Go ice skating! I’m sure there’s an outdoor rink or two nearby. It’s fun.
The village has two outdoor rinks that are free, but I’m not sure that they’re operational yet. Up until now it hasn’t been consistently cold enough. I’ve been meaning to get some skates for Daniel. Maybe this is what will finally make me do it.
There’s an indoor rink, too, and Daniel and I sometimes duck in there on our walks and watch a little of the high school hockey practice or whatever’s going on at the time.
1 Like
The website says that the Longfellow rink is open. Maybe I’ll wander over there later and see if it really is.
I’ve skated once, a few years ago. Yes it was fun.
I suppose I’d do it again but I kind of feel like I dodged a bullet by emerging unscathed that time so why tempt fate.
3 Likes
I could only ever skate with a hockey stick in my hands so that I had three points of contact.
2 Likes
From inside it looks pretty outside, but I’m in absolutely no hurry to cruise around and look at stuff.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned this, but as a (much) younger man I got into the habit of playing pick up hockey weekly, and it was as much fun as I’ve ever had playing any sport ever. There was a small percentage of guys who really couldn’t skate, a similarly small percentage of guys who’d played college hockey (and it seemed like they were playing a different sport altogether), but the majority were idiots like me, guys who could skate fine but didn’t have any real background in the sport.
Anyway, it was great.
2 Likes
Team handball is the one rando sport that I absolutely loved playing. Also, I never played it, but I imagine I would have felt the same about lacrosse. Water polo looks fun as hell but also absolutely exhausting
1 Like
Ok, it’s snowing like a motherfucker now. They said we were done.
I learned recently that a guy I know ended up, briefly, on the TCU polo team. The story goes that they needed warm bodies to field a team and he drunkenly agreed to suit up. He said the team had one or two guys who really knew how to play and the rest were guys like him who vaguely remembered how to ride a horse.
2 Likes
I can skate forwards okay but struggle skating backwards and changing directions rapidly. I had never played hockey before when I got asked to play. I played in 2 denial league type hockey games when a friend’s team was gonna forfeit games for not fielding a full team while a couple of key members were away on a vacation. I only touched the puck two times and by accident. My job was to get in the way of the other team and stay out of the way of the guys on my team.
1 Like
Roads are pretty bad here in my area. It dumped several inches of sleet one day and a lot of snow on top of that last night. You kind of have to guess where the side roads are as they are covered and nearly impassable unless you are in a 4x4. I was driving a 1980 4x4 Chevy pickup and it does very well in the snow.
4 Likes
Just got an update from a relative near Nashville: lots of downed trees, including one that crashed into his brother in law’s bedroom. Took out a car for good measure.
That’s a great truck.
Update from a cousin at the ranch outside of Johnson City: 3.5+ inches of snow and sleet
1 Like
“…and the Washita Lineman’s
got clothes on the liiiiiiine!”
1 Like
A friend from Nashville sent me this picture that was posted. It nearly looks like a tornado went through.
3 Likes
Thankfully for us this was not an “ice storm”, just snow and sleet. No downed trees or limbs or lines or anything like that.
3 Likes
My friends and family go skating on the C&O canal every year it freezes enough to do so. Usually up by Potomac,MD where there is always plenty of water in the canal. We’ll shovel off the snow into a hocky rink sized area, drill a hole and stick a hose thru the ice and siphon water up to flood the rink so it’s smooth as glass. Build a fire on the ice and bring some camping chairs and you have the makings of a great day with friends.
So, in 2018, we’re out there having a great time and two guys are out for a run on the canal tow path. They stop to watch for a bit and one of them asks if we have any extra skates (which we always do). They borrow a couple and grab some sticks and proceed to spend and hour with us skating around, shooting pucks and drinking beer. It was Evgeny Kuznetsov and Dmitri Orlov from the Capitals. They said the scene we had created could have been any normal winter day in Russia and they felt like they were back home.
6 Likes
I’m unfamiliar with the activity having never been on “natural” ice, but this seems…risky.
There was one DC winter that was especially cold, I want to say 1994, somewhere in that area. There was an odd series of events, and the result was that everything got frozen over. Frozen over as in I literally ice skated down the street to the park where I skated across the park to the tennis courts where there was a lovely ice rink just waiting for me. Sadly I didn’t run into any Capitals or anything.
1 Like