Thin Ice

Caroline and all of the boys have taken up ringette this winter and so there has been a large commitment made to ice-time. Its all ramping up and the boys are all starting to have more fun as their ice-skating competence increases.

In addition to the ringette, the boys and Emily have been booked into skating lessons which should hopefully get them moving around the ice with even more confidence and help them to catch up to some of the other kids.

So everyone had been ice-skating except dear old Dad. We were headed into a sports store to get some skates for Caroline ahead of her ringette debut and seeing as it was a Sunday, I went along as well, which thrilled the kids. They were obviously keen to see their father on ice-skates.

At the store, I decided that seeing we were going to be living in this wintery wonderland called Canada for a couple of years, then it might be in my interest to get a little bit better at ice-skating myself. And unlike back home, where the thought of having your own pair of ice skates in the cupboard seems just a little bit whimsical and pointless, over here, hiring skates seems to be unheard of. So I sat my butt down and said to the sales guy, “Get me the cheapest pair of ordinary skates that you can, I won’t be doing much more than the occasional casual skating.”

$180 later, I am the owner of a pair of ice skates. Ouch! Apparently that was the cheapest pair that I could get in that store and I couldn’t be bothered shopping around

Of course, I was really pleased walking through Walmart today to see skates on the shelf for a cool $59. Come in sucker.

All I can say is I’d better really get to love this ice skating thing!

I survived our first session without my precious butt managing to come in contact with the ice, though it was something of a close call. I haven’t managed to get out to see Michael and Sam have their turn, because the one time I did was the day of the thumb incident. But I have managed to see Thomas have a go.

It is so cute! This little guy is all dressed up like a hockey player and at first, can’t skate to save his life, but he’s trying his hardest and improving all the time. He’s actually getting a grasp of the basics and you can see him starting to push off and glide, rather than try and run across the ice like one of his little Aussie mates. And it’s the moments when they think they’ve got it that are the funniest. You can see that they just start to relax that bit and then bam! Hello splatsville. But because they’re all padded up in their gear, they don’t actually get hurt.

Last night they did a ‘power skating’ session. Michael and Sam were on the ice and Sam was waiting due to insufficient equipment (we’ve enough to get two of them on the ice at once, but not three – more scrounging required). They play a game like red-rover (or British Bull Dog) where they have to try and skate across without being touched.

Well in the first game, Michael ended up being one of the last three by lurking around whilst everyone else madly chased each other at great speed across the ice and then basically limping in his own crazy skating style whilst no one was watching. The problem that that created for him was that he had to be one of the three in the middle to start the next game.

So when you can’t really skate and you have to chase down these tiny tackers that blaze around like they have rocket propelled skates, what do you do?

Well obviously you pick on your little brother who’s at the same level as you rather than try to get to someone faster. But it was hilarious. Because Thomas is getting close to as being as good as Michael. But when he saw his big brother try and advance on him … splat! Which of course got Michael excited because his target was now prone, but in his attempt to speed up and nail his quarry … splat! He went down on the ice as well. And so it went over about a third of the ice rink.

Tom would get up and skate for a metre or three and then splat. Michael would get up and start closing the gap and then splat! Man I wished that I had a video camera to capture that, it was absolutely priceless.

But I think my favourite memory of the night is Thomas standing on the ice in front of me, hanging onto the edge of the rink, grinning his missing-front-teeth grin through the face guard of his helmet as we tried to communicate through the perspex that’s there to keep the puck (and probably hockey players as well) from meeting the crowd.