Perspective

I went to coffee club today. I worked on swing rolls a bit, and Mohawks and 3-turns a bit, but only got about half an hour of skating in because...

About 12:38, a skater named Christine had a horrible fall. I just saw the last part of it, where she basically fell straight back and whacked her head. It was just awful. She briefly lost consciousness and couldn't breathe, but came back. Then the bleeding started, and there was a horrible amount of blood on the ice. Someone (Lisa, I think) quickly called the paramedics, while other folks put stuff on her to keep her warm. Fortunately one of the skaters is a retired doctor, so he was a godsend; and my buddy Nicole sat with her and talked with her, etc.; she was terrific. Finally the paramedics came and carted her off to the ER. I guess we'll find out later how bad it is, but I'd guess a nasty scrape and a concussion at a minimum. Please send a prayer her way!

Needless to say no one was particularly in a mood to skate after that... so we pretty much all left. As we were leaving I asked Anna if I could speak with her and I told her how bothered I was about our conversation yesterday re: waltz jumps and not pushing me. She explained that it wasn't that she didn't have confidence in me, it's just that jumping is an entirely different thing from everything else we have done so far and she wants me to feel very comfortable about it; she'd rather go slowly than push me too hard and then have me need to back off. She said on the other stuff (spins, etc.) she knows where I'm at and has a better idea of how hard she can push me, and she doesn't know that yet for jumping. After our discussion I felt a lot better. I'm really glad I got to talk to her about it, otherwise I'd probably have stewed over it all weekend and been miserable. She said she really wants me to work the walkthroughs, so that's what I'll do.