Finally. I. Passed. Free-Style 1.

 Ta Da...

It only took me 32 years, but  I am persistent if nothing else.  Of course I probably should deduct all the years in between now and 1981 when I finished my Masters degree at the University of Delaware and moved to the University of Maryland before I was ready to test on the ice.  In those days Maryland didn't give a hoot in hell about figure skating and even now skating is a limited sport at UM.  Perhaps a more meaningful metric is that it took me almost exactly a year to move from Delta to FS-1.

So now I get to brag a little: how many skaters can claim they're better in their 60s than they were in their 30s?  Of course it helps to have a relatively small hill to climb, but bragging rights are bragging rights! To be honest, I did have to retest on one element: the two foot spin.  During my "program" I only got five and a half rotations of the required six revs.  Upon retesting I somehow managed stay off my drag picks long enough to squeak out the missing half rotation.

Up to this point most of what I was encountering during lessons was familiar territory.  Perhaps introduced in a diffrent order and taught in a different way from back in the 70s but still noddingly familiar.  Getting my body to do some of them again took a lot of convincing.  Beyond this point lies terra incognita.  How many rungs will I climb on the Free-Style ladder?  Good question.  I tend to take things a rung at a time so not to become too dispirited.  My current group lesson instructor told me that I'll hate FS-2, not because of how she judges my potential but more because all of her past students have struggled with this level.  I plan on engauging a coach for private ice dance lessons as well as continuing with FS in the group. With my current minimum of accumulated skills, I think now is the time to explore whether or not I have the musicallity to skate and chew gum at the same time.  We shall see!

Road Testing Pingi: Beating the summer munge.

Babbette first blogged about these dehumidifiers on her blogspot a month or so ago here.  She reports that her feet are dry and so she doesn't put the Pingi bags directly into her boots but just drops one into her skate bag.  Your diarist, on the other hand has sweaty feet and the confines of my Jackson free-style boots with their soft, heat moldable linings get quite moist with as little as a 30 minute lesson.  A two hour public session?  Soaked!  Skate four or five times a week during the summer?  You can image.

My attempts to deal with the smell have included trying those deodorizing balls one finds at sports shops.  Other skaters have recommended putting drier fabric softener sheets in the boots.  Those strategies basically just hide the problem with a weird smell which reminds me of old hiking boots abandoned in a pine forest.  Worse, the boots remain damp inside.  Nothing is more fun than sticking your feet back into clammy boots the next day--kinda like wearing wet diapers on your feet.  I'll save that sensation for when I put on my dinghy boots for the second day of a sailing regatta. 

I thought about getting those little heater/fan thingies that campers use to dry their wet boots but was concerned that the heat from the driers would ruin the inside shape of my heat-moldable boots.  I already have a love/hate relationship with the fit of these boots and since the boots and I currently have declared an uneasy truce, I don't want to rock that particular boat.   My best solution up 'til now was a home made one: put either kitty litter or Drierite desiccant into old socks and put the socks into the boots.  That actually works well but it's hard to get the right amount of desiccant into a sock without the sock getting too big to fit into the boot.  After reading about Pingi desiccant bags I decided to give them a try.

Pingi bags come in three sizes:  150g, 250g and 450g.  I ordered the smallest size but perhaps the 250g size would still fit inside a skate boot.

I suspect the ingredient inside the bag is my old friend Drierite.  The penguin changes color from blue (dry) to pink (water saturated) just like Drierite does.

To recharge the saturated Pingi one places the bag in a microwave for 3 minutes or until the indicator Penguin goes from pink back to blue.  This is a lot easier than removing the Drierite from old socks and baking it dry in an oven and then returning it to the socks (which by now have little holes in them...).

Here's a 150g Pingi nestled inside one of my boots.  The next day the interior of the boot was dry and Pingi was still blue so the 150g size appears to have sufficient capacity to dry out a very sweaty boot.  I bought two; one for each boot.  Dry, odor-free boots are happy boots!  I ordered my Pingi bags from Amazon but perhaps they can also be found at a big box store near you.

Yin and Yang: автоФигурное Катание. Танец машин и фигуристов на льду

This is a cute little video that's making the rounds in ice dance circles.  I'll post it for those who might not have seen it yet.  Too bad the skaters don't do a lift...  Enjoy!

Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop!

While driving to the beach this morning I tuned in to one of my fav programs on the radio: Even Stephen's "Bop Time" on WDUV, the campus radio station of my Alma Mater, the University of Delaware.  The theme of today's program was the year 1946. That is, all the music played in today's show came out in that year.  Now 1946 was the year I "came out" so I was very attentive.  The best song played, in my opinion, was Lionel Hampton's release of "Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop".  Lionel is better known for playing the vibes, but this tune is a wonderful example of  "call and response" vocals mixed with skat.  The icing on the cake are the great trumpet and clarinet solos towards the end.  I could so solo-skate to this!  Granted I'll probably face plant, but I'll be so stylin' on my way down to that "up close and personal" encounter with the uncaring ice.  Somehow I gotta work out some choreography for my very limited skill set and get it into a program.  Put on some good earphones and see if you don't agree--get your MO-JO workin'!

Working on fundamentals

Whenever (make that most of the time) I'm struggling with a new skill, I tend to back away from it after a while and shift gears a bit by working on something else.  I have a seemingly endless array of fundamental skills to choose from which all need work, so no worries about finding something to work on.  The last two publics which I skated where for the most part devoted to refining the forward inside Mohawk turn that I use as the entry element for the half-flip jump.  It's getting better but at a glacial pace.

Sunday I gave myself a break from that and worked on another weak foundation skill: forward and back crossovers.  My forward crossovers are OK but those in the CCW direction could be better.  My back crossovers are the reverse:  I'm comfortable going CCW but very shaky if transitioning to the left back outside edge for the CW crossover.  Last Thursday night I talked to the coach who was substituting for our regular group lesson instructor about this and she indicated that my half swivel pump for sliding the cross foot ahead of the inside foot could be stronger/smoother.  I went home, thought about her comments and watched a couple youtube videos (and actually got something useful out of youtube for a change).  Yesterday, back on the ice, I focused on the pump phase of the back crossover and was immediately rewarded on my strong side.  Even the back crossover in the shaky direction got a little better.  Additionally, I worked hard to consciously deepen my knee bend   With more knee bend my forward crossovers not only became stronger and flowed better but also started to produce much more power and speed.  The rink suddenly became much smaller!   I might become halfway stylish if I keep this up...

Thank God for good days: how much is too much?

Last Friday I stunk up the ice.  I couldn't get out of my own way.  Absolutely nothing was working.  Today--totally different.  My legs decided to report for duty.  What a relief!

I'm still trying to work out what is the minimum timing between sessions on the ice to permit my legs to recover.  Public sessions vary between an hour and a half and two hours.  Some of the other skaters that I'm on speaking terms with tend to come to the same publics but unlike your overly thrifty diarist, those skaters come late and leave early.  Do they know something about over-training that I've yet to discover?  I did notice today that with 15 minutes to go my legs were feeling distinctly "gassed".  Should I have stopped then and there?  I pressed on until the Zamboni came out.  Did I really do anything worthwhile with the last few turns, jumps, perimeter skates?  Or, did I set myself up for another stinky skate two days from now when I plan to next skate?  I'll find out Tuesday!

Slow but steady

Diaristdaughter and I are back taking summer group lessons.  I've been skating with the free-style group while she's been sticking with the mixed bag of adults.  This past Tuesday my group was flooded with extra kids dropping in from Bowie's ISI team, so I decided to wander back over to the adults and skate with them since the two groups share the same time slot.  The usual instructor, coach Mike, takes the  summers off so there was a new person at the helm of this group.  I told the new gun that one of  my persistent issues in advancing up the free-style ladder is that my CCW turns suck.  She asked me to demonstrate and after observing a couple of LOF3s and CCW Mohawks she offered several suggestions that immediately improved those turns.  She also suggested that I try entering the half-flip jump from a Mohawk rather than my wonky left 3 turn.  I tried it and while the jump was not a thing of beauty at least I got in the half rotation.  This experience reenforces my opinion that I really need to concentrate on cleaning up foundation elements rather than beating myself up attempting jumps that require strong execution of those preceding turns.  It also was good to have a different coach take a look and make suggestions.  Sometimes you just need to hear advise from a different angle to make a concept click.  I plan to continue with group lessons but I hope to hire this particular coach for occasional private lessons to refine foundation stuff and give me fresh perspectives so that I continue to advance in the group lessons and don't plateau.

One of our pre-teen nieces from Georgia (that got me back into skating two years ago) is up visiting for a few weeks. I've tried to talk her into taking lessons while she's here but she's a hard head and just wants to skate fast and turn left.  Must be that southern NASCAR influence!   I've tried to teach her the snow plow stop without much luck.  Her mode is to just hit the boards when she wants to stop and that's OK since it's summer and the public sessions are relatively uncrowded.  She is enthusiastic, and has become noticeably steadier each time out. She's taught herself a couple of little spins and things like forward swizzles mainly by observation so I know she'd benefit from formal instruction.  But while you can lead a mule to water you can't force one to drink.  In her defense, back home there are no ice rinks close to home, just roller rinks.  I recon she'll be prefect for roller derby some day...