For What It's Worth

I stopped by Valley today to see what the ice was like (I was sort of in the neighborhood) - and it looked okay. I asked one of the skaters I saw there if it was better than last Friday and she said it was a lot better.

But I got a report from her coach (and another skater who emailed me) that it was terrible this morning and that some of the adult skaters turned around and went home when they found how bad it was.

What I saw this afternoon looked okay - it didn't have those zamboni-wide "shelves" where you were constantly entering new levels and it looked like the flow was pretty good from what I could see of the figure and recreational skaters that were on the ice this afternoon.

That's all for now - I will try again tomorrow as I have a friend from out of town who wants to skate and she has liked Valley in the past...).
Lisa, your redundant reporter.

Is There ANY Excuse for This?

I should make this picture bigger because I'm not sure that you really get the picture of this ice that was experienced this week at Valley. I mean - they were having pretty good ice this summer up until this week - and then what happened?

What you see in this photo is a series of deep ruts (make by hockey blades) over another rut made by the zamboni itself - these zamboni-ruts create what look like shelves across the rink (each shelf being the width of the zamboni-blade) - and so when you skate you kind of go down these little shelves. In themselves it wouldn't be that bad, but add in the completely-random hockey-ruts in almost every sector of the ice rink and you basically have a disaster on your hands.

And a disaster that is not worth the $8 for the session plus the time and money spent getting there.

I can only hope it is better next week. I'm going to try to get a lesson with my Valley-bound coach this week but after this week she will be out of town and I may enjoy my end-of-summer ice at Lloyd Center, Mt. View and hey - maybe even make the trek down to Sherwood because THIS JUST AIN'T WORTH THE AGGRAVATION!!! (am I yelling?)

Another view, just in case you didn't get it the first time: