Anyone Can Whistle

After spending an entire summer not taking any vacation time, I decided to take my two comp days (for working a weekend) and go skating. Well, I did for one of the days as I was too dog-gone tired the next day to do it again. On Thursday, I skated the "Coffee Club", an interesting freestyle/dance session filled with people I would respectively call by their sir names. I am not a kid, but since most of these skaters are older than I am, I would be respectful and call them "Ms. Q" or "Mr. C". It's the way I was raised. Either way, any time I'm on a session and someone tells me I move too fast, I know that's a slow session. Happily, it was a double session (110 minutes) for an affordable $30.00. I didn't really care, as it was also a relatively empty session. And yet, I kept getting cut off. To the lady who never looked where she was going: how do you do that? You're doing back crossovers looking where you came from, not where you're going. You were surprised when you slammed into the boards. Why? To the lady who thought it was funny to spin just as I took off in a jump: Sorry I hit you, but you did see me coming. You really couldn't miss me. I was the thing in the air when you stepped into your two-foot spin in the jump corner. To the gentleman in the helmet who I could not figure out which way you were going: the two women listed above, whom you slammed into probably have something to say to you. Me? Well, I'm just curious as to what happened to the rule where you must be at least Freestyle 1 to skate on a freestyle session. Keep working on that snowplow stop; you'll get it soon. Bend those knees. My MIF are improving, even with a sore, stiff back which is what I had on Thursday. I pushed through the pain and stiffness to do all of the Silver Moves, not perfectly, but I plowed through. I'm still having a problem with three turns either being too early or too late. The RFO3s are too early, the LFO3s are always flat. The RBI and LFI3s are also flat, but the LBO3 is too late and the RBO3 is too early. Also, either my 3s are too small or when I'm going down the ice, the surface increases, because I'm up to eight or nine 3 turns per side. The goal is four or five. Once, I had twelve sets. Yes, twenty-four 3 turns in total. Don't ask how, I have no idea. I neglected to mention that I was asked to join an Adult Ice Theatre group. I think the coach just wanted adults and didn't base this on my skating ability. They meet on Thursdays in the early afternoon, so I can't make every rehearsal, but I will when I can. The first thing I noticed was that the moves were righty dominated, which for this lefty is kind of hard. The next thing I noticed was no one seemed to understand the concept of spacing. As we were warming up, doing right power 3s, the person on my right was so close to me we could have kissed. The person on my left was even closer as I was unable to move anywhere except behind them both. I hope the spacing issue is cured soon because I'd like to finish the warm-up without injury or having to skip parts because I have no room. After years of dance classes and doing theatre, you'd think I'd catch on to choreography quickly. Nope. There's a part that after doing it a dozen times, I still don't know what the footwork is, but I can say, it was fun. Extremely hard work, but fun. Can't wait to take another Thursday off and return. Oh yes, accidentally did an axel on Sunday; was aiming for a waltz jump. That's how my skating goes. "What's hard is simple What's natural comes hard..." Anyone Can Whistle. Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.