DOID

Had a great skate today, and was lucky enough to witness some incredible skating by a skater I'd not seen before. He has just got back to Australia after touring the states with Disney On Ice, and he was just amazing. So much speed and height in his jumps! I saw him land a stack of double toe loops (even a double toe, double toe combination), as well as nearly land a triple (slightly fell out of the landing) and a couple of double axels. He's been skating for 20 years now, and so is understandably slightly better than me!

I don't know his name though, so I'll just refer to him as the 'Disney On Ice Dude', or DOID for short!

I think it's about time for a progress update on my skating, so here we go. Forwards crossovers in my favoured counter-clockwise direction are pretty clean. In the clockwise direction they are a little stunted, but improving. Backwards crossovers in my favoured counter-clockwise direction are very nice. In the reverse direction they need a lot of work. I worked on them a bit today and managed to fall over a couple of times doing so. One foot balance forwards is perfect on both feet. Backwards balance on one foot is remedial and needs work. My mohawk is good and clean in both directions. My eagle is very good in the right-foot-leading direction, and just okay leading on the left foot. My two-foot spin is remedial -- I seem to have lost a lot of my balance while I was off the ice. T-stops are great. Hockey stops are very good. Backwards skating is okay, but it needs work to gain confidence, balance and speed. My outside 3 turns (RFO and LFO) are pretty good. My inside 3 turns (RFI and LFI) are sloppy. My pathetic excuse for a 3 jump (or waltz jump) is very shaky, but then, I haven't officially been taught that yet -- I'm just clowning around. Overall, I feel like a solid intermediate beginner! If I can clean up my backwards skating, and really nail those crossovers, I'll be able to fool people into thinking that I've been skating a lot longer than I have.

So, to round it all up... I've got a fair bit of clockwise skating work to do, and some backwards work. Everything else is pretty decent!

I'm also pleased to say that when I fell over today I didn't instinctively put my hand out to catch myself. Good boy! Hopefully my right wrist will heal up soon, as it's still very sore.

The usual gang where all there, and it was fun to catch up with Michelle, Anna, Pat, Cecelia and Tanya (with little Casey!). Tanya offered to bring Casey and come with me to see "Ice Princess" when it comes out, so I don't feel like a dork going to see it by myself! Yay!