Skate Rally!

I changed my mind - skating stuff needs to be in here too - a different distillation can go in my other blog. This is pretty much directly from my notebook, written Saturday morning (wasn't feeling up to re-interpreting it again, and typing fast is soothing)

SO much to write about and remember - skating is such a different pace, such a different engagement of the senses. This mob skate was very different even then solitary skating - it was very like a concert in the shared experience paired with the extreme isolation and introversion - maybe like a mosh pit, overly aware of everyone else while lost doing your own thing.
Much milling about before the rally, awkward and comfortable groups forming, many more individually standing on the edges, more easily accepted here then in other group situations. The group had a ton of energy - and motion- due to the wheels on every pair of feet. For most I'm sure it was unconscious, but standing on skates in not necessarily a still process. The moment of take off was magical, only one verbal shout and being called to motion by other moving backs - a compression of the pack, then space opened up in front of you and off! and immediate stop seven pumps after freedom, but that taste was enough for giddy excitement. I quickly lost all track of where I was, consumed instead with wind and feet and trajectories and speed adjustment and the glories of smooth movement, muscles, and acceleration.

200 people - what a strange pack. Constantly being passed by and passing people. I started out in the rear, but after the first few straightaways - definitely after the first hill - I found myself comfortably in the rear of the first cadre of riders. Always at stops people would wiggle their way through (quite skillfully, given the skates), and always they would be passed again. I much prefer to not be pushy at the stop and overtake people like that on the move. Strange repetition, then, of backs and sides - really only a few stand out as memorable, maybe the supply was neverending. I was nearly always the first girl (may that NOT be my epitaph...) There were probably less the 10 females that I saw total, still was nice to be first in some regard. The eventual feeling was that of being surrounded by friends, playfully jousting on who goes ahead or swerves - I'd win on the uphill, I'd let others win downhill and on cobblestones, and stopped.
Skating really is a terribly introspective thing to do, and it was enhanced by the social context. Competition, ambition, gender, work ethic, grace, endurance, past and present mini-victories; all these concepts, always present in action, are enhanced and play themselves out for reflection. Not too humbling - I'm proud of my work ethic, I don't let competition spur me to nastiness - grace I do need to work on - endurance I have down pat. I wonder at my uptightness on hills, especially since I ski, I wish I could fling myself down heedless, but it takes some mental effort to let that happen. Something to work on I guess. And - I hate having an innate advantage. I was cursing my abec 7s for making the skating too easy....