You know you're passionate about something when you can't wait to do it, you don't care if you have to do it all by yourself, and you can lose track of time when doing it. That's how I feel about designing and making jewelry and that's how I feel about inline skating.
That said, when you find someone that can get as excited as you are about something, you can join forces and have even more fun together. Again, that works for me with both jewelry making and skating.
How lucky was I therefore to find two amazing women to skate with me on two separate occasions over the last week. Both women and their spouses are in my husband and my movie club and both women inspire me: Irline and Kristine.
Irline has been an ice dancer for the last several years. In fact here she is ice dancing:
She hadn't skated on wheels in years and years. I see her and her husband Martin on the Lafayette-Moraga trail--them walking and me skating--and I kept bugging her to join me on the trail. She said she wanted to but I figured it was one of those, "Wouldn't that be nice one day?" comments that we all make from time to time--activities we've like to do in theory but don't get around to. I was wrong about Irline. She emailed me last week and said if I could get her a pair of skates in her size, she'd go out with me. Lucky me she fit into one of my extra pairs and away we went.
I also wrongly figured that on her first outing she would just want to tool around in the parking lot at the Lafayette Community Center. Instead, after 5 or 10 minutes of getting used to the skates she suggested we try the Lafayette-Moraga trail. Over 5 miles later--including curbs, wooden bridges, sticks, rocks, slight hills, and uneven pavement--she finally had her fill. Wow, was I impressed with her! She so naturally transferred her ice skating expertise, balance, and stamina into a related but new activity.
Irline so inspired me that the next day I skated my furthest distance since I began keeping track last year: 8.6 miles. (My Facebook post may have reported a longer distance, but that's because I forgot to turn off my app at the end of my skate and it recorded some of the ride home!)
Then today I had a skate date with another movie club member, Kristine. Here she is with her husband, David in the Virgin Islands:
She has skated for years--even told me that she used skating as her main mode of transportation in college for a time. We met at a parking lot by the Iron Horse trail in Walnut Creek after she had already taken a workout class that morning at her gym! I figured maybe a 30-minute skate would be all she had left in her. She suggested an hour skate and away we went.
One hour and 8+ miles later, I was satisfied with myself and very impressed with Kristine.
With both Irline and Kristine, I enjoyed one of my favorite activities in a whole new way and got to know each of them a bit better. If you have something you like to do as much as I like inline skating, it's even more fun to enjoy it with a friend. And seeing the activity through their eyes made me look at my skating and the limitations I put on myself differently.
My next goal: go out again with Irline and the new inline skates she bought herself and to drag Kristine out on some hills!
Look out, here we come!
Keep skating (or whatever you do)!
Nancie ♥
My last skate:
1/25/13
Skate #17 of 200
Iron Horse Trail 8.08 mi
