On ice

I had a Blood Bowl match scheduled for 7 this morning but my opponent overslept, so I went back to bed and woke up about 10. The morning was a blur of driving to the grocery store, the coffee shop and the bakery, all in preparation for going to the Kraken Community Iceplex in the afternoon.
There are three different rinks up there at Northgate, and they’re open to the public from 3 to 5:30 on Saturdays. We got there for 3, which was the same time as everyone else, so there was a bit of a queue to get signed in and rent skates, but pretty soon we were out on the ice.

Public ice rinks are generally full of accidents waiting to happen. You’ve got utter novices like me and my wife, you’ve got experienced skaters pirouetting or going as fast as they can, and everything in between. At least everyone is going counter clockwise, but the different speeds, the random direction changes, the constant fear you might run over a small child…

To begin with, the girls clung to the edge of the rink, but soon their skating lessons from the summer, their school roller skating, and me encouraging them to let go of me and start skating, meant soon they were circling the rink without stopping.

I fell on my arse after the first lap, and then later on somebody stopped in front of me, and I got distracted and fell down hard, bruising my palm and losing the drive to stay back out on the ice.

La Serpiente was uncannily strong from the get go; Destroyer was looking slightly crazed, her legs constantly thrashing away, but she did 28 laps in the end, single-mindedly cranking out the distance.

We even sat and watched the Zamboni smooth the ice and the girls went back out again. And then home through the fog to put the kids to bed, and then work on painting Blood Bowl trophies as a change from endless VR workouts. A good day …