Hi

Today I witnessed the most stupid thing I have ever seen in my entire life at an ice rink.

I turned up for the morning session thinking that it would be quiet, as it usually is on morning sessions to find that some of the children from local schools are having their half term breaks. Naturally the rink was fairly busy with lots of young kids whizzing or stumbling around the arena but that is to be expected.

What I didnt expect was to see a mother exhibit complete moronic behaviour which was beyond anything I had ever seen before.

Firstly she pushed the babies buggy right up to the rink exit so that no one could get on or off the ice. Secondly she took the baby out of the buggy and placed him on the ice. This child could not yet have been a year old. She allowed him to crawl on the ice regardless of the fact that there were approximately 70 children with no control who were not skaters whizzing past him. Thirdly said stupid mother was walking on the ice in stilettos and thought that it was perfectly acceptable for her to be on the ice in her high heals and her baby to be crawling around as if he was at home.

She was told by several of us that what she was doing was extremely dangerous however she just could not understand why and felt that as she was stood on the ice with him the child would come to no harm. After being asked to exit the ice she refused saying that she felt she had every right to let her little baby crawl around on the ice and she also stated that it is perfectly acceptable to walk around in stilettos. Eventually the Steward had her removed.

I have honestly never in my entire life seen anything so absolutley stupid and I am totally gob smacked.

Has anyone else ever witnessed anything absolutley stupid whilst being on the ice?

Andrea

Totally selfish springs to mind ...

Hope the rest of your session was at least pleasant.

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Yup, just as stupid & I see it all the time: teetery parent in rental skates picks up & carries baby/toddler around on the ice. I once went over & told a dad he should put the kid down, as it was extremely dangerous if he were to fall.....he said, "well then I won't fall."

A lot of rinks I have been have a sign posted that no one is allowed on the ice w/o skates. Solves the problem immediately. Yes, I have actually seen a situation quite similar. Blocking the entrance w/ baby carriage is actually not uncommon.

Kay

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If I were dictator, I would require an intelligence test for everyone before they were allowed to reproduce. Sigh.

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Not if it isn't enforced. I was actually told that by helping a few patrons I posed a liability to a local rink. At the very next session, there was an adult skating with tot in his arms. The skating director (the one who told me to cease & desist), chastened some teens with cell phones and totally ignored the dad with kid in arms. So much for liability issues.

I wish that were all there was to it! Some very smart people have been know to do extremely stupid things when their overblown egos were in control.

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I've heard that before and it always makes me go

I hadn't thought of this before, but I wonder if yokels like that could be persuaded to think safety first if one were to ask them, but what if someone crashes into you because they're stupid or can't skate? You wouldn't want to fall and land on your child, would you?

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Indeed! At my age I have seen enough stupidity to know that Darwin was wrong - some apes never "evolved".

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Dianne
(A.O.S.S.? Got it BAD! )

Now if only that woman could be persuaded to do the same thing on a busy highway instead of a rink (probably wouldn't be difficult)....that might help the gene pool.

Failing that, let's hope it gets itself spayed before it produces any more innocent young to get trampled at an ice rink....

S xx

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There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"

Yeah, two parents who put their paralysed daughter in her wheelchair on ice amidst like 100 other kids on skates and were amazed that 5 minutes later, the girl was in tears and were amazed that the kid wasn't having fun like they suggested she should try to have...
IDIOTS.

If you want to acquaint her to figure skating, at least take her to the nationals or a selectional competition for the nationals. She wouldn't be feeling bad about not being able to do double and triple jumps. Of COURSE she's feeling bad when she sees everybody else skate and she can't get up out of the wheelchair!!!

Idiots, I wanted to kill the parents off right there.


And yes I've seen many parents who can barely stand pick up the child and put it in their neck, on their shoulders, when they can barely stand themselves. Once, I skated up to such a father and told him that a Russian pair of figure skaters were doing exactly that (well not quite, but hey, close enough) when he dropped her and she went into coma. He was like: Yeah but I'm not gonna drop her.
MORONS.


Another thing are people sitting on the boardings. If somebody bumps into a boarding, they'll tumble over backwards and hit their heads and necks against the hockey team benches in the booths... Fortunately, they really started to re-inforce the rule that that's prohibited.

However, I'm not allowed to practice spins when there's a lot of people but the hockeyers are allowed on the ice with their black flat ball thingies! During public hours. GREAT thinking, ice rink! Wow!


Most ridiculous things I've ever seen:
- you know those short skis? I'm talking about these: http://www-solar.mcs.st-andrews.ac.u...nimericski.jpg and some guy thought that he could skate on those...
- hockeyer attempting to copy my flip and not realizing the toe picks are there for a reason - he ended up being carried off ice
- daddy with a sleigh on which he put his kid, the sleigh had a really long rope by which the daddy pulled it. The sleigh slipped in the curve, banged into the boarding...



BTW it's always GUYS I see doing stupid things... Makes me go Hmm!

Sometimes we have wheelchair sessions on the ice here, and the sister of one of our skaters has to use a wheelchair, but she has been part of show numbers with her sister and other skaters - notably as R2D2, with Mum being C3PO. She had a lovely time, as she did in a winter number, when she had skates on, but just sat on a sledge.

Stupidest - and funniest - thing I ever saw at the rink was once on a public session, someone picked up a pair of blade guards that were sitting at the entrance to the rink, not, I think, realising that they were someone's private property, put them on, and proceeded to try to skate round in them. One of the coaches went over to him to try to tell him that this was dangerous and that he was using someone else's property, but he was like "Oh, this is much safer to start with, I think!"

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Mrs Redboots
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Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

We have wheelchair sessions here too - they also have some of those low profile plastic sledges that you sit in rather than on, and some of the kids who don't need the sitting-up support of the more sophisticated wheelchairs go in those.

Our rink stewards may get a lot of complaints for things they don't do, but I can't see them allowing anyone on the ice in shoes, or putting a baby down on it

I guess my stupid story was several years ago when a teenage mother brought her baby in and left the baby in the baby holder in the warming room, where you put on your skates - alone, while she had her lesson. I had two thoughts...I was tempted to hide that baby to teach her a lesson, but that would be too cruel and might get me arrested ...and I made a mental note to tell my daughter that if she had a baby I would support her and help with the baby but that would be the end of her skating lessons

Yeah but it is different when there is a session for handicapped people. It is like with wheelchair dancing, I mean you dont put a child in a wheelchair in a normal dancing class, there are special classes for that, if you do, youll have the kid in tears in no time, of course you will! If you want your child to look normal while doing sports, try swimming: a girl in my class, in a wheelchair because of a broken back, had no problem at all swimming with the rest of the class.

As for guards, one time, this guy with hockey skates (I have those double-sided guards that one can jump and run in) comes up to me and goes like... can I borrow your guards? Im like, no, you can use my soakers if you want but not my guards: they wont even fit you.
Result: he went and stole them and went outside to have a smoke. Then I went to the skating rink people and told them my guards were stolen, so they brought back the guy and made him apologize. I told him next time I would file a thievery report with the police (and as a law student, I do know some tricks to keep the police from not-persueing the matter because it is too small an offense like they usually would) and I regret I didnt last time, because one of those guards keeps slipping after that incident...

It is amazing how many stupid incidents happen really. I am suprised that more accidents and injurys don't occur because of it.

The worst i've seen was at a day session I went to. About 3 or 4 adults (I'm assuming teachers) took a class of primary students along. They were sent up to skate hire on their own, expected to tie their own skates (they were about 5) and then marched onto the ice, clinging onto the barrier whilst the adult in charge (she was definately a teacher) walked on in shoes and took photos! There were not enough adults for them as it was, let alone one on in shoes, and the others couldn't skate well. Luckily it was as I was leaving as I am sure that there would have been accidents.

Another time a group of about 200 came along and were purposely crashing into each other When I left one was disappointed that they weren't hurt like their friend!

I would seriously ban morons from the ice. At public evening sessions at my rink the hockey guys seem to just stand by the barrier in a big line trying to look cool. It just looks dangerous though, especially at the moment where it is busy with people who can't even stand. Good on them for going along and giving it a go, but at least the people who can skate should make it easy for them and not hogg a section of barrier to stand and talk to your mates by!

A few times a year I will see some one (usually a teenage boy) skate fast up to a friend who has fallen on the ice and do a quick hockey stop in an effort to throw ice shavings on them.

Every time I cringe.

I have made it a point to stop and explain that it would only be a small slip and their blade would slice into their friends head.

I don't know if I have any effect.

The ice would be pretty deserted! (Except for figure skaters, of course )

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Dianne
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The worst thing of all, of course, happened at our rink a couple of weeks ago when a 16-year-old boy was shot dead.

However, it's not clear whether he was actually in the rink at the time, or outside it and rushed in to get help. Certainly he was not skating, but I understand a group of youths had run in via a side door with the intent of robbing the punters.

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Mrs Redboots
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Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

Russiet, are you going by the same name on YouTube? Cuz then I've seen you skate on video, I actually practiced my salchow from your videos at first!

What I think is most disgusting about this hockey stop stuff is that hockeyers spit, bleed, and snot on the floor. With those shavings, all that stuff comes onto you. And that's not just simple streptococci and staphilococci bacteria and flu type viral strains, that's actually also (possibly) hepatitis, mononucleosis and a lot of other stuff you really don't want on you!

The hockeyers at our rink do that to every young girl they can find, whether she's standing or sitting on the ice or whatever. Most girls end up screaming like WAHHH YOU MORON etc, and the hockey guys just like it... One time, I was still new at the rink, I was practicing jumps, fell down, and this guy goes and does a hockey stop on me literally covering me in snow. I was really hot from the jump practicing so I went automatically like "Mmm nice, do that again" before the conscious part of my mind that thinks it's icky kicked in.
The hockey guy was totally dissapointed and since, nobody ever hockey-stopped on me.

That would be me. They were my first sals. You should be emulating some one else! I practiced from watching a slo-mo video of Brian B. The slo-mo got my timing mixed up at first. It made the sal really wide.

About the ice, when my daughter was younger I would warn her about the un-purity of the ice. I would ask her, "If some of this ice were melted into a glass, would you even THINK about drinking it? Hockey players SPIT on the ice! Stop playing with it!!"

Yeah my sal is still my most screwed-up jump, and now I know the cause!!! Hahaha, trouble is, our teacher doesn't manage to explain it to me in a way that I understand it. Ohwell I get around and my free leg's in front, I'm just double-bent in the air but hey, could be worse. I should really get some private lessons and maybe someday I will. For now, I can't.
I spent a lot of time watching our competition girls practice their double sal's (this is holland, they don't do triples) and at least I got the shakeyness out of the landing now...

You know I really like slomo's of double jumps from http://www.sk8stuff.com/m_recognize.htm
The timing is far less off than with triple jumps. And also, somehow Plushenko's jumps are easyer to emulate than those of other people. I don't know why. Maybe because his technique is truelly clean or something. The timing for single jumps isn't even THAT far off. Though personally I really like the way Slutskaya has been known to do her loop sometimes - first a series of forward and backward 3 turns in backspin position and then jump haha.

Doubletoe, referring to what you said, i had to laugh my head off. Sad thing is, the powers that be at my rink would fall into that same category.


They ALLOW a certain man and another child (2 different times) to be on public session with stick and puck, hitting them agains the wall. Any complaints? Well, just don't complain. Forget that the rink might get shut down from a lawsuit. And it's a new rink.

A group of kids was there the day the man with the stick/puck was there, and they asked to rent a hockey stick (or more). They were told those things were allowed. ha ha. Scarey, isn't it?

Oops, i mean "NOT allowed" is what management said, yet they SAW these others hitting the puck around...

People trying to skate in blunt rental skates which are not done up properly, "This is really difficult" they say - No sh*t!

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