I’m supposed to write about my skating week-or a typical week in skating. It’s 19th of Dec and people are buying presents for Xmas for each other. Lucky for Skatefresh, one loved up couple, my friends Cindy and Ian bought themselves a package of skating lessons for Xmas (Skatefresh’s special offer of buy 4 lessons get one free). Not only the latest Nintendo games or I-pod make people happy. Keeping fit in life is very popular too. Good thing is that skating is funky too-as I have to admit to myself, that`s one of the reasons why I keep on skating.

Since I passed my ICP (Inline Certification Programme) exams to become an inline skating instructor, I learned how to brake after 14 years on skates (also 13 years after becoming an active skier, and as it helps your balance, I’m now an even more confident skier. So I’m looking forward to teaching Cindy and Ian how to keep safe and be confident on skates. After 5 lessons they should end up on the Sunday stroll, a street skate with several hundred skaters in London. It is a good, fun and healthy thing to do on Sunday afternoon.

Is very rewarding for a skating instructor to see students progressing quickly! Skatefresh’s “learn how to streetskate in 5 weeks” course is designed exactly for that. From a shakey skater creature you will become a confident, gliding (maybe elegant) person on rollerblades who’ll know how to stop and turn even on fairly steep hills. So I hope my friends will be successfully streetskating by the end of February. I`m going on month long holiday-starting 22nd Dec (Yipee). Will hopefully be able to ski in Slovakia-hoping for some snowfall at home. White x-mas. That would be nice.

Saturday 16th Dec, was in every skaters diary highlited as a speciall event, the Santa skate. Starting from Hyde park corner at 5pm last Saturday. I got ready by cleaning my bearings beforehand so I can enjoy it more-don’t have to do so much hard work pushing the stride-it was worth it. Asha-our manager bought all skatefresh instructors tickets as a thank you for nice team work in 2006. Thank you Asha once more.

We picked up our Santa outfits from The Vic pub (Londons only skate friendly pub). We got changed into –one size fits every proper skater-L/XL-Santa outfits, ncluding scary white beard. I used it for covering my neck-chest area-it was nice and warm and my fairy lights were shining nicely through and created special atmospheric Xmasy glow.

At the front of the skate there were 8 fast-sexy looking reindeers. Behind them our specially decorated music bike. Another speciall reindeer decorated scooter with speakers was ensuring that Xmas hits filled streets through which santa skate was passing with festive atmosphere of all popular Xmas songs. The skate took off at 5pm from Hyde park corner, then went through central London- Skating down Knightsbridge, Chelsea to Trafalgar square-where we had short brake for refreshment and chance to chat to non skating public wondering which one is The Real Santa… I wonder. Then after short show of by the most talented streetskaters who performed jumps and slalom we skated up to Piccadily circus, around Soho, down Oxford street and finished in front of good old VIC. We wished everywhere happy Christmas. Skatefresh instructors used this opportunity to make skatefresh more visible by handing out flyers-Skatefresh Santa-Asha-the manager +helpers-Me, Louise, Nina, Jonathan, Jason. Andy was marshalling the skate, and we were very proud of Skatefresh Linda as reindeer-she was skating really fast.

The weather on Saturday was ideal, felt finally a bit more wintery. Chosen route for this skate was very smooth and to me it seemed mostly downhill, so I could skate one more after we finished. Very succesfull evening indeed, I’m already looking forward to do next streetskate. Imagine 300 skating santas-you should try to join next year. Most skaters cought up on recent events and wished each other happy Xmas festive period in Vic after the skate. I didn’t buy last years DVD- Santa skate-the movie, but going to watch it now despite that. As I luckily saved it for my skate mate- also co skatefresh instructor Andy, who left it in The Vic.

So happy Xmas everyone and don’t forget to try something adventurous next year! Maybe you could take up skating, if you haven’t done so already.

Maja

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 20th, 2006 at 3:30 pm and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.