I accompanied my mom to the Friday afternoon freestyle session. Freestyle session... that's figure skating of course! Friday afternoon is informally dress-day at our rink, which is the real reason why I wanted to go! So I put on my skating dress-that-isn't-red and a pair of skating tight and went down to the rink. I think it's good to do things that you're uncomfortable with. Good to try activities that challenge you to think about how you move, what exactly your body is doing and what exactly it should be doing. If you only do "your" sport, whatever it may be, your body ends up forgetting how to learn which I think will eventually hinder your development in your sport.

So I stepped out onto the ice and felt a little wobbly; it's been several years since I've skated. First I skated around the rink a couple times. Then I did some cross-overs, then backwards cross-overs. Next up was forward and backward swivels, except when you're (pretending to be) a skater you do swivels on one leg only and call them power pulls. Then I worked through all of my forward and backward, inside and outside (edges) 3-turns, rockers, brackets, swing rolls, cross rolls. At that point I'd covered all of the basic moves and it was time to attempt some jumps, eek! Waltz jump- fine, toe loop- a little awkward, sow-cow (um, NOT the right spelling)- also awkward, loop- pretty good, flip- still fine. I didn't try a lutz which is the only other jump I ever learned. I didn't jump much, just enough to assure myself that I could. Then I went to work on my spins. Ugh, I am not so good with the spins, you have to really be able to center yourself and let the rest of the world disappear. Oh well, it was fun to break out the old figure skates. Here is some short footage of my mom and me doing scratch spins.