Slowly improving

Yes, I'm still working with my old friend--the right forward inside Mohawk.  The good news is that if I'm warmed up and if my brain is awake I remember (at least some of) the following during the split second that the turn occupies:  to bend my skating leg, to bring the free skate as close to the instep of the skating foot as possible, to keep my arms up (need to do this eventually when partnered), to rotate my hips during the edge transition and to check after the foot change.  If I remember all that and don't spend a lot of time looking down at the ice then the turn actually works well enough for me to hold on for the required two beats per edge.  Of course if I try this while partnered with coach A. everything goes out the window: I wide step, break at the waist, fail to check properly--oh, the agony!  But at least I can now hold the entry and exit edges for two beats each while skating solo, so that's progress to built on.  Slow improvement is better than slow degradation.

During our last lesson she brought out the dreaded coach's marking pen and drew curves on and slightly beyond one of the face-off circles, marking off where (a). she wanted the Mohawk to happen and (b). the placement of the tracing for the curves that make up the RBO edge (two beats) and the LBO swing roll (four beats) which follow the turn.  I worked on this with mixed success.  The free-style session during which my weekly lesson occurs, while not as busy as in previous weeks, still had enough skaters to make moving backwards a trifle hazardous.  I need eyes in the back of my head. 

Say--maybe the Ice Halo company could introduce a new model with a blind spot monitoring system.  I'd be first in line for that.

That and ooh, maybe an air bag instead of the current ungainly foam stuff.  Just think of those times when you get just that tiny, little bit too far back on your blades and the next thing you know you're falling backwards over the ends of the tails.  Rather than falling heavily and coming away with a bad headache or worse, if your Ice Halo had the all new ABS ("Aire Bagg Systemet", patents pending) instead of allowing you to crash, the bag would sense the unintended backward/downward acceleration and then, after carefully constructing next week's grocery list, deploy the bag a micro-second before ice and head make painful contact.  The falling skater would bounce and be instantly catapulted back to their feet--how cool would that be?!  And a lot less damaging to the ice as well I should think.  What?  Your favorite hat and artificially intelligent refrigerator can't cross talk and inventory each other's status?  Ha, you don't know the half of it.