"Ice skating"

I consider myself a proud St. Louisan. I’ll be the first to admit, St. Louis is no New York City…but I think STL has a lot to offer, and despite some pretty hard hits to our local economy we continue to hold our own.


We have some great restaurants. A decent number of free music events. The St. Louis Cardinals. Lots of quality people. AND…one of the largest parks in the nation. Did you know Forest Park is 500+ acres larger than Central Park?
Forest Park Fun Facts

Speaking of Forest Park, in all my 30 years I’ve never ice skated at the Forest Park ice rink. That’s not saying too much considering my ice skating experiences are few and far between…and as far as I can remember…all indoor. Early December, I learned some good family friends, John and Angie, (aka Santa and Snowflake the Elf) had a skating “gig” at Stineburg Ice Rink on Dec. 12th. One of my favorite things about this list is I generally don’t have any plans for how (or with whom) I’ll do various activities. If an opportunity randomly comes up to carry out an item I’ll usually do it…especially if it involves spending time with people I don’t see on a regular basis. All that to say, it seemed all the stars were aligned and it made good sense for me to lace up my skates and hop on the ice for a few loops with Santa and Snowflake.

I won’t subject you to the story of my horrible experience at Wherenberg Theater the night before…but know this: I left Wherenberg super annoyed and $21 poorer. My ice skating experience was similar…pretty much to the penny. It is January 2nd as I type this blog entry and I’m officially re-annoyed.… but I digress…

Because of some other things happening in the afternoon, I knew Megan and I had a very narrow window of time to skate…i.e. 30ish minutes. By the time we purchased our ice time, picked up our skates, laced up our abnormally long laces, talked with Santa and Snowflake…nearly 30 minutes had passed before we actually got on this ice. After my first five steps (maybe 10 steps) …and just before I was about to move into my Triple Salchow (ok…that was just a test to see if you were still reading) the zambonie comes out to clean the ice (a 20+ minute process). Ever heard the phrase, “piss-poor timing”? Yeah…well…that’s what this was. Seriously? Didn’t Steinburg rink know that I had a hair appointment at 2:30?!?

Though I technically skated at Forest Park (all 10 steps) it really wasn’t quite what I had in mind. I tried getting my rink time money back from the kid behind the register…but I guess this whole “we’re in a recession” thing is making places tighten up their purse strings. So…much like my Wherenberg experience…I left annoyed and $21 poorer. Bah humbug. For the record, it doesn’t cost $21/person to skate, I was treating Megan since she was nice enough to join me on this endeavor.

Because I like to think of myself as a “glass half full” kind of gal…maybe the piss-poor timing of it all made the whole experience all the more memorable. Though we didn’t even make it a quarter of the way around the rink, I don’t regret why we chose to skate that day. I’m glad Megan and I got in some sister bonding and we were able to support some good friends. That’s worth $22. And, maybe it’s a good reminder that I shouldn’t try to cram so much into one day.

If you (whoever you might be) are in need of an ice skating buddy, particularly at the Forest Park Ice rink, let me know...I feel like I should go again.