Ice Skating

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Did you ice skate as a child? In my small town where I grew up, we have a canal that runs through it. My cousins lived out in the country at the edge of town right across the road from the canal. The older cousins were allowed to skate clear into town and go visit friends, or skate with them in the town. But we were not old enough to be allowed to go that far from the house. I never owned a pair of ice skates, but with the cousins I had options to wear their outgrown skates. They didn't really fit me well and were a bit too big. I would wear several pairs of socks both for warmth and to fill out the skates more. Then we would also put empty bread bags on our feet with another pair of socks over that to keep our feet dry. Because the skates were a bit too big on me, I could not stand up well without my ankles giving in, so I did not skate very well. One year I ended up with a big blood blister on the bottom of my foot and I never ice skated again. Since we skated on the canal, we had a good-sized canal bank from the top down to the ice. We often went sledding down that canal bank. You had to be very careful because there were trees and underbrush in the way. One time, sledding on my belly down that bank, my sled got hung up on a dip in the dirt or a rock or something else and came to a complete stop, while I kept on going. I ended up at the ice hitting my chin on the ice and my bottom teeth going through my bottom lip. Went inside, got that taken care of, and it wasn't long before I was back out on the ice. Just not sledding. We learned with ice skating or other ice play on the canal that the temperature had to be well below freezing for 4 days before we knew it was safe. The canal was not deep but still, breaking through wasn't fun. One of my cousins fell through. It was less than knee deep, but his feet sure got cold. There used to be an ice-skating rink in a mall about an hour away. We took our kids there a couple times. The rink gave skating lessons, and you could rent skates. It was in a food court so we could get a table and drinks and watch the kids skate. There were some really good figure skaters there too. After the kids would finish, we would get something to eat at the food court and continue watching the other skaters before going home. It was fun. Did you ice skate when you were young? Do you still ice skate?