The Awkward Stage

My rink runs adult LTS like a social club. We've got Basic Skills and Freeskate. That's it. No Basic skills 1-8....just one Basic Skills class. Same with freeskate. Just one big class. Some people have been in their happy place for years. So yes, social club on ice.

I'm in the awkward stage -- too good for Basic and not quite really good enough for Freeskate.

Whatever. The skating director put me in freeskate so there I am.

We warm up with spirals on each leg across the rink. Let me assure you, my faithful readers, that I can indeed do something that resembles a spiral, if the spiral would accept an acute angle of the leg instead of a horizontal angle of the leg.

Then Dance Coach says, "Now we do double three entrance into a jump."

That's not happening!

So, I go happily off to my space away from all the people who are willing to do whatever the coach says, and I work on whatever I want. Occasionally Dance Coach passes by me and says "Open your arms!" which is one of those coach instructions that skaters can't interpret because it doesn't mean 'spread your arms wider': it means something else that has to do with my shoulders or my elbows or my head position, but which no one can explain. Ladies and gentlemen consider that your lesson in enumeratio for the day. 

On the other hand, at the end of class, I nailed the waltz jump followed by side toe hops. Not sayin' it was pretty, but damn, I nailed that sucker.

Back three....

Still, crappy waltz jump with side toe hops, is better than nothing at all!