The weekend before break, Andrew came for a visit. It was the perfect storm - I had just finished a bunch of exams, had no weekend commitments, and I wanted to show off my freshly-decorated apartment.
While he was in town, we decided to do some Christmas-y things, including the most Christmas-y thing that you can do in Pittsburgh: go ice skating around the huge Christmas tree downtown at PPG Place. Seriously, the ice skating rink actually goes around a huge, twinkling tree. It's like a Christmas explosion!
My desire to ice-skate around the gigantic tree was also fueled by an overwhelming need to show off my mad ice-skating skillz. Last year, I spent a quarter in "Ice Skating 1," an amazing class in which I learned all kinds of tricks. I can skate backward. I can skate on one foot. I can do a slide stop. In summary, I now rock a ice-skating.
Since that quarter, I have yet to go skating with Andrew, meaning he is still oblivious to my talent. So secretly, I was uber-excited to impress him at the rink.
When we arrived downtown, it took forever to find a parking spot. That should have been a hint that the evening was off to a bad start. After cruising around for a bit, I finally nabbed one. Things only went downhill though; when we walked into PPG place, we discovered that the line for the ice-skating rink/humongous tree looked like the line for the Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point. My heart sank. No matter how much I wanted to ice skate, I knew that we weren't in it for the long haul. Two hours in the freezing cold just wasn't going to happen. I was pretty bummed.
Knowing how badly I was looking forward to skating, Andrew suggested that we look into other options. Thanks to a tip from friend and the internet on my phone, I located an outdoor skating rink in park not too far from my apartment. We jumped back in the car, and headed that direction.
I was silly enough to think that once we got to the park, the skating rink should be easy to locate. After all, how hard could be to drive around and find it? Turns out, pretty darn hard. Seriously, we drove over one bridge six times during the process of looking. I finally broke down and called someone for directions. The worst part is that in all of the aimless wandering, hoping that we would find the skating rink, we weren't even close. Andrew was getting kind of grumpy. He claimed we should have had just called for directions from the beginning. He tried to keep the grumpiness to a minimum though. I think he was just happy that we finally found a place, and I could be placated with a few laps around the rink.
The area right around the rink was packed with cars. Everyone was parked along a curvy road. From the road there was a path that led to rink, but we weren't able to park anywhere near the path. We had two options: walk to the path or take the shortcut over a small hill. I was too eager for the first option, so I headed triumphantly for the hill. That's when the Great Ice Skating Tragedy of 2010 struck. In the darkness, the hill looked totally normally and grassy, but it was actually super slick and muddy. Two steps up the hill, my foot slipped out from under me, and I hit the ground - the muddy, muddy ground. My coat was muddy. My jeans were muddy, my super adorable new gray suede boots for muddy. TRAGEDY.
Andrew helped me up, trying to stifle a chuckle. He kept saying, "We don't have to ice skate. We can just leave." At this point, I was far too determined for such nonsense. I pretended like nothing had happened, and continued toward the ice skating rink (though I did succumb to the long way instead of trying the hill again). The girl working the counter smiled slightly as we walked up. I think she could see the mud. Ignoring this fact, I said, "We'd like two tickets for open skate and two rentals." Her smile quickly faded, and she said very apologetically, "We're about to end this skating session, but our adult skate starts in two hours." That was the nail in the coffin of the Great Ice Skating Tragedy of 2010. I think at that moment I realized a variety of things: I was cold, I was muddy, and I was not going to get to show off my ice skating skillz.
I had a mini breakdown, so Andrew drove us home. We watched It's a Wonderful Life and everything was instantly better. Hopefully, the ice-skating powers-that-be are a little kinder to us next time.
Happy Holidays!
Brittany
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