kids like ice, adults like bling-bling

we went out ice skating last night for the rs fng.

ice skating? do they still do that?

wasn’t hockey season cancelled? besides, aren’t we living in california, land of sunshine, blue skies, and beaches filled with voluptuous baywatch babes?

unfortunately, we’re in northern california, where it rains incessantly during the winter (where’s my drought when i really need it?), and the beaches are goddamn cold. and the babes are more hippy-chick/granola types, which is also ok with me.

charles schulz, as i recall from the disappointing visit up to santa rosa, built a huge professional level ice rink there, due to his love for things icy: hockey, figure skating, snow-cones, and curling. well, maybe not curling. was there ever a peanuts cartoon where snoopy was a world-class curler? not that i recall. ask me again after i’m done reading every single peanuts released in ten years.

back to ice skating, i haven’t done that since i was a kid back in ann arbor. living in michigan, while you get a lot of snow, most of the exciting snow sports are oddly enough out of your reach. given that michigan is almost entirely flat, the skiing is pretty crappy. there’s one place to ski in lower michigan, mount brighton, which is this tiny lump of a hill where everyone goes to ski or learns to ski. which is what i did one winter and had a miserable time.

did i mention that mount brighton is actually made of landfill?

learning to ski on a pile of crap. literally.

what michigan is actually ideal for is cross-country skiing. lots of snow. lots of flatness. lots of wide open spaces. somehow, i never got around to it.

my winter sport was snowshoeing. or, as i like to call it, walking home from school. and without the snowshoes.

actually my big winter activity was sledding. we lived on golfside road, which was, uh, beside a golf course. on the north part of the road, there was a huge hill that was perhaps five stories high. and you really wanted to sled down that road, but you never could, since, well, you’d be afraid of getting run over. so instead, we climbed over the fence to the golf course, where the hill was even steeper and rougher, and had a frozen pond at the bottom.

because that’s the safer option.

that’s what you did as a kid. fear? you don’t have any fear! you’re going to live forever! if not, well, at least you heal easily. but hell, you didn’t even think of that. you’re out to have fun, man!

and that’s the difference between ice skating as a kid and as an adult.

as a kid, you’re out there having fun, barrelling around and all over the ice. if you fall down or plow into people, no big deal. you get up, and start barrelling around again. but as an adult, now you’re all cautious about falling. bruising things. breaking. you’re aware how much it hurts to break your tailbone, and even worse, how long it takes to heal from a broken tailbone.

i used to be pretty good. whipping around the ice with abandon, crossover turns, and hockey stops. hockey stops! and skating backwards, even. yesterday i realized that i couldn’t even conceive how to skate backwards.

it’s a wonder that we’re able to learn anything as adults. how did i manage to start snowboarding, with all this fear of breakage surrounding us? hey, it’s easy, right, just don’t fall!

whew, there’s the answer. duh.

or, at the very least, you can revel in being an adult. go home. drink some whiskey. buy a car. have sex.

fuck you, kids!

Posted at February 19, 2005 10:32 AM