Gliding on Ice

At Strömbackaskolan, sports class consists of many different sports I had never even heard of until arriving in Sweden. This includes innebandy, handball (trust me, this is not the handball you play in primary school in Australia) and all new versions of dodge ball that I won't even begin trying to explain...possibly because I'm still unsure myself. However, today I did recognise the name of the sport -finally - and so now I will tell you all about my experience with ice skating out on a frozen lake. 

In Brisbane, the only oppurtunity for ice skating would be at an indoor rink, for obvious reasons. The ice was always perfectly smoothed out by machines, shaped as an oval for customers to skate around in a clockwise direction unless told otherwise. In Australia, this is pretty cool stuff since our weather cannot provide us a natural version. However, now that I've tried the real thing, it's going to be hard to return to the manufactured version. I actually really enjoyed having the natural cracks and bumps on the icy surface as it was both intriguing to see and also made the skate that little bit more exciting as you have to focus on what's coming up ahead or else you might find yourself sliding straight through a crack and lying on the cold hard ground. Ouch. Watching the floor beneath you is definitely good for keeping on your feet, and is also really interesting because you can see all the layers of ice beneath you with all sorts of different patterns.

The ice skates that we used for sports class were quite different from anything I have tried before. These ones had much longer blades which were clipped into the boot just before you are about to skate. Unfortunately for me, one of my blade's binds were broken. Even worse, I noticed once I was on the opposite side of the lake from where I started. So just as I was starting to get the hang of this skating rhythm, I see my blade fly off my shoe, leaving me with one skate to balance on. With a bit of momentum up, my attempt to stop turned into a dramatic slide to the ground with my loose blade continuing on its way for another 10 metres or so. You can imagine the awkward partial skating with my right foot and walking with my left foot as I went to collect the blade. Luckily Julia stuck by me throughout the whole lesson so I always had someone by me to help out. 

I loved being out in the open air for the skating, with so much space to move around, rather than following a singular route round and round a rink in a building closed off from the rest of the world. The path around the lake was aproximately a 3km trip, and the time really flies by out on the ice! One thing you really have to tackle out there though is the wind. Sometimes it was your best friend, pushing you to your destination, while other times it decided to be your worst enemy and make it nearly impossible to move forward. At least we also had poles with us which we could use to help push us forward. 

To sum up the lesson, I had a total of three falls (thanks to the broken binding on my blade), learnt that stopping isn't very easy, and neither is fighting against the wind. I loved it anyway.