More Ice Skating?

Yes, foolish though it seemed, I ventured out onto the ice rink again.  This marks my third trip, following the two disastrous attempts as discussed earlier.

This time, I had no choice. A friend from Utah was in town and invited me to join her at the rink. It seems she and her husband had much fun reading out my earlier ice-capades, and took up ice skating in their town. She thought it would be perfect that we would spend some time during lunch hour on the ice. I agreed to join her.

When I arrived at work that morning, I first stopped by the boss’ office to explain why I was wearing blue jeans. She said it was fine, she knew Janey and I were going ice skating. Word had travelled faster than a fat man falling face down, ass up on the Washington Capitals practice ice rink facility. Would this mean a set of curious onlookers, more co-workers seeking to quench their blood thirst?

The hour arrived. As Jane and I laced up our skates, I confessed that I hadn’t been back on the ice since my second attempt. Jane said, “That’s okay, Jeff and I only went out once.” So here we were, two novice skaters, the proverbial crippled leading the crippled.

Out to the ice we went, and surprisingly, it was quite easy. I quickly got into the groove, rarely skating too far from the wall, but sure-footed and confident. I did find myself getting a bit too confident at times, and quickly reeled back my thinking. Confidence on the ice begets bruises and breakages on the ice.

Save for a couple of breaks (the rest kind, not the humilating, compound through the skin kind), we skated six laps all told, neither of us falling.

I’ll be going back to the ice rink, sooner rather than later. Oh, I’m sure I’ll fall again, a time or two. But what won’t kill me will only make me stronger. Stupider, maybe, but stronger.