Who AM I?

And why I am keeping this blog?

People have been asking how I have so much time to skate AND to write this blog, so maybe I have a little explaining to do: I am a 53-year-old married small animal veterinarian. I do house-call practice and have been for ten years now. I started skating when I was 6 and skated "in a competitive atmosphere" until I was 14 and then quit for all of the usual reasons (teenage-ness for the most part - crappy skating for the other part...).

Fast-forward 16 years: Torville and Dean win the '84 Olympics. I get the skating bug again. I buy some used men's skates and start to skate at the Boston-area rinks. I have just graduated from vet school. I have no money for lessons or new skates and have tons of school loans. So I just skate from time-to-time from my memory. I used to like dance but can't remember the dances so I make them up. I do some lousy freestyle, but it's fun anyway.

Finally, in 1989, someone tells me about an ice-dance class at one of the local rinks. By this time I have my own white skates and decide to take the class. I enjoy re-learning all of the dances but am worried about not having a coach - wondering how that is all going to happen.

Then I took a job on the south shore of Boston. One day this guy comes into the vet practice with these two dogs - little poodles. My boss winked at me and said, "Come and see these dogs" so I went into the exam room with him. I could not understand why he wanted me to see these two dogs because it was an average visit - then the guy says, "Yup, the dogs are with me all day at the rink."

"Rink?" I say - looking at my boss who was grinning from ear to ear. My boss says, "Yeah, this guy is the owner of the rink a couple of blocks from here". so I ask the guy about dance and he said that yes, they had a dance session - at noon on Mondays and Wednesdays and that there were "some younger people there".

So I went and started ice-dancing with the group at that rink and met an ice-dance coach and started testing, etc. I got the bug bad.

So then in 1993 we decided to move to Portland. I wondered if they would have dance and yes, they do - which is great!! Anyway, I worked several types of jobs here in Portland (all vet jobs of course) but always had the intention of starting a house-call practice, partially so I could control my hours and have more time to skate and not have to depend on early-morning ice.

So why do I write this blog?

I like to write, so that is a start. I wanted to blog about SOMETHING and have a lot of opinions about animal care and veterinary medicine that are not particularly popular and I didn't want to get my clients involved. So I started this blog about the rinks in the area.

I do not have any particular training in ice-technology, only what I can feel with my feet through the skates. I realize that some of the problems with the ice (like say, at Valley) is not necessarily due to negligence but to certain engineering factors that I have no way of understanding. So I hope everyone can take my blog with a grain of salt and know that really, I love skating and I enjoy most aspects of skating in the Portland area, including any perceived problems with the ice and/or rinks etc.

So enough about me - I just wanted to get this off of my chest (so to speak).

I also want to send out a big "good-luck" to all of the Portland skaters who are in Lake Placid RIGHT NOW competing in the US Figure Skating Adult Championships. Go Portland skaters!!

Lisa