trying again...

I guess my most memorable skating day was one cold early January when I was a young teen.

The town I grew up in has one central lake and several other smaller ones scattered on the edges. The central one, Lake Alice, has an irregular shape and has a road encircling it that manages to be almost exactly one mile in circumference. There are two small man made islands towards the north side, filled with pine trees and scrub. Most of the shoreline is rocky, sometimes filled with cement chunks from old curbs and gutters torn out by the city and dumped there to prevent erosion. The south end has two dips in the shoreline where the lake used to discharge small streams to the nearby Ottertail river. Those streams were only a trickle most times and the overflow was shunted to storm sewers as the city grew. On the western dip is a warming house that opens each winter. At the time it was a wooden structure that sometimes even opened up and sold hot cocoa and candy to the skaters. Usually when open they had popular music blaring out of a loudspeaker. Sometimes you could hear the music drifting over the leafless trees a mile away at my parent's house.

On this day in January, it had been a cold, but not snowy winter. The ice had frozen on the lake as a single sheet. Usually when they opened the warming house, the volunteers would create a "skating rink" by scraping away the snow. There was no such limit this winter.

I got there fairly early as it was still light out. It was likely after school, so it was about 3:30 or 4 pm. Most of the skaters were in the general area of the warming house. I got my skates on and laced them up tight. I had bigger fish to fry. I may have been the chubby kid, but on the ice i had one thing that went for me: momentum.

I loved to hit the ice and skate hard and fast across the lake. I would swoop around the islands and skate like hell across the lake, nimbly avoiding the cracks you could plainly make out on the smooth glass of the lake. The ice seemed almost black in other places, as the deep water underneath was being refracted quite a bit.To add to this darkness, the clouds overhead were getting darker and darker. I paid little attention to the clouds, as I was a kid and probably assumed that night was coming on.

Then it started to snow. Just a little at first. It was a welcome site, as we had been snow free for Christmas and I hadn't even taken out my steel toboggan for the year.

It started to snow harder and the wind was picking up. I kept skating. I amused myself by making patterns in the snow, and as small drifts began to form, I would bust through them with ease, an inch or two is nothing to an ice skate.

Then the music stopped.

I assumed they were just changing 45's and hadn't kept up with the spindlefull.

The music then persisted in not returning. I stopped and looked towards the warming house. I could barely make it out through the pesky snow. It was falling very thickly now, and the wind was whipping it around quite a lot.

I decided I would go find out what was up, and made my way back to the southwest corner.

It was then I realized I had been in a protected area. The storm was worse towards the south side. I kept hitting drifts going over my ankles on the skates. I still burst through them, but not with as much ease. I made it back to where the staff of the warming house had been keeping up with the snow to a certain point, and I had to climb over the ring of snow. Even the cleaned off portion had another layer of snow on it.

In the warming house there ware still a couple of people there, and I gratefully accepted a "brooming off" of my snow-caked ice skates, and took them off.

The two remaining staff were watching the temperature gauge plummet. When it hit 10 above zero Fahrenheit, they had to close the rink.

I changed into my snow boots. It was 11 degrees.

I don't recall how I got home that day. I think my uncle Lloyd the fireman may have been one of the volunteers at the warming house that (continued...)

Well yeah, but you aren't planning on skating in a wet concrete roller rink in the dark, are you?

Well, no. But Pete still worries. Plus, there's that whole "I'm complete crap at skating" thing. But I'd still like to try it.

( continues...) day. I guess I never gave it much thought. He was always around when we needed him, and the place didn't have a phone that I can remember.

My next memory of that night is my pants were hung up and dripping on the rug near the back porch door. I was sipping hot chocolate, and my mom and dad were playing Scrabble with their friends Roy and Rosie Braun. I joined in later, and the storm kept howling outside.

Roy and Rosie ended up staying at our place the next couple of days. The storm got worse. Dad and I kept checking the barometer in the living room, at one point it went below the bottom of the scale, below 28.

When the storm was over, we had, if I remember correctly, 46 inches, and drifts that buried cars and houses. There was one drift over at the grade school across the street that let us walk up to the roof level.

School was closed for three days.

I think I remember skating more that winter, but the small rink they dug out never compared with the whole lake.

Okay, I give up trying to post it all in one fell swoop, somehow another post swoops in. Never mind.

Just think of it as having an uncanny knack for x-post timing - anyway, it's perfectly readable as-is, so I wouldn't sweat it.

And then Almonzo went and got the damn wheat?!?!?!

Dang, Daniel!

I gratefully accepted a "brooming off" of my snow-caked ice skates, and took them off.

Hee. I remember being broomed off before being allowed inside. Snow and ice were lovely when I was a kid, but I was over it by late teens. At this point I don't mind visiting it once in a while.

Although in a different part of the country your winter experience sounds much like mine was, Daniel.

Will have to backread Daniel's post--am at the moment completely enthralled by my new PotC LIFE game! It's SO COOL. Screw Halo, we're all going to play this today!

::tries to wrap poor global-warming-ized brain around "warm enough to skate"::

When it's 30 below (or colder) out, one does not spend more time outside than one has to. One especially does not go on a frozen surface outside and try to pick up speed. One will generally have to be treated for frostbite if one does do that.