Synthetic Ice Skating

Yep! I live in sunny Southern California where Christmas means mostly sunny days with a bit of rain from time to time.

Don't get me wrong, just because we live in a holiday hot spot doesn't mean we don't long for a white Christmas. We've got it covered though. No snow? No problem! We get in our truck and 4x4 it up to Big Bear where we play in the snow for a couple of hours and then shovel loads of it into the back of our truck and drive it all the way back down to our house and unload it on our front lawn.

Most people don't want to drive up the mountain to touch the snow. Probably because they don't have chains or a 4-wheel drive vehicle. That's okay. Plenty of trucked in snow for everyone. In several locations throughout Southern California, shopping centers and cities will pay to have snow unloaded in parking lots or grassy parks. It's free to stand in line to touch that snow. No sledding though, or snow ball fights. Just the wonder of touching the snow. This is almost as funny to think about as a decent fall in the snow.

What!? No black ice? No scraping windows? No shoveling? Easy peezy, right? Yep! More or less. There are always those rare occasions when it snows or gets icy out.

When I grew up in Utah, going to the grocery store meant risking slipping and sliding around with my grocery cart in the parking lot, frozen locks in my VW Bug, and falling at least a half a dozen times through the 6 MONTHS (give or take) of snow and ice. Good times had by all.

There is this one memory I have from a date I went on in high school while living in Utah: My date had just closed the door for me after I got in my side of the car, what a gentleman, I thought. After what felt like a minute or so of waiting for him to get into the driver's side, I looked back and didn't see him. I looked all around through the windows and still didn't see him. I wondered where he got off to just when he finally opened his door and said, "I slipped on the ice and fell behind the car." He was fine. It was pretty funny though. I still laugh when I think about all of the follies snow and ice brought into my life. My kids won't have those stories.

They will however, sit around and think about the times they went "ice skating" on faux ice. When it's too hot to keep outdoor ice rinks frozen, you wait for the shopping centers to call in the experts over at EZGlide Synthetic Ice, or if you live in a regular neighborhood you wait for them to call an equivalent.

I think because it's fake ice it should be cheaper to skate on. Sadly, because it's manufactured, it's expensive, at least to me, to skate on. I'm sure $13.00 per person regardless of age, isn't more than skating on regular ice, but it's fake, people!

Here's what happened when my kids skated on synthetic ice for the first time:



Do you have any good slip-sliding stories to share? Hopefully all of you are having a safe and fun holiday season! I won't be back until after Xmas.