Skatin' At The Mall

Tonight I went to the public session at the Lloyd Center Ice Rink, a rink at the Lloyd Center Mall in Portland. The session was 7:30 to 9:30 but I didn't get there until about 8 due to horrible traffic. I stayed until 9:30, so probably 75 minutes of skating after the Z-break. Lloyd Center is pretty cheap, only $5 for the public session.

In one of those "Duh!" moment, I totally overdressed for the occasion since I wasn't thinking about the fact that mall rinks are warm! So I didn't wear my jacket and was a little warm anyway.

For the first half hour or so the ice was pretty bad and it was fairly crowded. There were a fair number of adult skaters, which surprised me until I saw a posting that said that the adult classes were Monday nights so that explained it. I talked with a couple of them. There were also a couple of coaches giving lessons as well.

After the Z-break they had an "exhibition" skate, one of the young figure skaters got to do part of her program. She was pretty low level, the highest jump was a half-flip I think. Still it was kind of nice.

I worked a fair number of things. My waltz jump is getting much more comfortable, but I've noticed a couple of times I'm almost falling backward on the landing -- my foot is getting too far out from me. Need to jump up not out! as Anna would say. Worked the Salchow a bit, it's very cheated but at least I'm consistent. I got to work my stroking a bit in the second hour since it cleared out nicely; it felt good. Tried to work on Russian stroking but still too crowded for most Moves.

The summary: it's about 10 miles from my house, which is annoying. On the other hand, it's the only rink around that has evening skating as far as I can see; so it's probably in my future from time to time. And it's cheap. After the Z-break the ice was passable -- before that it was rather scary. The people seemed pretty nice.