I play a lot of sports here so was really looking forward to trying out some new activities in Calgary. Sophie on the other hand has always said that she gets tired just watching sports, let alone doing them!!! When we decided that we were going to move we knew we had to embrace the lifestyle and decided to get a head start before we arrived.
We wanted to become fairly confident with a few things before we moved, mainly so we didn't look stupid, but also so it would give us a way of meeting new people and socializing. First on our list was roller blading or in-line skating, whichever you prefer! Both of us had done roller skating as children but hadn't done any since, so off to the local sports shop we went to purchase a pair of in-line skates and protection kits, which we understand are compulsory in Alberta.
(Can I note now that we didn't get matching ones on purpose!!)
We are currently only practising under the cover of darkness to reduce the risk of ridicule from the neighbours, that is until we get to a reasonable standard (hopefully)!
Next on our list was ice skating. We had both been as children again, but also a couple of times since we met nearly 9 years ago, however again, neither of us had been for at least 5 years so we weren't quite sure what to expect. We decided to go on one night (Saturday - Ice Disco!) and thankfully there is no visual evidence of the event from Sophie's point of view as she'd managed to spend most of her time in a heap on the ice. Very elegant! I was also worse than I remembered, but only had one fall, however this was at high speed avoiding two teens heavy petting on the ice!! Sophie's knees were black and blue the following morning from the number of times she had fallen and we were still finding bruises two days later!! We had been told by one of the stewards that the best thing to do was to buy your own skates as the ones that you hire are really poor quality to learn on (that's what we thought). So two days later and after a fair amount of time on the web we bought 2 pairs of ice skates. (I won't bore you with another picture!) We have now been once more and have dramatically improved, with a minimal fall count!!
Last on our list was Skiing or in my case snowboarding. Now for me this was completely new, but Sophie had been for a weeks skiing whilst in school so was quietly confident on the skis. We looked at lots of different options but decided to do the days learning course at the snow dome, Tamworth in the Midlands. That way we would be on real snow and would get it over in one day.
Well what can I say, I spent most of my time on my bottom, although I am assured that all snowboarders start off like this.
(I'm the one in the red and black. I think this video was taken later
on in the day as I appear to be doing ok!)
Sophie on the other hand took to it like a duck to water being able to use her past experience and really improved as the day went on.So after a fantastic but very tiring day I had picked up the basics and Sophie had made real progress and we are both looking forward to getting on the slopes in Canada.
We are going to try and go every couple of weeks to build up our confidence and skills but will be ice skating once a week and roller skating as much as we can during the week. We'll keep you posted on our progress.
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