When Oil Meets Ice: Lloyd Center Madness!!

Well, this would have been a great day to have "skatecam" with me because I would really like to have gotten a photo of the ice today. I asked around but no one had a camera phone that I could use - (maybe I didn't try hard enough...). this photograph is of an oil spill over a melting ice-flow, but it gives you an idea of what the ice was like today.

On the 1st dance session the ice was really hard to skate on - it was as though there was oil mixed with the water coming from the zamboni and it froze into annoying little dribulets (I know, this is not a word, but it is perfectly descrptive of what it was!) of frozen water on the surface of the ice. It was the kind of ice that makes your teeth hit together as you skate. It was the kind of ice that I have trouble skating on... fear of falling kept me from doing much on this session. It would have been nice to take a lesson, but I was too scared.

Luckily there were LOTS of complaints and the second session was much better and much less attended, actually, so I think I got some good skating accomplished. There were a few areas that seemed to be affected by the dribulet-situation but all in all there was enough "good ice" in between those spots to make the session skatable, so that was good. At least the situation seemed to be easily rectified (something that seems to be lacking at The Valley for instance).

I took advantage of my free public session and skated on the session that starts at noon for about 1/2 hour before the crowds came. It was good and gave me a chance to just do some turns and stroking. Sometimes the social ice-dance session is so social I don't get much skating done, and these public sessions are better for just skating since I rarely know anyone... of course that on some level is less fun, but oh, well.

Meanwhile I may just have to get my own "skatecam" for emergency situations like this one - you never know where you may unexpectedly hit some crappy ice!!!