I ♥ icenetwork
January 29, 2008
Let me explain, up front, that I don’t have television. What I mean by this is that I don’t have any television stations: I have a TV and a DVD player, on which I watch my fair share of movies, but no cable service, no TiVo, nor whatever newfangled technology they’ve come out with in the last ten minutes.
I “went off TV” cold-turkey about nine years ago when I realized that watching it was in direct conflict with my writing aspirations. Basically, to be a writer you have to do an inordinate amount of reading and an equal amount of writing. You have to go out into the world and have experiences that you can write about and sometimes you need to just sit on your couch and think. Watching TV doesn’t help much. I suppose other people have the ability to turn off the TV or rarely turn it on in the first place, but I know myself and I am not one of them, so it’s just better to not have the temptation.
Yes, I’ve missed out on a lot: American Idol, Survivor, Desperate Housewives, the visual images of countless world events (I do listen to the radio, but of course it’s not quite the same), and that particular comfort of coming home at the end of the day and decompressing in front of the boob tube. What I’ve also missed is just about every skating event that has been broadcast from around the universe in the last decade. (Excluding the few events I’ve attended and the fewer events I’ve invited myself over to your house to watch, thanks by the way.)
So you can imagine I was pretty intrigued when icenetwork re-launched/re-invented itself in August and announced they’d be offering on-demand broadcasts and archived footage for many marquee events this season. I subscribed and have been sporadically taking advantage of this service for the last few months, but it wasn’t until this past week, during the coverage of the U.S. Nationals in St. Paul, that I fully appreciated how remarkable this is.
Specifically, I came home on Thursday night after work and caught the majority of the Championship Girls (not a typo) Short Program event, live. I tuned in just as Caroline Zhang was taking her bow, and for the next few hours experienced the strange sensation of being in two places at once: simultaneously at home and at the Xcel Center.
The icenetwork coverage is relatively barebones and straightforward, perhaps not as “slick” or “produced” as other broadcasts, but precisely because of this, watching it online is a lot like being there. Have been at Nationals for the previous three years, and watching many events from the stands, I can say that there are some ways in which the icenetwork experience is arguably even better than being there…and I’m only chewing on a few sour grapes. Seriously, such a small percentage of coaches (and skaters and fans) get to partake in the Big Party so it’s great that icenetwork is sharing the love.
What’s not so great about sitting in the stands is that period of time after each skater, while the Technical Panel is reviewing the video. These are basically like a bunch of intermissions, and they can seem infinite. Sure, you can inspect your fingernails, cross and uncross your legs, engage in some chitchat, and crane your neck, squinting to see if the Kiss and Cry is living up to its name. From home, however, it’s the possibilities that are infinite. During the IJS Intermissions, you can:
- Watch the icenetwork replays, which usually include three elements from each skater, either in celebration of a performance triumph or in closer examination of a foible.
- Watch (and hear) the skaters and coaches kiss and cry from close range and wonder if they realize how close (and how effective) the microphones are.
- Analyze the Double-handed Wave: a friend of mine noticed that the Kiss and Cry tends to bring this out in many of the younger skaters. This waving technique involves extremely loose wrists wobbled at about shoulder-level. I’ve been practicing mine and I think I’m getting the hang of it. I wonder if this is part of the new media training.
- Stretch. Watching any of these events will inevitably make you realize how inflexible you’ve become.
- Warm up some of that homemade soup and rejoice in the fact that it is not a concession-stand hot dog or a serving of over-baked ziti from the coach’s hospitality room. The only catch is that you’ll have to wash the dishes, but there’s time enough for this as well.
- Check the icenetwork results from events you missed or even peek at the archived footage, including press conference clips.
- Peruse the icenetwork message boards, which include comments that range from extremely insightful to incredibly…numb-skulled. In the middle of the spectrum, there are many comments that will confirm what you are also thinking, which nicely replaces the chitchat you would have participated in in the stands.
After you engage in all of these activities and return to the live broadcast, the Technical Panel will probably still be involved in deliberations, in order to insure that the judging of our sport is more fair. So from there, you can tackle some domestic projects, some billing, or that chocolate bar you’ve been trying to avoid. What I’m saying is that watching icenetwork can be quite productive.
(For the record, I do think the job of the Technical Specialists is a challenging one and I certainly wouldn’t want them to rush through their task on my account. Truthfully, the video replay really is, hands-down, the best part of the new system.)
Most importantly, and this is the key, this year on icenetwork you could actually watch the short programs, including all the skaters, and you could do so from anywhere in the country. You could even watch compulsory dances and novice and junior events (and you still can, at your leisure.) The subscription fee is nominal, but even if you didn’t want to make that commitment, you could still see backstage photos, read articles including skater and coach quotes, and just generally keep tabs on the whole Championships. All of this is nothing short of momentous and a vast improvement over what was available previously through USFS, which was really not much at all.
It’s also pretty exciting from a skater’s perspective. Far-flung fathers, sisters, grandparents, teachers, and friends can see these performances even if they can’t make the trip. And skaters themselves can log on from the competition, for that matter. This is something I would have valued when I was competing; the videotapes we ordered for our own cringing and for our family’s viewing always seemed to take forever to arrive in the mail.
Two days after Girl’s Short, I was glad to watch their Long Programs at a friend’s house where the TV was about 45 times the size of my computer screen. The NBC broadcast was well-composed, the camera-work was sophisticated, and the picture quality was crystal clear. It was an exciting and extremely weird event but it all seemed very far away; I was quite aware that I wasn’t there. When I got home, I logged on to icenetwork to see what had been posted so far.
All of this has definitely taken precious time away from my writing. On the other hand, I’ve noticed, over the course of the last few paragraphs, that it has also given me something to write about.
***
Yes, you are wise to have on your bias-detector: I have written articles for icenetwork and will do so again. I assure you, however, that I was not asked to write this and that all of the above sentiments come straight from my ♥ .
Skating at Bryant Park
January 22, 2008
There are several situations in which it would be helpful to have a neck like an owl. In other words, a neck capable of turning 270 degrees. You might look kind of creepy but you could swivel it around while driving, while in Yoga class, while walking home late at night. And an owl neck (not to be confused with a “cowl neck” – I already have a few of those) would come in especially handy if you’re ever overcome by the strange urge to go skating for fun on a crowded public session.
I recently decided it was time to check out the newest skating venue in New York City: The Pond at Bryant Park. Bryant Park is located in Midtown next to the Public Library and near to both Grand Central Station and Times Square. It’s known for having WiFi service and for showing movies, mostly classics, on Mondays in the summer. It’s now a winter hotspot, so to speak, from November through mid-January, boasting a holiday fair, a Canadian cocktail lounge fittingly named Celsius, and “free” ice skating.
A lot of non-skaters in my life had partaken of this slippery fun and wondered what I thought of it. I found it was difficult to form an opinion without actually going there, so I dug out the old Reidells, tied them together then hung them over my shoulder in order to stroll on over. (Okay, I confess that there was actually a backpack and a cab involved, but that other image is better.)
Of course the word “free” is always suspect but in this case it really is true as long as you bring your own skates (no problem) and don’t bring any valuables or wear your favorite shoes (oops) because you’ll have to rent out some NYC storage real estate either in the Bag Check area for $7 or in a locker, the lock of which (if you didn’t know to bring one) will put you back $10. I chose the latter option, rationalizing that you can never have enough locks…you never know if you’ll suddenly be called for an emergency repeat of 7th grade and it’s good to be ready for that kind of thing.
Four friends joined me for the occasion, two of whom are skaters. Two of whom are not and therefore they had the pleasure of strapping on the stylish, royal blue rental skates (nope, not free). There was a lot of giggling while we got ready. We asked each other how long it had been since we last skated, the answers ranging from “three years ago” (giggle) to “two hours ago” (giggle, for the opposite reason – what are we, obsessed?)
Stepping on the ice was like trying to walk onto the Autobahn at rush hour. If I were a more thorough journalist, I would have asked them what the rink capacity is and what the numbers were that night. Suffice it to say, the small rectangle (170 feet by 100 feet) was densely packed with limbs, all of which were flailing and half of which were attached to blades. I had this overwhelming urge to keep looking behind me. What I saw was people spastically careening, yelling “woah!” and making efforts at stopping that were only putting them more out of control and only millimeters from hitting me. What I also discovered when I looked behind was that this meant I couldn’t see what was ahead, not that that view was any prettier.
The upshot is that it was downright scary. Therefore, I wasn’t really skating. I was instead doing some kind of paranoid shuffle. I noticed that one of my friends, also a coach, was being similarly cautious. “How’s it going?” I asked nonchalantly, as if I was in a state of complete calm. She proceeded to remind me how, on her first day of coaching, ever, she was knocked down from behind by a kid who couldn’t stop, a fall that resulted in a broken sacrum (the technical term for rear end). “Oh. That’s right,” I said soberly and wondered why it had seemed like such a good idea to put ourselves in harms way like this.
I have taught lessons on many a crowded public session in my day but not in a few years, and I’d forgotten that frenetic sensation of never knowing what or who was coming at you. As my mother used to say when I first started driving, “It’s not that I don’t trust you, I just don’t trust all those other crazies on the road.” I’d also forgotten how hard and how awkwardly non-skaters tend to fall. All around us, crazies were crashing into each other and falling in ways that looked practically fatal. I’m no doctor, but while there, I’m pretty sure I witnessed several broken wrists, just as many torn ACLs and at least a few cracked skulls. The victims were surrounded then carried off by a fleet of diligent rink guards. I winced, shook my head, and also wondered why all these people were putting themselves up to this.
It was gradually brought to my attention by one of the eager non-skaters in our group that the way I was skating wasn’t what he expected. He asked me why I wasn’t going any faster and I told him I didn’t want to hurt anyone. Of course, the opposite was true. Over the course of several laps, his ribbing escalated until he devilishly said the words, “Frankly, it doesn’t seem like you’re all that good.” I looked straight ahead, chuckling, trying to not reveal my horror.
And then, in response, I peeled out. Like a cheetah, like a Nascar super-engine…like Marion Jones after an illegal dose. Except on skates. I must have been a blur, the way I was so quickly threading between people. I was a human sewing machine; all I could see were streaks. After all, I haven’t spent my life on ice skates to have my skills doubted.
At the end of that momentous and death-defying lap, I abruptly hockey-stopped by the barriers, spraying the biggest plume of ice I could muster. The rink does draw a crowd of onlookers (though less than at Rockefeller Center) and they were impressed. Well, I’m pretty certain they were oohing and ahhing…on the inside, silently. I looked over at my critic and smirked. Mission accomplished.
From there on, I skated at medium speed. I snuck in some pulls and a few modest crossrolls. Then we taught our non-skaters how to swizzle, slalom, dip and (against our better judgment), glide on one foot. They were unsteady, yet enthusiastic and appropriately appreciative of our work. As coaches, we spend so much time around young, strong, flexible athletes who can really skate (and therefore we may hesitate to demonstrate and skate full-out) that sometimes it takes being surrounded by beginners to remember that skating, the simple act of gliding, for us, is actually as easy (if not easier) than walking.
In fact, when we ventured into the middle to demonstrate some pivots and two foot spins, we suddenly became rockstars. People gathered and gawked. Myself and my coach friend were swarmed by off-balance strangers. “How do you do that?” And, “How do you stop?” And, “Do you think my skates look too tight?” “Are they supposed to hurt this much?” (Those skates? Yes.) We doled out a few freebies then returned to the Autobahn for some more laps.
By this point, I was more comfortable with the traffic and had stopped impersonating an anxious owl, so I was able to take in the unique setting. Namely, that we were skating outside. At night. In the middle of New York City. Buildings jutted up on all sides. Instead of stars, windows of apartments and offices twinkled at us from above, their occupants aware but inured to the fact that we were slipping and sliding way down below.
We found that the huge lighting fixtures set up on both ends of this temporary rink were overly-bright, almost blinding. We decided that, next time, we’d have to wear our sunglasses at night, an addition that would nicely contribute to my already um…very cool aura.
There is something about skating in the open air, without a ceiling overhead. Even if the surface is tiny, there is a sense of expansiveness, a sense of wintry goodness you can’t quite replicate inside. That night, the air was filled with the scent of hot chocolate, with laughter, the scraping and scratching of imperfect blades, and taxis honking in the not-so-distant background. I was doing something I do just about every day, but it was completely different.
***
Well, as of January 15, Bryant Park rink has been melted to make way for Fashion Week. But you can still take a spin on it next season, or visit Rockefeller Center (open until April 13th ish) or the picturesque (and triangular!) Wollman Rink (open until April 6th ish) in Central Park. But, please, be careful.
Bowman the Showman
January 15, 2008
“You have to be very tough, very competitive. You have to be a real fighter, a real scrapper, a real go-getter. Basically, you need that spotlight, you need that attention…There are thousands of Christopher Bowmans out there, they all look the same. So you have to break out of the mold, become individualized, become someone else…and spark that interest in the mass general public that makes you popular, that brings you to a higher plateau.”
-Christopher Bowman, 1989
On Friday morning, while getting ready to head out to the coffee shop to do some writing, I had 1010 WINS on in the background, the local traffic, news, and weather AM station that pretty much reports the same stuff over and over every 10 minutes. As I was packing up my laptop, the announcer reported that a former figure skating champion had died of a possible overdose…Christopher The Showman Bowman.
I stopped, sat down on my couch, and waited 10 minutes to hear him say the exact same thing again. I was both shocked and not shocked at the same time. And mainly, saddened.
I didn’t really know Christopher Bowman, but he was at the top of his game in the same years I competed at Nationals. So I knew him only in the way you feel like you knew the Seniors in your high school when you were a Sophomore: you observed them both from afar and from close proximity and after a while, you felt as if you were somehow acquainted, not in a stalker way, but in a same-place-at-the-same-time kind of way. Skating is a small world, and, of course, in those years, Bowman didn’t exactly hide under a rock.
I’m sure lots of people have meaningful anecdotes to recount about Christopher Bowman, but here are the two I’ve been replaying in my mind in the last few days.
In 1983, after he won Junior Men at Nationals and Junior Worlds, he was the guest skater at our club’s annual ice show. The Figure Skating Club of Madison always pulled out all the stops for these productions – spotlights, sets, elaborate costumes, a huge curtain along one end that created an exciting zone called “backstage”…and guest skaters. My brother and I were relatively new to skating, bumbling along at the Novice level and clueless enough to not even know who Christopher Bowman was. But he breezed into our little Midwestern rink with all kinds of California star power. He was 16 years old at the time. He had a tan (well, relative to us), a gold chain, and very slick hair. I was only 11, but I noticed the teenage girls in our club were giggling more than usual and whispering to each other with animation whenever he came out of his locker room. I’m not sure if he actually winked at them before he took his guards off on his way out onto the ice or if this is something my memory has added, but it’s certainly something he would have done.
Anyway, what I’m getting at happened during the show’s grand finale on the last night. All the girls in the club, including me, were performing in a Precision-style, or Synchro-style group number, which culminated in what can only be described as a sort of add-on pinwheel, where you’d line up in opposite corners, and, when it was your turn, gun it for the middle, trying to latch onto the girls who were already marching in a revolving line. The skaters at the end, usually the shortest girls, had the biggest challenge, since the line was by then spinning pretty fast.
Once we’d all successfully hooked on and were holding on for our dear lives, we had a surprise coming our way: the big curtain parted and my brother and Christopher Bowman started aiming for us. We were all supposed to be turning our heads toward the middle of the wheel, but we instead looked to the outside to see what these boy interlopers were going to do. My brother was grinning but careful to catch onto the last girl, probably really concentrating on not falling. On the other end, Christopher Bowman was bent over like some kind of vaudeville speedskater, pretending like he couldn’t catch up. The audience and us skaters were all in hysterics. By the time the music stopped, he finally caught up to the lucky girl on the end. He looped one arm around her waist and with the other hand, he did one of those wiping-of-the-brow “Phew!” hand gestures. He waved at the audience while we all bowed, and I remember thinking that this Christopher Bowman guy sure was a lot of fun.
Later, at the 1989 Nationals in Baltimore, my brother and I got off the shuttle bus at an outlying practice rink and discovered that the last group of Championship Men were finishing up their practices right before us. Though it was cold, we did our off ice warm-up in the rink instead of the lobby in order to more easily see them. Christopher Bowman was working on his Triple Axel. We watched, stretching our quads and calf muscles, as he popped not two or three attempts but what seemed like at least 15 of them until Frank Carroll must have told him (probably with exasperation) to just call it quits.
The next day, we watched from the stands, rapt, as he popped a few more of these on his five minute warm-up. Then, of course, in the program, he not only landed the Triple Axel, but nailed it perfectly and the crowd, as it tended to do for him, went berserk. (This is my memory of the event, anyway…please correct me if I’m wrong.) I clapped and hooted with the rest of the audience, impressed, to say the least, and marveling at his ability to perform under pressure. At that competition, he would win the first of his two National titles, something you might not have thought possible, based on his practice less than 24 hours before. It did seem as if Bowman was spurned on by the audience, as if he performed better with it than without it.
Watching Bowman compete was always exciting, and not just because he had so much charisma. He had a reputation for not training very much, so as skaters, I think a lot of us watched to see if his methodology (or lack thereof) was ever going to catch up with him, not in a spiteful way, but maybe to justify our own secret (or in my own case, not-so-secret) desires to slack off. Of course, Bowman had a surplus of talent, so he could “pull it off” at the last minute with a sure-footedness that the rest of us could only dream of.
In the last few days, I’ve been re-watching videos of his performances on youtube, both in competition and exhibition, some of which I was lucky to originally see live and some of which I saw on television. I recommend that you sample some of these postings if you haven’t already. What you will see is extreme technical competence, true entertainment, and an undeniable spark, the magnitude of which is impossible to learn and impossible to teach.
In the Up-Close-And-Personal type pieces, you’ll see him shirtless while demonstrating martial arts, reclining on the beach in swim trunks and skates, and playing paint ball before most of us even knew what that was. You’ll see him, full of bravado and so pleased with himself, in the Kiss and Cry with the horrified Frank Carroll after he’s improvised his program at Worlds. In the show numbers, you’ll see him gyrating his hips, wearing a sports jersey from whatever town he’s performing in, and dancing with some unsuspecting yet overjoyed woman he’s picked from the audience. (Other guys try this shameless stunt during show programs, but most look like idiots and few seem to be genuinely having so much fun.) It certainly appeared that Christopher Bowman was handling the pressures of elite figure skating just fine.
In this footage, you’ll hear Scott Hamilton squeal with admiration, “Nobody works the crowd like Christopher Bowman!” And you’ll hear Dick Button’s backhanded lament that, “he has an enormous amount of talent. If he’d ever get finished playing around with this sport and not being quite as serious as he could be, then I think he’d be sensational.” When Button said this during the 1988 Olympics broadcast, the competition in which Bowman achieved 7th place on the heels of a National Bronze medal, it could be argued that what he’d already achieved was, in fact, sensational. (Going to the Olympics at all seemed pretty sensational, from where I sat.) Maybe Bowman never did fully take Button’s unsolicited advice and “buckle down” but he did go on to amass an impressive collection of medals.
Probably there are a lot of lessons to be learned from what has turned out to be a tragic story, more details of which will probably be revealed over the next few weeks and years, but I think it’s important to mainly remember the wink and the chuckle Christopher Bowman brought to figure skating, how he didn’t take himself or the skating world too seriously. In one interview, Bowman says, “I don’t see how anyone can do anything and be successful at it without enjoying doing it.” He adds, almost-defensively, since he was always being criticized for his lack of focus, “I feel that there are a lot of wonderful experiences to grasp and I try to grasp as many as I can.”
Ours is a regimented sport, filled with tension, and the stakes seem to just keep getting higher. One hopes that the athletes coming up today can carry on some of his lightheartedness amid all the new rules and regulations and the ever-increasing scrutiny of the media. I hope they can have enough perspective to occasionally laugh themselves. (I hope all of us can.) After all, to use Bowman’s own words, “Skating is a performance sport.” The world doesn’t tune in to watch a bunch of stiff machines and it’s kind of a drag to be one, anyway.
In a particularly serious moment, Bowman looks to his interviewer and makes a statement that, in hindsight, is nothing short of heartbreaking. He admits, “I’m doing the very best I can. I’m only human.” In fact, it’s been reported in several places that Bowman had a tattoo on his shoulder that said, “Nobody’s Perfect.” I don’t know when or exactly why he had this etched into his skin, whether it was an apology or some kind of battle cry. Whatever the case, though, he was right.
If nothing else, watch the exhibition footage from 1989 Nationals (link below). You’ll see him perform a slow number to Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” followed by his iconic, hammy, Woolly Bully program. At the end, Bowman falls face-down on the ice, as if dead from exhaustion. He playfully raises his head, moves his hand in a comedic “more more” fashion and, as if following orders, the crowd claps even louder. Then he puts his head back down, playing dead again.
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To watch Christopher Bowman in his prime, click: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuCDKDxISUM
Thank you for reading.
The Coldest Job in the Universe
January 8, 2008
Well, the holidays are over. I don’t know about you, but I’m experiencing a bout of post-holiday blues; my cozy, pajamas-on-the-couch vacation is behind me and the long, cold winter stretches out ahead.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: coaching skating is a great gig, and there’s nothing else I’d rather do (well, besides cashing lottery checks and even if I did win, I’d probably still teach lessons). But the temperature of this profession from November through March can be more than a little problematic. Of course, in the summer, it’s a downright godsend, but that’s light years away, at this point, and not the focus of this discussion.
Allow me to clarify that there is a gigantic difference between skating in a cold environment and coaching in a cold environment. Even when you glide around with your students, you rarely generate enough body heat to have a real effect. The temperature is usually tolerable for the first hour or so, but once you get three or four hours in, you inevitably start to feel like an underdressed Eskimo.
There are times, at the end of a workday, when I’m so cold I can hardly think, or I can only think about lasagna…diving into a large vat of it. There are times when my hands, my feet, and my face have gone beyond frozen to a scary state of numb. My shivering probably makes me look blurry to my students, as if I’m one big hummingbird wing. After my last lesson, I rush into my car and put the heat on full blast only to rediscover that it always starts off as an arctic wind far colder than air conditioning. While I wait for it to heat up, I worry that the violent chattering of my teeth could result in a jaw sprain or a cracked tooth. I wonder: when exactly does “hypothermia” set in?
A few years ago, I tried to comfort myself by making a list of careers that must be colder than ours. This is all I could come up with: 1. the foreman of an ice cream factory, 2. a roofer specializing in igloos, 3. a busker who plays guitar on Mt. Everest. Composing this list did not make me feel any warmer. In hindsight, perhaps burning it would have…
It could be that I’m particularly wimpy. I’m open to this theory because I am wimpy in many ways, however, I did grow up in Wisconsin in the years before global warming. (See prior installment – my father transformed our driveway into a rink with the simple spray of a garden hose.) In my formative years, on the rare days when I was not at an ice rink, I spent many an hour helping my brother construct sophisticated snow forts and extra-plump snowmen. I helped (okay lackadaisically, but still) my father shovel the driveway and helped my mother shovel our car out from various snowdrifts. So I’m no stranger to the cold.
It could be that the rinks I teach at are particularly chilly. You know how, when you come in from the cold, your face sometimes burns for a few moments? One night, when I came home from teaching at an outdoor rink, my face didn’t stop burning. I looked into the mirror to discover that my skin had become disturbingly splotchy and it stayed that way for hours. Those of you who know me are aware that I have an abnormal affection for polka dots – but not on my face! A call to my doctor the next day confirmed that I was probably going to live, but that I had contracted the very first stages of frostbite. I know a few coaches who have gotten more advanced frostbite in their toes, and this does not sound like a pleasant experience.
The temperature of indoor rinks varies. Ice surfaces apparently need to be somewhere between 24 to 28 degrees and the air is usually somewhere in the 50′s. Though, recently, at one of the rinks I teach at, an adult skater brought in a digital thermometer, just for kicks, and let’s just say that the reading was…well below the 50′s. It suddenly made perfect sense how, about a month ago, the ice pack I was using to nurse a shoulder injury was more frozen (rock solid!) at the end of my workday than at the beginning. Similarly, this New Year’s Eve, the rink nicely chilled a bottle of champagne I had tucked in my bag for later consumption.
Unsurprisingly, one of the most commonly uttered phrases in my work life is, “It’s so cold.” We coaches say this to each other as if it’s a revelation, as if it’s something new, as if we haven’t already mentioned it to each other four times that day and 65 times that week. Hearing the heartfelt, “I know,” in response, as your co-worker burrows further into her scarf, is comforting: at least we’re in this together.
During the ice cuts, we purchase more coffee or tea, we blow on our hands (or run them under the hot water in the restroom.) We sit in the lobby commiserating and fantasizing. Our eyes gloss over as we talk about things like electric blankets, and heated vests. One of my friends enjoyed the benefits of this latter invention until it busted. The other day, someone was regaling us with a tale about a rink somewhere in Massachusetts where there are a series of heating panels installed behind the benches for the benefit of the coaches, which sounds to me like nirvana. My latest hair brain idea is to develop and bring into fashion a sort of “nose cozy,” perhaps knit in a variety of styles: an orange beak, a pink snout, or a red homage to Rudolph. What do you think?
All of us have already devoted a lot of cognitive energy (and funds) to combating the cold.
Of course, the most important survival mechanism is strategic layering. For me, this starts with a layer of long johns and ends with a ball-gown length down-feather coat. It’s kind of a like a sleeping bag with arms. Of course, every time I want to demonstrate something, I have to hike it up to my waist like a bride walking through a puddle so that my students can actually see my feet and legs. The middle layers consist of a combination of fleece, wool, gore-tex…and, on the advice of a friend, I have recently discovered the thermal power of cashmere. I’ve always owned a few cashmere sweaters, but I’ve made the mistake of saving them for special occasions (a.k.a., when they could actually be seen, silly me). I didn’t realize, until now, that this luxuriously soft material is also quite practical. Snowpants are also a key ingredient. The few times I’ve tried to cut corners and teach just in my jeans, I might as well have been naked.
What you have to remember is to put on your skates before you apply your final layers because the bulk factor can make it difficult to bend forward. In fact, not being able to reach your feet is a good way of gauging whether or not you have enough layers on. Of course, once I have all my gear in place, I look about as large as a Kodiak bear. In the summer, it is common for skating parents who observe us coaches arriving at the rink in our shorts, to marvel at all the weight we’ve lost. Of course, in actuality, it’s just that they’re not used to seeing us in less than 44 layers.
Hats are a given, though your hair will pay the price, as it will look perpetually smooshed. I’ve found that mittens definitely trump gloves; it’s optimal for the fingers to huddle together. And, on the most extreme days, if you supplement with one of those handwarming pouches, it’s as if your fingers have all gathered around a virtual campfire. The downside with mittens is that they severely affect your dexterity: you have to take them off in order to write anything down or to play a CD. They also impact your ability to give your student the “peace sign”, the “okay sign”, or the “do two more sign” with your fingers. Fortunately, you can still give an effective thumbs-up, or thumbs-down, whichever the situation calls for.
One thing that has helped me survive morning teaching (but just barely – see the installment entitled Morning Madness) is my own personal space heater, which is about the size of an eight-inch cube. Lots of fellow coaches have invested in these. The problem, which we have learned the hard way, is that you can only plug so many of them into a power strip before you blow a fuse.
Sometimes, the only thing that will thaw you out this time of year is a long, scalding shower or a very hot dinner. For this reason, last week I implemented Project S.O.U.P.. I made three different kinds and I’m happy to report that my freezer is now stocked with 17 servings of liquid heat. Next, I’m going to purchase some boot covers, which many claim to be lifesavers, or toe savers, at least. All these methods will surely help with the winter blahs, but I know, as we dig deep into February, I’ll need to employ more extreme tactics. Specifically, I’ll have no choice but to board a plane to visit my oldest and dearest skating friend. She now lives in Puerto Rico.
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If anyone has any other useful ideas or remedies on the topic of temperature, whether serious or facetious, please bring forth by clicking on “comment” below. And, I implore you, if I show up at the rink one day wearing a bank-robber style face mask or some kind of cashmere beak, please intervene.
So the day I’m posting this missive, it is 65 degrees in New York. January 8. Go figure.
Ha! A special thanks to Commenter #8 who has provided us with a link to a knitting website that includes an actual nosewarmer! That is just not something you see everyday…
