Valley: Good for Balance? Bad for Balance?

So - look at these pictures side-by-side. Supposedly these yellow boards are the same height.

They don't look at all even, do they?

One might argue that the photo on the right is closer than the one on the left and therefore the board may look higher.

In reality, the reason that the boards look like they are of different heights is that the ice is built up more in some places along the boards than at others. Now in itself, this is not a big deal because you never really skate that close to the boards - this has been the situation there for quite a long time, actually. But after some time the height difference makes it's way across the whole ice, dipping up and down, center and ends, all over the place. You can see it when you look at the rink from the sides.

And I can really feel it as I'm skating.

I've decided that uphill is okay and is probably good aerobic exercise. I can certainly feel it in my legs when I'm going up.

Going down is another matter and can get a little scarey especially when you are doing a turn, at speed and then start to go downhill. You don't have very much control over your speed and well, I get scared of the whole thing and feel like I can't skate anymore.

On the other hand, maybe this is good for proprioception (balance) to skate on such a surface. Eventually you have to compensate for the hills. When you get to skate on a flat surface, it all seems so easy... "I can skate again".

So another day at Valley (why didn't I go to Mt. View as Anonymous suggested in the comments section of my last post?). too early? too flat?

Of course at Valley I saw an a couple of friends and some of the kids that I've been watching for the past few years were there to take their freeskate lessons. It's great to see how they have grown!

What can they do about the ice? Maybe if they cut it with the zamboni sideways it would cut off part of the hills/valleys so that it would be flatter overall instead of just compounding the problem by cutting it over and over again in the hill-fashion. Of course then there is the problem(?) of creating too much snow. How will they get rid of it? (hot water, anyone?) Will the zamboni eventually just go crazy and not want to try to cut it anymore? Can zambonis go up and down steeper and steeper hills? Are they built for that?

Many questions to be answered... maybe...

Your redundant reporter.