Silly short sightedness
Sep. 1st, 2008 12:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alitalfOn Friday I took my youngest niece (On Hibernia's side) to the ice skating rink. She wanted me to take her because I can skate - though I haven't practised much for almost 40 yerars, I can still make a sensible attempt.
If I had not known what skating *should* be like, I would have concluded that I had no chance to learn it, when I first tried. Ths hire skates were so bad that the blades almost completely failed to grip the ice. My niece had a similar problem, so we requested something better. Here replacement skates were not very good, but probably as good as she was going to get. Somehow, they managed to find a worse set of skates for me, so I returned again and asked if it was possible to pay extra for higher quality. The man at the hire counter looked wry and gave me a set that he had sharpened less than a week ago. I could skate well enough to start re-learning the skills, using those. They didn't slide sideways unless I actually wanted them to do so (on ice, a quick way to stop is to turn the skates sideways and, obviously, lean and balance in order to stop under control rather than stopping suddenly and falling over).
I had offered her a lesson with an instructor, after which she would probably leave me behind - but only if it is possible to guarantee getting skates good enough to make that worthwhile.
The skating rink probably does not make much money from public skating sessions, because anyone who tries it once will conclude, probably erroneously because of the rotten quality of the hire equipment, that they have no chance of learning to skate. There can't be many repeat customers from among those who give it a first try.
I am typing this while Ubuntu installs itself on the partition reserved for it on the mended computer. Yes, I will probably need to run Windows for a lot of the time, but having the ability to boot to Linux could be handy.
If I had not known what skating *should* be like, I would have concluded that I had no chance to learn it, when I first tried. Ths hire skates were so bad that the blades almost completely failed to grip the ice. My niece had a similar problem, so we requested something better. Here replacement skates were not very good, but probably as good as she was going to get. Somehow, they managed to find a worse set of skates for me, so I returned again and asked if it was possible to pay extra for higher quality. The man at the hire counter looked wry and gave me a set that he had sharpened less than a week ago. I could skate well enough to start re-learning the skills, using those. They didn't slide sideways unless I actually wanted them to do so (on ice, a quick way to stop is to turn the skates sideways and, obviously, lean and balance in order to stop under control rather than stopping suddenly and falling over).
I had offered her a lesson with an instructor, after which she would probably leave me behind - but only if it is possible to guarantee getting skates good enough to make that worthwhile.
The skating rink probably does not make much money from public skating sessions, because anyone who tries it once will conclude, probably erroneously because of the rotten quality of the hire equipment, that they have no chance of learning to skate. There can't be many repeat customers from among those who give it a first try.
I am typing this while Ubuntu installs itself on the partition reserved for it on the mended computer. Yes, I will probably need to run Windows for a lot of the time, but having the ability to boot to Linux could be handy.
