What About You? What Did You Do?

I had a really wonderful day off on Sunday, listening and watching some of the Olympics, playing Lord of the Rings Online with DH, and generally relaxing. Of course, as usual, I missed the top skaters since they are always broadcasting them live and it's after I've gone to sleep. I'm bummed about that because ice dancing is my favorite part of the ice skating competitions. DH is bored with all ice skating events except ice hockey and curling. It's not for everyone, I'll admit. I'll try to catch some of the performances streaming on my phone later today. I want to see some of it. 

One of the competitions that DH really loved was the qualifying
runs for Women's "Big Air". The snowboard jump is ten stories
high (there's an elevator on the left of the big ramp). It's
amazingly tall, and they're doing some great flips and turns
off the swoop at the bottom - the one that has the Olympic
rings on it. 

When I learned to ice skate, I learned in Aspen during the summers. There was an ice rink in the western part of town (of course the town was pretty small, so walking there and back wasn't a problem). The "Ice Capades" show summered over in Aspen at that time, and their skaters taught skating in their non-practice hours. I'm bad - I don't remember my teacher's name, but certainly remember his wonderful Samoyed dog - Charlie. Every once in a while, Charlie would squeeze through the lobby doors and nudge open the rink gate, to join us on the ice. It was a merry chase for all of us to catch Charlie, and he loved it - playing with kids on ice was his total joy. 

Charlie loved nothing better than leading the students in a chase
around the ice rink, all of us trying to catch him and put him
back off of the ice. I remember him with great fondness. 

Charlie's owner, who I shall also call Charlie for the sake of convenience, taught me figure skating and ice dancing. I loved ice dancing, but really hated school figures which were still a required part of competition at that time. The older skating fans will recognize what I mean by school figures - those inside edge and outside edge circles on the ice that we had to do for hours at a time. Oy! The worst! In competition, the circles would be judged for how accurate they were, how consistent the edgework was, whether the form was identical from circle to circle, etc. It was a part of the scoring and some good skaters entered into the performance portions of competition already down because of their school figures. 

School or "Compulsory" Figures were a personal hell
for most figure skaters for years and years. Here, Dick
Button works through his figures. Look at the old
pictures and you'll see Peggy Fleming, Dorothy
Hamill, and others of renown working through
their School Figures. These were judged with
rulers and strings. Nasty!!! They were just NASTY!!!

I don't have the greatest sense of balance, so always had a really difficult time with spins and jumps. When Charlie would whisk me around the rink in the basic dances, it was magical. We concentrated on ice dancing for at least one full summer, and I kept up my lessons during the school year the best that I could - a bit harder because it had to fit between my music and my schoolwork. Then I broke my foot, and everything came to a screeching halt. Charlie and the rest of the Ice Capades didn't summer over that next year, and I dropped ice skating from my routine. Sometimes I miss it, but I learned enough to be comfortable on the ice, so a pick-up hockey game isn't out of the question for me. 

The Ice Capades, like many other traveling shows, was founded in
the depth of the Great Depression. It existed for fifty years, even
had a last hurrah under the ownership of Dorothy Hamill. But it
mung up its blades for good in 1996. 

What about you? Was there anything you seriously worked on as a child that you didn't keep up with? Childhood is a time of experimenting - finding out what things are of interest to you and what things aren't. For me ... math and science? Probably not. But music and art? Oh yeah. Those are still my happy things. 

Today I'll just beat the snow as I visit my Chiropractor, and then return to my home suburb. It should start falling around the time I'm at breakfast. Of course, that means DH will be caught it in while he's driving back and forth. That's not a good thing, so I'll be worried about him until he checks in later on. We'll get a few inches out of this one. *sigh* Have a wonderful Monday, I'll be back tomorrow.