Last Gasp

I had arranged a lesson with Kelli, my old figures coach here in Portland, for tonight at the Sherwood club skate.  I got to the rink just in time for the club skate after my skate at Lloyd Center (it's not that far but it was  a Friday rush hour).  I had a couple quick moments to greet some old friends (yay!  I love being "home" at Sherwood!) and get my skates on.

We had a good lesson.  We worked mostly on FO8, and while Kelli addressed mostly the same issues she tends to state things differently than Lynne so the combination is helpful.  Kelli suggested I place my hands more into the circle on the push-off and to find a spot *inside* the circle to spot for to help me make a smaller circle.  We spent most of our time, though, just trying to get a better edge.  I did eventually get a pretty good edge on the RFO8, and once on the LFO8.  It was all we had time for though.  After we were done but before she left I had a chance to show-off my BO8 to Kelli -- what a good feeling that was!  She was impressed and I was really proud.  It almost made up for my FO8s :-)

I had a lot of problems with layout at Sherwood.  I thought this was kind of ironic :-).  At Chandler there are so many imperfections in the paint, etc. -- pressure cracks, lines from the pipes under the ice, etc. -- that it's easy to find a 'memorable' spot in the ice to center on.  At Sherwood, since I was staying away (as usual) from the painted lines etc. -- it was really hard.  Sherwood's ice is SO nice there really are almost no imperfections to choose for a center!  Oh well.  A nice problem to have :-).

No skating tomorrow.  Sunday morning practice ice is at 6 a.m.  Kelli is putting me on the ice for which I am very grateful!