Bucket List – Go Ice Skating!

I’m Canadian. It goes without saying that people assume that we glide out of the womb on ice skates. Girls doing a fancy little twirl and boys ready for a fight, right?  Well, I guess that’s sort of true. Starting at a very young age, we are put on ice skates and are taught to stand on our own two feet.

If you are me, it doesn’t matter if you fall anyway because your mother has so many layers of protection on you that you wouldn’t feel it anyway!

We would go skating as children with our parents, at any local arena or pond.  We’d go skating with our classes in the winter and as teenagers we would go for fun with our friends.  We didn’t have to be good at it, lord knows I never was, but we did it… because IT IS WHAT CANADIANS DO!

After leaving Cape Breton, my skating days were pretty much over.  Partly because I was busy working and socializing in other ways, but also because my weight had already started to get in the way.  By the time I was here in the Netherlands? Forget it, it just wasn’t going to happen.  All I could think of was THE BIGGER THEY ARE, THE HARDER THEY FALL!! 

I missed skating, I always found it quite a free feeling when you get in a good groove on the ice. Especially times when you manage to stay on your feet, ya know?  I was just too out of shape, too insecure and too a whole bunch of shit to bother going.

It has been on my 101 List for quite some time now and this year I decided it was time. After losing the weight, if I wasn’t going to do it then, I never would.

SO I DID!

We met up with our good friends Renee and Ron, had a quick bite to eat and then headed off to the Silverdome in Zoetermeer.  It’s such a cool place and the layout is not like anyplace I’ve been skating before. The ice rink is on the bottom floor, and up behind the seating is an oval 250 meter track for skating around. I loved it!

We couldn’t believe how much we felt it in such a short period of time.  I don’t remember skating feeling so… exercisey!  Although, when I was a kid a lot of things didn’t feel that way!  At one point, Renee (a runner) stopped and was like “It’s only been SIXTEEN MINUTES?!”, I felt a little better then because both she and our husbands also found it more tiring than they expected!  Surprisingly, we weren’t at all sore the next day. I was really expecting that I would be.

In the end we skated for over an hour or so and then we were done. We were all pretty pooped by that time but we had had a LOT of fun.  So much that we are planning to do it again early in February!

We even managed to get a little video of Renee and I skating by. I think we look pretty freakin’ sweet on skates, if I do say so myself!

[youtube id=”5zvnoCf5QBs” width=”600″ height=”350″]

It was such a fun evening, can’t wait to do it again.  Getting out with fun friends and getting exercise too?  Bonus!