While skating along, I couldn't help but think how surreal this experience actually was. Similar to those indoor downhill ski slopes in Dubai, or seeing Pandas in a zoo in Washington DC - it just didn't seem quite right. Sure, my body was in the rink, skating around in circles, a familiar activity, reminding me of lumbering around on skates, lugging around an over-sized hockey stick in a flooded backyard - with really no clue what I was doing. (To me, and apparently the rest of the world, ice skating isn't quite one of those "natural" activities. To this day, I'm really not quite sure humans were meant to waltz around on ice with razors attached to their feet. Iron lotus, anyone?)Even though the essence of skating was the same in Sydney as anywhere else - the equipment, the awkwardness, the disorder, the counter clockwise direction, people hanging onto the rink wall for dear life, and a world owned by teens and tweens - something was still a bit... off. Maybe it was the fact that it was 108 degrees outside the glass walls. Or maybe that there was nearly an inch of water on the ice, making the rink like one giant Slip N Slide. Or the fact that skaters were gliding around not in sweaters and jeans, but their shorts and tees.
Regardless of what was off about ice skating in Sydney, it's fun to "do as the locals do" as much as possible when traveling. And apparently, Aussies have an affinity for ice skating almost as much as Americans! It's certainly not quite as I'd expected, and of course that makes it even more fun. Although I'll probably opt to head for the beach next time, or maybe hitch a ride to the outback - this experience was one for the books.
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