January Catch-Up: Outings 1, 2, 3 and 4

 So, I have to say, my blog-writing for this project is not off to a spectacular start.  I've been a little disappointed in myself, because my adventures so far, have similarly been rather unambitious.  I think it's a combination of things: COVID means I am doing stuff by myself or generally with one other person; my work schedule has been in the way of my January break a lot; and, when push comes to shove I have to admit that I am not in great shape, which is significantly different than in the year of 52.  Must work on converting all these issues from excuses to challenges.

But the good news is that the challenge has gotten me out the door and to some places I would never have gone otherwise, which was exactly the point, so in that sense it's good.  And since I've done a terrible job writing about what I've done so far, I'm going to consolidate it all in one post right here.  So here goes:

1. Back to back hikes for the New Year.  On December 31 my friend Amanda and I finished out all the "Terribles" of 2020 with a micro-spikes-are-non-negotiable hike up to Butler Lodge on Mount Mansfield. There was a fairly impressive (if you're not trying to hike it) length of steep ice in the top one-third, but it was also beautiful and a great way to ring out the old. 

Then on January 1, 2021, Jon and I did a second hike, this time on a trail I've never visited, to Duxbury Window.  This is a small section of Vermont's famed Long Trail, and hiking it felt like a lovely way to welcome a new year and, hopefully, many great changes in store.

2, Cross Country Skiing at Rikert Nordic Center.  A big goal of this year is for me to try out new places I haven't been, and this one fit the bill.  Rikert Nordic Center sits on the Middlebury College's Breadloaf Campus in Ripton, Vermont, an area I have explored very little.  So, if was great to ski on it in the first week of the New Year.  The afternoon reminded me that I am not a great cross country skier, in part, because I hate going downhill and need to get over that.  Maybe this winter will be the time.

3. Afternoon Break Ski at the Burlington Country Club.  So, another hope for this year's round of outdoor challenges is to try to also do things that are easily folded into a workday (that is, to get in the habit of getting outside before, after or even during days I have to work).  Luckily, my friend Kate wanted to help me out with that goal and suggested trying for some lunchtime skiing at the Burlington Country Club Golf Course, which is open for winter recreation and literally out her back door (and has the added bonus of being free).  It was a great way to catch up, get some exercise and be outside.  We agreed we need to do it more often.

4. Visit the Donahue Sea Cave.  This one has been on my bucket list for forever.  I'd heard about the cave, and that you can pretty much only visit it in the winter when the water that surrounds it is frozen, so today was the day I finally did.  I'd highly recommend this one to anyone for a fun little winter pick me up.  The trail is across the road (North Avenue) from the Burlington High School and it's probably less than a quarter mile to the Cave.  There were people skating as well, and though I brought my recreational skates, I decided to save the skating for another day (skating on as many outdoor ice surfaces as possible this winter is another aspiration) because it was so cold I didn't want to have take my hands out of my gloves to lace up my skates.  So, that part another time. 

 

So, not off to a splashy start, but at the same time, the plan is doing what it should - getting me outdoors, trying some new (and old) places with friends and solo, and hopefully I'll only pick up steam as I go,  Onward and upward in 2021.

Outside in Vermont: 52 Outdoor Escapades in 2021

 Maybe the only thing that the entire country agrees upon is that 2020 has been a spectacularly terrible year. The last time I had a truly outstandingly bad year I set up this blog and spent the following year (2010) hitting the reset button with a project I called "52 New Things".  All signs appear to be pointing for another reset year.  That time I set out to do 52 New Things --- one for each week of the year -- encompassing all kinds of categories - new activities (like ice climbing), new places (like Nepal), old things new ways (like hiking Camel's Hump, the most famous Vermont peak, in all four seasons) and bucket list items (like skating in Rockefeller Center).

The plan for 2021 should, I think, be simpler for two reasons.  One is that over ten years later I'm older and my goals are less ambitious.  I am more cognizant now that travel comes at an environmental price, and I am more appreciative of the incredible outdoor opportunities that exist right in my adopted state of Vermont.  The other is COVID.  It may be that a vaccine will lift us all into some form of normality during the coming year, but right now, the safest outlet for recreation here is to be outside, on our own or with our household or with a small number of other masked, socially distant people.  So, those are the parameters I want to embrace for 2021.  My plan is to make sure to visit an outdoor destination in my state and walk, hike, ski, skate, swim, canoe, climb, gaze, learn and appreciate my way through 2021.

One of the most fun things about my 2010 year of new things was that I had two friends, Siham and Leah, who created their own lists with significant crossover for us to embark on adventures together.  And many other friends joined in for one or multiple new thing adventures.  So, if there is an outside destination in Vermont that you've been meaning to get to, how about making 2021 the year?  Here's the working list that I've got going right now, roughly divided by the season I think they are likely going to go in.. Let's make a plan!

WINTER

• Winter hiking (microspike and snowshoe) to classic locations like Camel's Hump and Mount Hunger, and hopefully some new destinations I've wanted to see like Duxbury Window and Skylight Pond.
• Nordic skating on Lake Champlain and/or Lake Morey
• Skating on outdoor rinks and ponds
• Cross country skiing - hoping to try out Craftsbury this year
• Ice climbing - in the "stretch" category, Eben put out the idea of a multipitch...
• Skiing at Bolton with Paul
• Going sledding and/or tubing
• Moonlight winter hike/snowshoe/ski and/or skate
• Another very stretchy maybe - outdoor winter camping
• Snow structures - a snow man, snow fort or snow sculpture
• (If Lake Champlain freezes) - a trek on the ice from Vermont to New York
• Attend a winter bonfire

SPRING (aka Mud Season)

• Visit a maple syrup farm during sugaring season
• Salamander night-time crossing
• Explore some local natural areas that I don't know well including Rock Point Trails and Hubbard Park
• Hike Mount Ascutney, one of the peaks still available to Vermont hikers during mud season
• Visit some historical landmarks I've always meant to check out including the Calvin Coolidge Historic Site and Joseph Smith's birthplace.
• Spend a day visiting covered bridges
• Volunteer picking up litter on earth day and/or on a Green Mountain Club or Crag VT workday
• Plant a garden

SUMMER/FALL

• Hiking, with an emphasis on some new hiking adventures including new places (Quehee Gorge, Mount Equinox, Hogback Mountain, Mount Pisgah, Skyline Trail)
• Section hike a part of the Long Trail
• Go paddling (thanks for the offer, Hannah)
• Stand up paddle boarding
• Bird watching
• Go berry picking
• Go foraging with someone who knows what they are doing
• Biking adventures
• Go snorkeling in a Vermont pond or lake
• Camp in a Vermont State campground
• Cook dinner over a campfire
• Go sailing
• Climb a tree
• Go trail running
• Attend an outside farm dinner

I like to try to do a hike on New Year's Day, so that is likely going to be my first outing of 2021.  With any luck, I'll also get in an outdoor skate early in the New Year.  I've included a picture from skating on Shelburne Pond from almost exactly a year ago for inspiration.  Here's to lots of great outdoor fun in 2021!

 

 

 

July Milestone: First-Ever Skating Competition

Last weekend I had one of those experiences that simultaneously illustrated how far I’ve come and how much further I need to go when I participated in my first-ever competition. I was in the lowest event for adults - Adult Pre Bronze.  This meant I was competing against other adults who can do the most simple single jumps (waltz, salchow, toe loop, and possibly loop and flip) and simple spins. I would say that my greatest bit of improvement this summer has been to get over my fear of jumping. Obviously, my jumps are pretty small anyway, but fear of falling has been holding me back and causing me to hold back to the point of stopping at the entrance of jumps.  About a month ago I realized that I was thinking about improving my jumps rather than avoiding them — a big deal for me.
Watching the video below I see about a million things that I obviously need to improve.  I’d say speed, extension and looking up at the top of the list.  Even so, a year ago I was having trouble doing any of the jumps in this program even from a stand-still, let alone from a skating entrance.  The other great thing was discovering that I actually enjoyed skating the program and have lots of things I’d love to add as I improve. So, here it is, my first program skated in a competition.  Onward!

End of May Check-In

I think one way I am going to try to keep myself disciplined about both skating and blogging is to make a new rule that I have to write at least two posts a month — one forward-looking into my goals and hopes for the coming month and one retrospective at the end of the month to see how I did.  Since it’s the end of the month, I’m switching things up and starting this exercise with a retrospective for the end of the month.  I like lists, so I think that is the way I will organize things at least for this one.
1.  High and low: for this month, they came within ten minutes of each other.  I passed my Fiesta Tango ice dance test about 5 minutes after I failed my Swing Dance ice dance test.

2.  Where I put my energy this month: this is a frustrating month for skaters in my skating circle, because our go-to risk closed down at the beginning of May and won’t reopen till mid-June.  There are other area rinks but they don’t have ice time that is as plentiful or as convenient.  So, I’ve also tried to use the month to start to get back on track with a little bit of running (three times a week at a painfully slow pace) and hiking (once a week for the last couple of weeks).

In terms of skating, for ice dance, there is obviously the Swing Dance to still conquer and particularly my back edges (swing rolls and chasses) to be improved. My coach Russ is letting me dip my toes on the next two dances, the Willow Waltz (which I think looks so pretty) and Ten Fox (which will require the learning of a new turn - the outside Mohawk).

For free skating and moves in the field, moves have pretty much been sidelined for the sake of free skating.  My first program, which performed for the very first time in March, has been upgraded by my coach Melody (more about that in my early June blog post), so that it now has two single jumps (waltz jump and salchow) and two single combinations (waltz jump-toe loop and salchow-toe loop) as well as three “hops” (my term) — mazurka, ballet jump and falling leaf. Getting it all in requires more speed, which is very tricky for me.

3.  Improvements and continuing frustrations: on the frustration category one word: spins!  I have SUCH a hard time with them. Although my jumps might only feel better to me, they are starting to come together better.  I think a huge key for me is learning to actually bend my skating knee in the approach to a jump, rather than scratching to an abrupt halt.  Tons of work to do, but progress. In ice dance, I think turns are starting to improve — Inside Mohawks are going pretty well, outside three turns getting a little less sluggish  and outside mohawks, which I had been terrified to even try, seem within reach if I keep practicing.

Since the goal of this post is just to set a marker for where I am at the end of May, I think this is a good stopping point.  The next will cover what’s coming up, and what i hope to work on (and improve) for the month of June.

Win Some. Lose Some, Keep Going

Something I learned in graduate school is that the most interesting people I’ve encountered in life are usually not the ones who race efficiently from Point A to Point B with no stops or detours.  So, I will try to think of today as an opportunity to become a more interesting skater, since today was my first Official Testing Fail.  One of my big goals for this year was to pass all my Pre-Bronze ice dance tests.  I had already done the first (easiest) one, the Cha Cha in fall 2017.  Today was the big day when I would test the other two — the Swing Dance and the Fiesta Tango.  The good news is that I passed the Fiesta Tango; the bad news is that the Swing Dance and I have some more ground to cover together.

It’s a little ironic because the dance that I passed is the one that intimidated me more.  It has a quick Mohawk turn going into the end pattern that I’ve been working on for months, among other tricky elements.  Today, though, the thing that got me more than anything else was nerves, and it really showed in my first dance, when I didn’t keep time well with my partner (my ever-patient coach Russ), and generally skated the whole pattern in a way that the judges accurately referred to as “sluggish”. 

There’s a Buddhist bit of wisdom that can be reasonably paraphrased to the effect that life’s lessons keep showing up till we learn them.  So for today,  I’ll post the video of the one that came together for me here: 

And here’s the one that will help me become a better person (and better skater) as I work on the lessons of gratitude for challenges — along with better timing and backward swing rolls:

Not what I’d hoped to be recording today, but my goal for this blog is to record it all — the good and the bad, in the hopes of capturing what it’s like to try to improve on a skill taken up later in life. Hopefully this post will help me remember that what doesn’t feel good at the time might make me improve in the long run.

One Down, Two to Go

I've been pretty bad about writing, but a good thing about blogging is that it's always there, waiting to be picked up again.  Back on New Year's Day I set up three goals for the year, and I am excited to say that I've hit the first one.  So, it seems like a great opportunity to record what happened with that first goal, and update on the other two as well.

These were my three big goals for 2018 (in black), and some update on what has happened (in blue):

1. Pass my next two ice dances: Swing Dance and Fiesta Tango, and make some progress on a third, the Willow Waltz.  Been working on the Swing Dance and Fiesta Tango, and am scheduled to take my test for both on May 5. These are the first two ice dances I'm learning that have forward to backward turns in them, and backwards skating elements, so there are lots  of tricky parts to practice over the next three weeks.  

1. Perform my first-ever solo routine.  I’ll be using the song Moon Shadow by Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens), and it will be a very modest little number.  But it does have three jumps  - a waltz jump, a salchow and toe loop, as well as a one-footed spin, so if I can pull it off, I’ll be thrilled.  DONE!  I skated the Campion Rink Mini-Show on March 31. The vido is below.  It was a very simple little one and a half minute program, but it included some jumps (still more like hops, but it's progress) and my biggest nemesis to date, a one-foot spin. And to my surprise, I really enjoyed doing it.  My hope is to keep working on it to skate it better, and possibly add some more complex elements as I learn them.

1. Become competent at the three easiest elements of the Adult Silver Moves in the Field Test and  start working on the final three hardest elements.  The easier elements are: Consecutive Outside and Inside Forward Spiral Patterns; Forward and Backward Power Pulls; and Forward and Backward Cross Strokes.  The harder ones are Forward Outside - Backward Inside three turns; Forward Inside to Backward Outside three turns; and the 8 Step Mohawk.  This last goal is super-intimidating for me, which is precisely why I’ve broken it in half mentally to start by focusing on the easier part.  We’ll see how I do. Between getting ready for my solo and my ice dances, this one has pretty much been jettisoned.  My coach, Melody, has also been very busy with both her own skating preparation, and that of her other adult student, Leslie.  They both just competed at Adult Nationals and did really well. Leslie earned a Bronze medal in her division and Melody won Gold in hers!  Once I'm done with the dance tests, though, I'll be back to working on these in earnest.

Here are Leslie, our coach Melody and me at the Campion Show after the show was over.

In the weeks to come I am going to try, once again, to get more regular on posting, and since there are so many things I need to work on there's plenty of material to write about.  That's it for now, except to say that I am always excited to go skating with others, so whether it is something you want to try for the first time, or you haven't done in a while, or you do way better than I do, let me know if you want to go, please.  Onward!

All Ice, All Weekend (but no Figure Skating)

I’ve always enjoyed writing, but for the last couple of years, I’ve gotten out of practice.  That’s had all kinds of ramifications, from failure to keep up with blogging to remarkably sluggish turnout of academic papers.  One of the culprits might be my current love of figure skating, because I tend to do that four to five mornings a week, which makes me extremely happy, but as a morning person, this used to be the most productive time of day for me work-wise.  In an effort to become more flexible (I used to not even be able to touch my toes), I’ve also started do a lot more yoga, also in the morning.  What to do?  I came up with an idea, and we’ll see if it works.  I’m using the season of Lent as a way of re-establishing my writing habit.  Since I don’t want to lose my yoga practice, my Lenten resolution is two-fold: every day for the forty days of Lent, I need to do at least 30 minutes of yoga and fifteen minutes of writing.  I did make a special contingency that if I HAVE to miss a day of either or both, I have to “make it up” the next day.  So far, I’ve already had to make up one writing day, but it still definitely is getting me in the mode of thinking each day about writing, and how to fit it in my day.  And so today’s goal was to get back in the swing of blogging, and here I am, typing away.

The next post after this one will be looking at what I’ve done figure skating-wise, since the New Year  began, but for today’s post I thought it would be fun to record the ice events of the weekend which, for a change, had nothing to do with figure skating.  On Saturday, I participated in SMC’s annual women’s only ice climbing day, and Sunday I finally checked off a long-running bucket list goal of participating in the town of North Hero’s Great Ice weekend with the event I’d always wanted to do — skating from the shore across the frozen ice of Lake Champlain to Knight Island.

My friend Paul likes to tell his first year students “Don’t Anticipate, Participate.”  I should have taken his advice this weekend, rather than pre-loading both events with expectations.  I had walked into the women’s ice trip with some trepidation: my friend and fellow student instructor Sophie, who was scheduled to be one of the leaders of the trip had to back out with a broken wrist, and friend and colleague Rai didn’t make it to the sign in on time and had to back out.  Three senior students and friends I had lobbied hard to sign up were going, and I wasn’t feeling particularly competent about the whole thing.  As it turned out, it was a phenomenal day.  The weather was great, the participants — Summer, Victoria and Tova, together with their roommate Roxy and fellow senior Amelia, had such great energy the whole day was a blast.  Best of all, lead instructor Andrea and student instructors Lindsey and Becca were outstanding.

What a great instructor team looks like: Lindsey, Becca and Lead Instructor Andrea

With their support, I climbed the hardest (as in most vertical route) I’ve ever done, and climbed a simpler one with just one ice axe to have the opportunity to work on footing.

Starting at the bottom of the most vertical climb I've ever done.

Andrea caught this shot of a much more tired version of me almost at the top.

Buoyed by my unexpectedly shiny, happy climbing day, I sauntered into Great Ice waaay on the overconfident side.  After all, I skate many more days than I don’t; what could possibly go wrong?  Michelle was as eager to put on some Nordic skates and tackle the rough ice as I was, and Jon was ready to give the recreation pair of regular skates he’d bought last year a go.  But getting on the ice at the shore, it was hard not to notice that, not only was the ice really rough, it had at least a half inch of snow on it all the way across the lake. Jon was the first to decide that skates were not going to work and switched to microspikes over his shoes.  Five minutes in, Michelle followed suit.  Undaunted I was convinced that through sheer force of will I would get the hang of the Nordic skates and stop nearly falling over the toes every time the front of the blade would hit a particularly big bump.  After I got home I looked it up and discovered the crossing was two miles long; it definitely felt like more as I reaped the karmic reward for every time in the last year I glared at a kid on a milk  crate at the rink for nearly running into me. Today, I was that kid again, slowly creeping along on my  Nordic skates while Jon and Michelle tactfully slowed their march to the Island lest I take a nosedive and need them to backtrack and save me.

A victory moment on finally reaching the shore of Knight Island.

With my patient and wiser fellow trekkers, Jon and Michelle before we began the trek back.

When we reached the island I declared victory, drank my hot chocolate that was there to reward all those who made the trek, and having learned my lesson, donned my microspikes for the much-quicker shoreline march.

Although the weekend’s ice activities were different than those I usually blog about, the lessons were painfully familiar: better to put more energy into action and less into expectations (good or bad); good teachers can make or break and experience; and everything is more memorable when you do it with great people.