Mall Rats

Another obscure movie reference! I skated at Lloyd Center tonight. I decided to be brave and take the MAX; but it's a little distressing. Between getting to the station, waiting for the train, the long train ride, and walking to the mall from the train, it's about an hour from my house to the rink. One hour to get there, 2 hours of skating, and another hour home... it's depressing. It made me so sad! And once again the ice was really crappy until the Z-break. It was discouraging and when I compared it with my old Wednesday night skates back in Tucson it was depressing.

I had an okay skate. I worked a lot on my 3s and those darn alternating 3s, which are actually improving a little. I also worked on crossovers, spins, Salchows and waltz jumps. No breakthroughs or anything, I'm just trying to maintain my skills at this point.

I saw Jay again that I had seen at Valley on Saturday; I also saw a few people I'd seen at Valley or the last time I was at Lloyd. So I am starting to see some familiar faces. I did introduce myself to a couple more skaters, Ella, an older woman, and Alina, who was working on her waltz jump. Alina is verrrry tall! She said she'd just gotten her waltz jump a couple of days ago. I suggested she work on breaking the pieces down to work on -- entrance, jump, landing.

While I was riding the MAX home I got very depressed about my skating. It's so much work here! In Tucson ice time was limited, sure, but I could skate at lunch time at adult session, I could skate on the weekends, there were a few evening freestyles, and if I had to I could get up really early and skate the early a.m. freestyles. Most of my skating was covered by my annual pass. I had a wonderful coach... Now everything seems like so much work. There's no night skating. I'm paying $100/month just for ice, not to mention a coach. Everything is so far away. It's depressing. I know many others have it far worse, and I'm sure it will be fine, but I needed to vent...