Yesterday I took Thomas and a friend of his to the Montgomery Whitewater Park, which is, as the name might imply, a kayaking and rapids obstacle water course, it was recently used as the time trials for the USA Olympic team to determine who would make it to the Olympics.

Anyway, this year, they built an ice rink in one of the areas and they have open from November until sometime in February so I took Thomas and his friend and myself ice-skating

first, holy shit! It has been so long since I’ve done anything like that. I’m not sure that I have been ice-skating since Thomas has been alive; He’s now a teenager. first foot down on the ice was like I had never skated before in my life. It was so difficult, 10 minutes and I wondered if I had made the wrong decision about what activity we should’ve done that day After I came back in and readjusted my skates. I made a determination that my entire goal was just to be able to go back-and-forth on the rink in the middle without falling.

I did not fall, but I did finally get the confidence in my feet to make a very rough attempt back-and-forth. I’m sure I wasn’t much fun to look at but after about 45 to 60 minutes of practice, I was able to spend the last 20 minutes or so actually skating

despite how I felt for about half of the time I was there, I am actually very pleased I took the time to do it. we don’t have an ice rink anymore in montgomery, so it is difficult to get that type of sport practice in, in much the same way I was talking about curling just the other day. It isn’t something we have in montgomery, which is to say, montgomery is lacking in a lot of cultural areas.

I won’t get into political issues here, but I will say I have recently determined it is a vastly different demographic in Montgomery than most small cities in america. In Montgomery, we are approximately even in race percentages between black and white. We are the “civil rights city.” what this really means is we have two fairly different cultural backgrounds. This isn’t to say one is right or wrong, it is to say that our city, which currently has a population of about 200K. Culturally, this means we are a city of two towns. two towns which can’t support entertainment industries of a city of 200,000; rather, entertainment for two smaller cities of 100,000 each. I treat it this way, not to be or show racism, but rather to appreciate the cultural differences between us.

the spice of life is literally in the differences between cultures. Why do we travel? why do we read? why do we like art? why do we enjoy music? Why do we love international food? its only because we appreciate the differences in our culture, upbringing, taste, aesthetic, entertainment, and of course our ways of thinking.

Wow, I just made a blog post about going ice skating with my son to a civics lesson. woof.