My family moved to Texas from Maryland when I was a young boy, and one of the things that I missed the most was the ice skating rinks that were everywhere up there, and few and far between in Texas at the time.

As time has gone by, however, and the Dallas Stars and a few minor league hockey clubs moved to Texas, ice skating rinks are starting to pop up more and more across the state. The good thing about it is, there are now many places open to the public, and it has always been my experience that they provide good, clean fun.

My parents used to take me and my brother to ice skating rinks when we were kids, and it was such a thrill to glide down the ice, race each other and start learning how to play hockey. I don’t know if it is because ice is such a unique surface on which to play a sport, but everyone seemed to work together and help each other out when we were at a rink.

I think one of the things that was most appealing about it was that it was a family sort of event, where parents and children got out on the ice together and skated together. There was no tolerance for fighting or cursing, because there was almost an honor code of sorts at the ice skating rinks where I grew up that it would be reported, and such people would be removed.

When we started to finally get more ice skating rinks in Texas, I decided to take my children one day, and found it to be the same kind of way. Everyone was having a great time, and while the parents were not nearly as proficient on their skates as their children in Texas, they were out there with them and doing their best to keep up.

We began visiting rinks throughout the area and it has become one of my kids’ favorite activities. One of the greatest things about it is that it can be done all year, and it is often one of our favorite destinations when it is hot outside, because the rinks are always so cool.

I always thought I would have to take my children back to the Northeast if they were to experience the fun of ice skating rinks, but we have them in our own backyard these days.

My son is now playing in a youth hockey league and my daughter wants to be a figure skater when she grows up. I am so happy that ice skating rinks started to open down here, because it has opened up a whole new world to them that they may not have known otherwise.

The author has been writing online for 4 years. Come visit his latest site www.TurboTrafficSystemBonus.com that reviews Turbo Traffic System free traffic formula.

It is a shame that the winters aren’t like they used to be. Two years ago, for the first time in memory, the  backyard ice rink did not work. We set it up on one of the coldest days of the year, and it looked like it was going to freeze solid. Just as it was getting there, the weather suddenly changed and all of the ice melted. Rather than having a  backyard ice skating rink, we had a backyard pool that winter.

Full article at Building Your Own Backyard Ice Rink

Roller skating, one of America’s primary mass participant sports, has traveled a long and sometimes hard road since the day two centuries ago when an anonymous Dutchman first attempted to transfer skating from ice to ground. The Netherlands ice-skating enthusiast, who could scarcely wait for the canals to freeze over each winter, nailed some large wooden spools to wood strips which he attached to his shoes, and went bumping along his merry way. Apparently his crude attempts at “ground skating” were not too successful, for nothing more was heard of a substitute for ice skating until mid-eighteenth century.

Then an ingenious Belgian mechanic and musical instrument maker, named Joseph Merlin, devised a pair of skates which ran on small metallic wheels. In London, where he had moved to become director of several museums, he fascinated the local gentry at a Soho Square party with his skates. However, he could neither turn nor stop his forward progress on skates and dashed himself against a huge mirror at a fashionable masquer­ade party while skating and playing the violin. According to a contempo­rary account, “He impelled himself against a mirror of more than £500 value (approximately $1,300 at today’s exchange rate), dashed it to atoms, broke his instrument to pieces, and wounded himself most severely.

To read more, go to the Roller Skating Tips website by clicking on this link.

At last you are quite ready for your first skate. Step onto the ice with the aid of a rail or a friend’s hand and stand still in a relaxed position, your feet parallel about 6 inches apart, with both ankles upright and your weight evenly distributed. Now bend both knees and both ankles forward, making sure that your pelvis stays forward over your feet and the rest of the body upright with your back straight but not arched, your shoulders easy, and head erect. This is the basic posture of skating (Illus. 3-A) and ensures that the weight of the body is directly over the skates. It is essentially the posture of walking plus an exaggerated forward bend of the ankles which puts the points of your knees so far ahead of the points of your skates that if you look down in this position, without “dropping” your head or shoulders over, you should not be able to see your feet at all. Flex your knees and ankles gently a few times to get used to the feel of so much bending. If you are a skier, this won’t feel strange to you; if a non-skier, you may feel a tightness at the back of your heels. In that case there are stretching exercises which I shall prescribe for you shortly.

To read more, go to the World Figure Skating website by clicking on this link.

An article about Inline Skates

Aren’t all inline skates the same? If you asked this question to a skate shop owner or an experienced blader, the answer would be an emphatic “No!â€? There are a number of differences between inline skates—all of which will determine your skating performance in the activity in which you plan to engage…

Full article about Inline Skates is at www.OnlineSkatesSource.com

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An article about skating

 Do you like to skate? Are you good at it? Like most things in life, people are good at the things they like. Think about it. If your first experience on skates resulted in your falling down so many times that all you remember is the pain… then chances are you probably don’t like to skate. However, if you had even a little success initially, you probably were determined to get your balance and you probably even laughed when you did fall down. In fact, when someone asks you now…

Full article about skating