Ice Skating 2009
From GRA
Event of December 17th 2009
Our Ice Skating event 2009 will be held on Thursday, December 17th at Cabin John Ice Rink in Rockville, starting at 8:00PM.
Information
Come with your friends and colleagues and enjoy some rounds on the ice with us!!
When? Thursday December 17th at 8:00PM the Guest Researcher Association is organizing the GRA Ice Skating event!
Who? Anyone who is interested in ice skating. It makes no difference whether you are an experienced skater or never used skates in your life before. People will be more than willing to help you on your first tries.
How much? This event is not for free. The exact prize per person will be posted here shortly - it will be below 10$ for the whole time, including skate-rental.
Where? The event will be held at Cabin John Ice Rink in Rockville. But do not panic if you have no car, we can easily organize carpooling. If you need a ride, please post in the forums in the appropriate thread.
Cabin John Ice Rink 10610 Westlake Drive Rockville, MD 20852 301-365-2246
The report
So it came to be the 17th of december, a good time of year for (surprise, surprise) some winter activities. The only thing that I wonder is, why do winter activities somehow include people falling on their precious hind? Well, shaking off that thought and accepting that there's going to be a lot of laughing about my skating attempts (seeing I haven't done this in 20 years), I finally decided to attend the ice skating. As usual, these GRA events bring people together, already starting with my ride -- Robert from Spain who I've just met the other day at the spanish language lunch table.
After driving down to the Cabin John Ice Rink (navigated by my memory of how the map should look like -- of course we had to turn around as suddenly the Westlake Drive ended...) we realized we were late by a few minutes -- and no other guest researcher was to be seen at the front office. But a quick glance onto the rink brought up images of french guest researchers training some figure skating (Gael! Poser!) and others doing boards-layaway. So, on to the rink! After paying $9.75 for the admission and a pair of rental skates, Robert and me were ready to do some serious falling.
As it turned out, surprisingly for me, ice skating seems to be something similar to riding a bike. Even though at the beginning everything is kind of wobbly, soon you remember how to skate and a round or two later I could begin enjoying gliding over the ice. This added to the good atmosphere, gliding over the ice while chatting with changing people all the time. (Changing? Some skate slower, others fall behind, ...). Seeing how about 20-25 guest researchers followed the call for the skate, there was also plenty of opportunity for some little practical jokes (Sorry Virginie!) as well as amusement caused by our different levels of skating expertise. I guess it's always fun to watch researchers do something more physical than sitting behind a computer screen or standing in the labs, performing experiments. The hours on the rink flew by, and the public skating time was over much too soon! Thanks to Caroline for organizing everything and I'm looking forward to the next skate -- with or without the GRA.
--Martin
