A Journey Of A Thousand Miles...

... begins with a single step. At least, that's how I feel. I spent an hour at the public session tonight, all I could manage since I had a choir rehearsal to go to.

Based on the suggestion from several people, I decided to wear my wrist guard (my rollerblading one). I'm surprised it didn't really occur to me yesterday. Anyway, I wore it. I'm not sure whether or not it made me feel more comfortable or not. On the other hand it's probably a reasonable precaution.

I spent my time on the ice just trying to see what I could or couldn't do; or more realistically what I felt comfortable attempting to do or not. I tried several two-foot spins, and although they were quite slow, they were pretty nicely balanced, actually; probably 3-4 revolutions. Beyond that I worked edges somewhat and did 1/2 swizzle pumps on the circle. Still no turns. I worked on stroking but it's rather tentative. The strange thing, of course, is that my form is pretty good. For example, I did some back swizzles, and had no problems whatsoever bringing my feet right together. Strange.

I think it's just going to take some time. I know it's going to take several weeks to regain full use of my hand (although for many things it's just fine), and I suspect it will take several weeks to get my skills back. I'm really looking forward to my lesson Friday though; I suspect Anna will be able to coax quite a bit out of me than I'm otherwise willing to try, and hopefully once it's out it will be mine again.

I got to see a number of skater friends while I was there tonight, and that was really nice.