When Your Blades Guards go Missing at the Rink

I've never lost a pair of blade guards at the rink--but I have lost them in my own home-- but I hear from people who have.  There's a kind of general agreement that kids pick them up from the boards and just take them. They don't know what they're for, but they're laying there and kids with a certain kind of parent (ones that let them get away with theft) just take them.

I think though that guard manufacturers are complicit in this. Guard manufacturers should put a smooth area on them where a skater can write their name. Even ROCKERZ which merely has a kind of decorative scrolling doesn't do this. These things cost $40, at that price yeah, I'm not worried about aesthetics, I want my name on them.

Theft doesn't appear to be much of a problem on freestyle, but even freestyle skaters go on public where the trouble is with theft. (There's a certain superior kind of skater that will say: "But I wouldn't be caught dead on public, I only skate freestyle." Well, goody for you sweetheart.  I skate publics and it's my blog, so I can bitch about what I want.)

Moving on.

Anyway, first option is to search for the guards. Did they fall behind something? Did someone turn them into lost and found? Did someone move them into the hockey boxes? Bad places to put them

1. Next to the gate on the outside
2. On the boards on the inside

 If you put them in the hockey box, it lowers the risk, but it still happens.

I've come to think of guard theft as inevitable.  There's really no way to get around it. Even with your name on it, and hiding them in the hockey boxes, there are weaseley little kids, with inattentive parents. There's no place weaseley kids won't stick their nasty thieving hands.

So you've got 3 options:

Cry

Make a Scene

Say something under your breat

None of these work. So, just go to the lost and found and ask. And keep an extra pair in the car!