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Dec. 12th, 2005 11:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kirkcudbrightI had [what counts for me as] a pretty exciting day.
a. This morning I decided to check out the outdoor ice rink at the park near work, to see if it was open (yes) and what the condition of the ice was (crappy). The ice was rutted and covered with a dusting of snow and/or scraped ice. It sucked at my blades, so I only skated for about 20 minutes before my shins started hurting from pushing through it. But it was so fabulous to have any free outdoor ice to skate on, and I had the whole place to myself. Last winter, I generally had to share the outdoor rink with mothers-and-toddlers, who (understandably) tend to see my attempts at jumps and spins as decapitation risks.
ii. I taught aikido class tonight, for only the second time ever. The first time was about a year and half ago, when everyone else was at aikido summer camp, and I ended up teaching two people the second bokken kata. Anyway, today I had two black belts, one intermediate belt, and three white belts. I took advantage of the opportunity to teach a couple of really fun wacked-out techniques that we never seem to teach, like what to do if someone puts an arm around you. That's an attack that doesn't even have a name in aikido (we call it colloquially the "creepy uncle"), even though it's far more likely in real life than (say) getting punched in the stomach. It wasn't a self-defense class per se, but more of a street aikido class than we usually get. Anyway, I had a lot of fun with it, and people seemed to enjoy it (even the black belts).
a. This morning I decided to check out the outdoor ice rink at the park near work, to see if it was open (yes) and what the condition of the ice was (crappy). The ice was rutted and covered with a dusting of snow and/or scraped ice. It sucked at my blades, so I only skated for about 20 minutes before my shins started hurting from pushing through it. But it was so fabulous to have any free outdoor ice to skate on, and I had the whole place to myself. Last winter, I generally had to share the outdoor rink with mothers-and-toddlers, who (understandably) tend to see my attempts at jumps and spins as decapitation risks.
ii. I taught aikido class tonight, for only the second time ever. The first time was about a year and half ago, when everyone else was at aikido summer camp, and I ended up teaching two people the second bokken kata. Anyway, today I had two black belts, one intermediate belt, and three white belts. I took advantage of the opportunity to teach a couple of really fun wacked-out techniques that we never seem to teach, like what to do if someone puts an arm around you. That's an attack that doesn't even have a name in aikido (we call it colloquially the "creepy uncle"), even though it's far more likely in real life than (say) getting punched in the stomach. It wasn't a self-defense class per se, but more of a street aikido class than we usually get. Anyway, I had a lot of fun with it, and people seemed to enjoy it (even the black belts).
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Date: 2005-12-13 05:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-15 03:24 am (UTC)I've been thinking about giving it a shot after work tomorrow, given that it's been damn cold for a while now and tomorrow night will have a full moon. I'm really not sure the overall lake temperature will have been able to cool off enough for a good layer of ice, though. Time will tell. (I'm not so motivated that I've actually gone and checked or anything. I usually poke Hobbit for pond status, alas.)
Also, if you've worked out something vaguely legit for MIT athletic facilities access, joining this lot (http://web.mit.edu/skatingclub/www/schedule.htm) is great for uncrowded ice time. The weekday hours are probably useless, but the price is low.