Foray Into Adult Skating

I went skating again today and it was an experience (as always.) First off, my skating svengali took me to Floyd Hall at Montclair State University. If there is one session I hate skating on, it is Floyd Hall at Saturday mornings. The ice is always PACKED with young jumping girls who skate in pattern's one has never seen before. There are tons of coaches and rather large girls with futures only in synchronized skating. Some of the female coaches due quite a bit of yelling. I always manage to go when I'm just getting my skills back and Anastasia Kononenko is the HBIC of the session. Her leg wrap could kill a person, but her spins make me feel like I have no business performing crossovers in her presence. We won't enough discuss my rocking two foot spin.

One of the best parts about Floyd Hall is that there are all of these Russian/Former Partners of Navka and Galit Chait/likely competed for Israel/hungover-looking men with fierce fair who always look disgusted by everything. You can understand all of the sexual tension these men must've experienced with their partners over the years. They have battle scars. Also, it is noted that any young Jewish girl with a skating dad who earns a living as a lawyer will take lessons from said Russian-Israeli-Galit Chair survivors.

Olivia Yao and her mother were at the rink, as was the MILFtastic skating mom from Franklin Lakes (who knows the Manzos.) Olivia Yao's mother confirmed what Ioana told me---she did indeed skate while pregnant. Naturally, I have fabulous visions of Isabel Delobel during the summer of 2009.

Olivia Yao leaves for regionals in a few days but has been hampered by slight pain in her achilles. She took two weeks off and told me that her skating was "horrible." Yes, Olivia's bad days would be amazing for most mortals when it comes to spins and footwork. She is going to rack up the points with her spins. Olivia literally hung out in her pancake spin for a good five minutes. I wasn't sure if she was taking a cell phone call mid-spin. You can never underestimate the tech-savvy Asians. Her hair cutter was also looking especially fierce. I openly question whether she secretly has a Swiss father.

Given that the session had around 50 skaters on it, I did not mention to torture the ice too much today. I found corners to work on my back crossovers, 3 turns, spins and waltz jumps. I worked a lot on stroking. I couldn't do all of my moves in the field for the bronze test given space restrictions, so I made sure that my left foot was as turned on and giving as much PUSH as my right foot. This has been a glorious issue in the past. My hips still don't want to do back crossovers on the weaker side of my body. My upper and lower halves debate this issue frequently. There was one magical day that I even had them down in rentals, but that day has come and gone (like my salchows.)

There were moments that I felt like an actual skater again, but then the pain in my boots returned. As usual, my boot-tying issues continue. There are always too tight no matter how loose I try to make them. My navicular bone is NOT pleased about my decision to return to the ice. It turns out that I might not be a whiner after all. I'm going to have the boots punched out again. They were heat molded to by feet, but I fear they should've been wide boots. I got them in Hackensack, a place a never want to visit. There are only two things of note in Hackensack: a dark, damp, cold rink that produced Sarah Hughes and the county court (where you always wait forever and wind up paying lots of $ over bullshit traffic violations.) Nothing good happens in Hackensack. We even lost some controversial Mock Trial cases in said courthouse.

I'm going to go to Fritz Deitl again during a session where the owner's son won't be present to talk my ear off. I need to have one of those really good sessions where I have the ice to myself and work on all sorts of things without worrying about taking the lives of small jumping beans.