I ain’t no Eric Heiden, but…

My week long trip to Kaiserslautern, Germany has not been without its challenges, not the least of which is that my rental car’s window washer fluid mechanism doesn’t work. That is actually a pretty big challenge when you are driving over the Alps in the snow, or at night on foreign roads in the snow, or pretty much anywhere in this kind of weather.

But...but….one entire wall of my hotel room is a big window and glass door that looks out over a beautiful lake adjacent to the hotel. And when I arrived here, I could see people go out on that lake to walk around on the frozen ice, or ice skate, or attempt to ride their bikes. Also, there so happens to be a full moon this week, which is big and bright and beautiful, at least when it’s not snowing. So I ask you: was I going to stay in this hotel all week long watching these other people enjoy this beautiful frozen lake and not be out there myself?

Oh please, that dog just ain’t gonna hunt!

Of course I was going to go ice skating!...even if it meant driving all over God’s creation trying to find a pair of ice skates, even if it meant buying a new pair of ice skates when I have a perfectly good pair back home (or at least in some storage container somewhere), even if it meant embarrassing myself because it’s been so long since I’ve gone ice skating, and even if it meant going ice skating when it’s like 1F outside with a blowing, driving snow. I have been out ice skating every night since, taking big long loops around the perimeter of this lake, skating a little harder and faster with gaining confidence. And if anyone is wondering, yes, my legs and back have been so sore the following mornings I could barely walk. But it’s all good.

I mean, come on, anyone who knows me saw that coming a mile away, right? It’s like when we took our dog, Enzo, to the park and he would see a puddle of water off in the distance – you can predict the next half dozen series of events as sure the sun will come up tomorrow.

The funny thing about my time ice skating though is that I cannot seem to go ice skating without being constantly reminded of the days going ice skating as kids - specifically, going ice skating as a family, and more specifically witnessing the EPIC falls my Dad used to take on the ice. I might have to admit that part of the excitement of ice skating as a kid was the knowledge and expectation that as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow, my Dad was going to take a fall that would put the old “Agony of Defeat” video to shame. Rarely in any other time of my life have I seen bruising on the scale of size and color as the bruises my Dad would get from ice skating. And so if life has a tendency to repeat itself, I feel like I have gotten away with something if I can make it off the ice without repeating the carnage and subsequent cursing that my Dad used to wage on the frozen rivers and creeks of my youth.

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