Rollerskating

When I was a kid living in Oak Harbor, Washington, there was a place in town called the Roller Barn where every Saturday from 2-4 p.m. they’d have a $2 skate time (I think that’s how much it was – this was in the mid-70s). I would save up money and go as often as I could. I LOVED rollerskating.

When Denis and I were living in Queens I attempted rollerblading. I couldn’t do it. I was HORRIBLE at it. Never mind that I can ice skate – but rollerblading was impossible and I quit after only doing it one time. Denis later bought me rollerskates but I never really had the opportunity to use them, even though they were awesome tennis-shoe skates. VERY nice.

So today our church life group was taking a bunch of boys from a nearby children’s home to the rollerskating rink in Rock Hill. I’m about 40 pounds heavier than the last time I tried skating, so needless to say I was a bit nervous. But I have to say:

IT WAS A LOT OF FUN.

I only skated for about an hour over the course of the 90 minutes we were there, but boy were they a fun 60 minutes’ worth! After only about five minutes on the skates I was comfortable enough to to the step-over turns on the corners, and other than a few wobbles here and there I never came close to falling. I could TOTALLY do that again and may see if the kids want to go during a Saturday family skate night sometime soon (parents skate free with paying child). Plus talk about great exercise! I plugged in 60 minutes of skating in my calorie tracker and it said an hour of rollerskating is about 650 calories. WOW. So that 650 calories is on top of the 200-300 calories I burned this morning doing Wii Fit for 45 minutes. And I’ve only eaten 560 calories thus far today. Oh, I am SO showing a loss on tomorrow’s scale. *lol*

Anyway, the boys we took skating had a lot of fun too. They were all good little skaters and one boy in particular was really impressive given it was the first time he had EVER been on skates before! They were the ones that called the end to skating at 4 p.m. – apparently they had a dinner thing tonight and weren’t able to stay any longer. It’s a shame too, because the boys were just starting to really warm up and treat us like more than bank ATMs. As they were leaving, two of the boys specifically asked me if I’d go to the dinner thing with them, but I begged off since it sounded like it was for just the boys and counselors.

The boys took a vote and decided our next function will be to see “Kung Fu Panda.” Since I’ve already seen it, this means I can do childcare while everyone else takes the boys to see the movie. I think that event will be at the end of July/beginning of August. The next thing we’re doing for the boys is making a huge batch of sweet treats to take to them on the July 4th weekend.