done worse (no really, I have; much, much worse); I'm not here looking for someone, I'm here to have fun with AB. We go around a few more times, every trip around the rink builds my confidence, and we come to the inevitable point where we're behind some slow people. AB pulls to the left of them to go around, I pull right to head between them and the boards. I start swinging my arms to help build my momentum around the slow pokes and my right hand accidentally punches hottie #2... in the groin... as he tried to sneak to the right of the slow pokes as well. He appologizes to me (don't know why, but wasn't that nice? I hit him, he says 'sorry') and skates off a bit slower and shakier than he was on any of the other times he lapped us.

Sadly that is probably the best my 'game' has been in a while, and my friends wonder why I'm single...

A Productive Weekend despite the Doctor Who

For me, a weekend doesn't get much better than the one I just had. Despite the fact that it didn't end with the usual Sunday night dinner at my step-mom's, almost everything else I wanted to happen this weekend did: I had my first foray back into skating and it went really well, the Canucks beat the Bruins, Ireland won the opening game of Six Nations (rugby), I purchased and watched the Doctor Who Complete Specials DVD, I had a fabulous brunch with (most of) my girls, and I kept up with my running even without my running partner.

The last point was probably the biggest hurdle for me. Not feeling well, THR emailed me on Friday to say I'd be on my own for the next few days. A momentary fear crept over me; without my partner in crime, would I allow myself to talk myself out of my runs? Would some phantom pain or ache stop me from getting off the couch? It did on Friday but mostly in part because I was going to go skating afterwards so when I returned home from downtown later than I anticipated, I decided to let it slide and did the run on Saturday morning instead.

There is one upside (if I can call it that) to THR being sick. I was looking at the schedule for this week's runs and saw the increase of 2 minutes up to 3, and I balked at the notion. Although I find myself doing the 1 minute runs with ease, the 2 minutes still present a lot of gaa-waa-gaa-waa towards the end. Three minutes? The mere thought starts me gaa-waa-gaa-waaing and I'm sitting still. With only myself to be concerned with, I can make the executive decision to repeat this week's worth of runs and I don't have to try and sell anyone on the idea.

Skating on Friday night was a hoot, there really is no other word for it. I met up with AB from work and her boyfriend (or man purse, as we insisted on calling him after he agreed to hold our things) at the Oak Bay Rec for the Teen Skate. I know, I know, it's been a while since I could claim to be a teen, but I phoned earlier in the day to confirm if there's an upper age limit and according to the lady on the phone "there's no age limit, we just say 'teen skate' because we don't have a quarantine for the little kids." Um, quarantine? I was not as unsteady on my feet as I had anticipated, and soon we were heading around at quite the clip. By the end of our 90 minutes, I was in love with skating and couldn't wait to get back on the ice. Crazy ideas =1, complete and utter failure = 0.

Do hockey skates come with Velco?

Like most kids in Canada, I took skating lessons when I was younger but living on the usually snow-free West Coast, lessons don't really mean anything unless you plan to do figure skating. We don't have snowy winters with outdoor rinks like my cousins in Alberta, so what's the point? I had reached the point of starting to learn to do corners and to stop when my family moved to another part of town. We were no longer eight blocks from a rec centre; my lessons were done. Just like that. I'm sure if I had asked 'what about skating?' my mom would have enrolled me, would have driven across town for the lessons (she did for ballet and, before our move, piano), but I never loved skating so I was happy to let it slip by the wayside.

I have skated since my early childhood foray into the world of ice. In my teens in Ireland, my cousin's friends assumed that as an Irish-Canadian I must be good at skating and so off we traipsed, decked out for the disco as I had been misinformed about our destination, to a Friday night skate at a rink in a nearby city (this particular cousin lived in a town). They were asking me for pointers as we laced up our skates; how do I explain to them that I don't skate? I decided the answer was to go as fast as I could. I did go fast, very fast, even lapped them a few times, but any illusions of my ability came to a grinding halt as I tried to stop as I had seen countless hockey players do and landed 'ass-over-tit' with my head between my knees and my skirt trying to be a tube top. Jump forward to me living in Switzerland and the same assumption is made about me being a Canadian. Add five years of wisdom, however, and I'm more than willing to admit that I don't skate and believe that hanging onto the boards for my dear life is the way to go.

So here I am, on a quest to get in shape and the crazy idea pops into my head "why don't I learn to play hockey, a sport I adore? That would be a fantastic workout!" First problem, well, see the above paragraphs. I decide to check out if the Rec Centre closest to me has any adult skating lessons beginning soon. I'm about three weeks too late for that option but now this idea has been in my head for a week, it's festering along with the love of running, and I can't just give up because I missed the start of classes. I will just have to brave the 'everyone welcome' skates on the weekends. I will have to watch children zip by me, practicing their crossovers, while I try to glide forward without falling on my butt... or knees... or hip... or elbow... or face.

I planned to go on my own, saving myself from the embarrassment of friend's watching my attempts at being graceful but then I mentioned it to a friend. She still regularly skates, she'd love to come and teach me (in exchange, she starts hockey this month and knows nothing so I'm teaching her the rules and the basics of the game... in theory). I mentioned it to a few male friends who rent ice time once a month. They thought it was fantastic, might even have a pair of skates kicking around; next time they play hockey, I should come and they could help me work on hockey skills during the warm up. I mentioned it to another friend. Can I let her know when the lessons are, she'd like to join. Suddenly, my crazy idea doesn't seem so crazy.