I Went Skating! Yay!
It's been almost six months since I last put on my skates. While part of me thinks that is completely awful, the reality is that for most of my years as a freestyle skater, when I was skating only with the White Marsh program, then I went that long between our final show and the start of lessons in September.
Still, it felt like a really long time.
I had gotten a call from Cindy--yes, the Evil Cindy from Deep Creek Lake--on Friday while I was at work. She tricked me by calling from her work number so that I did not know that it was her, and I answered. Yet it is good that I did because she was having a birthday party at Skateland and wanted Bobby and me to come. Bobby found it a bit odd that a grown woman would want to have a Skateland party; I was too enamored of the idea of skating again to pay much mind to this notion.
(And really, skating is the best way to interact with Evil Cindy. Why? Because I skate much faster than her. Yes, this might be mean that I went to the woman's birthday party and didn't even skate with her, but hey, we paid our own way in.)
So I went to Evil Cindy's birthday party--which wasn't really a party so much as a group of people agreeing to meet at a certain time to go skating--because I wanted to skate so badly. That, I told Bobby, is proof in itself of how much I love skating.
Because it was the Saturday afternoon session, the place was packed, mostly with small children there for birthdays. It felt good to be on skates again but, damn...I had forgotten how exhausting public sessions are! Honestly, two hours and I was more wearied than a practice or rehearsal of the same length. The problem is not people who can't skate: It's people who can't skate who think that they can skate and go tearing about at speeds and attempting maneuvers that are really beyond them. It's the "child slalom," I told Bobby. Then there are the instances where, suddenly, stronger-than-usual gravity grabs the person in front of me, and they go down without warning. That's fun too.
It was too busy to do much beyond skate forward in a circle, but it was skating. And they did have one song of "adult skate" where there were maybe a dozen people on the floor, so I got to brush the rust off of some footwork and really basic spins. That was nice. No jumps or spirals because my hip has been feeling better, and I'd like to keep it that way.
The adult skate is nice too because they actually play decent music. Skateland's music is notoriously awful, obscure, hardcore hip-hop that I expect isn't to the tastes of any of the patrons but rather the employees. (I mean, the sorts of people who go to Skateland? Young children, their parents, older people looking to get exercise, and middle schoolers. Of that group, who listens to that sort of music? Maybe the middle schoolers...but probably not even them. Though maybe I'm behind the times already, at the age of twenty-five, and really everyone listens to hardcore hip-hop that makes one's brain feel like it is turning to oatmeal when played at full-volume. Everyone listens to it but me, that is.)
Of course, they played the hokey-pokey, which Cindy tried to get me to do, but as I informed her, I am a conscientious objector to the hokey-pokey.
But it is always the way that as soon as we decide to leave and I have my skates off, they play a good song. Actually, when we came in, they were playing Red Hot Chili Peppers. When we left, they played Michael Jackson, which is good old-school skating music. Damnitall. The only good song we got, then was "Life Is A Highway" during the adult skate.
In the evening, we went out to dinner with my in-laws because it was Terrell's 21st birthday. Terrell is my sister-in-law's boyfriend. Our plan was to go to Red Robin since the in-laws have never been there, but we arrived at 5:30--usually time enough to beat the dinner rush--and they were already on a forty-five minute wait. Ummm...no. I don't generally wait forty-five minutes to sit for a meal at all, much less at Red Robin, which doesn't have the most comfortable of waiting areas. It's small and packed with kids. Yes, I had spent the afternoon trying to avoid splattering kids while skating, so I was sicker-than-usual of the little bastards by the time we got to Red Robin.
Luckily, Rocky Run is right across the street, so we went there, waited about fifteen minutes, and got seated in the Jimmy Buffett room with an excellent server and ended up having a better time--and better food--than if we'd gone to Red Robin anyhow. But then, I hold a bias towards our locally owned restaurants to big national chains anyhow. And I could eat at Rocky Run every day.
My father-in-law plotted to have the staff come out to sing to Terrell also, which was amusing simply because they were standing behind him and already singing before he realized that they were singing to him. But he got a free cheesecake shooter for the humiliation.
Still, it felt like a really long time.
I had gotten a call from Cindy--yes, the Evil Cindy from Deep Creek Lake--on Friday while I was at work. She tricked me by calling from her work number so that I did not know that it was her, and I answered. Yet it is good that I did because she was having a birthday party at Skateland and wanted Bobby and me to come. Bobby found it a bit odd that a grown woman would want to have a Skateland party; I was too enamored of the idea of skating again to pay much mind to this notion.
(And really, skating is the best way to interact with Evil Cindy. Why? Because I skate much faster than her. Yes, this might be mean that I went to the woman's birthday party and didn't even skate with her, but hey, we paid our own way in.)
So I went to Evil Cindy's birthday party--which wasn't really a party so much as a group of people agreeing to meet at a certain time to go skating--because I wanted to skate so badly. That, I told Bobby, is proof in itself of how much I love skating.
Because it was the Saturday afternoon session, the place was packed, mostly with small children there for birthdays. It felt good to be on skates again but, damn...I had forgotten how exhausting public sessions are! Honestly, two hours and I was more wearied than a practice or rehearsal of the same length. The problem is not people who can't skate: It's people who can't skate who think that they can skate and go tearing about at speeds and attempting maneuvers that are really beyond them. It's the "child slalom," I told Bobby. Then there are the instances where, suddenly, stronger-than-usual gravity grabs the person in front of me, and they go down without warning. That's fun too.
It was too busy to do much beyond skate forward in a circle, but it was skating. And they did have one song of "adult skate" where there were maybe a dozen people on the floor, so I got to brush the rust off of some footwork and really basic spins. That was nice. No jumps or spirals because my hip has been feeling better, and I'd like to keep it that way.
The adult skate is nice too because they actually play decent music. Skateland's music is notoriously awful, obscure, hardcore hip-hop that I expect isn't to the tastes of any of the patrons but rather the employees. (I mean, the sorts of people who go to Skateland? Young children, their parents, older people looking to get exercise, and middle schoolers. Of that group, who listens to that sort of music? Maybe the middle schoolers...but probably not even them. Though maybe I'm behind the times already, at the age of twenty-five, and really everyone listens to hardcore hip-hop that makes one's brain feel like it is turning to oatmeal when played at full-volume. Everyone listens to it but me, that is.)
Of course, they played the hokey-pokey, which Cindy tried to get me to do, but as I informed her, I am a conscientious objector to the hokey-pokey.
But it is always the way that as soon as we decide to leave and I have my skates off, they play a good song. Actually, when we came in, they were playing Red Hot Chili Peppers. When we left, they played Michael Jackson, which is good old-school skating music. Damnitall. The only good song we got, then was "Life Is A Highway" during the adult skate.
In the evening, we went out to dinner with my in-laws because it was Terrell's 21st birthday. Terrell is my sister-in-law's boyfriend. Our plan was to go to Red Robin since the in-laws have never been there, but we arrived at 5:30--usually time enough to beat the dinner rush--and they were already on a forty-five minute wait. Ummm...no. I don't generally wait forty-five minutes to sit for a meal at all, much less at Red Robin, which doesn't have the most comfortable of waiting areas. It's small and packed with kids. Yes, I had spent the afternoon trying to avoid splattering kids while skating, so I was sicker-than-usual of the little bastards by the time we got to Red Robin.
Luckily, Rocky Run is right across the street, so we went there, waited about fifteen minutes, and got seated in the Jimmy Buffett room with an excellent server and ended up having a better time--and better food--than if we'd gone to Red Robin anyhow. But then, I hold a bias towards our locally owned restaurants to big national chains anyhow. And I could eat at Rocky Run every day.
My father-in-law plotted to have the staff come out to sing to Terrell also, which was amusing simply because they were standing behind him and already singing before he realized that they were singing to him. But he got a free cheesecake shooter for the humiliation.