Author: Karl Pearson
by Karl Pearson
[Note: I got this cool story in the email yesterday. Then I was talking to my local pal Tom who said, “I just got a call from Karl. He said he was in the middle of his skating rink—and that it was 4 miles long and 5 miles wide.” That Karl knows how to torture us! What a day he must’ve had out there! OK, now for our story… I think the feel of soaring across such big ice must’ve still been with him as he wrote… –JP]
I’d been watching the ice fishers for the last couple weeks. East Bay, just down the hill from my Traverse City home, had frozen solid enough that the regulars were, well … regular. Cold weather had come again a few days ago, and the center of the bay had obviously frozen.
Thoughts of skating sneaked into my thoughts. Last night, on my way back from another visit to the aging parental units, I saw a group fishing on the new ice. “I’ve got to consider it,” I told myself.
The weather report called for cold overnight, with no snow. Today, Wednesday, broke clear, calm and sunny. Temps in the mid 20’s. I set off to look for my old Vikings (my last pair of speed skates from around 25 years ago). Dusting them off, and digging out the old sharpening jig restarted old habits and rituals. They were comforting in their ease of recall.
With freshly honed blades in hand, it was time to commit. I dressed and decided to check the lacing of the skates. Slide the foot in. OW, Ow, Ow — get it off — quick. Oh, that’s right. Take off the skiing socks. Skating uses the thinnest socks — or no socks at all — that you have. Ski boots you wear, skates are part of you.
A couple minutes later I’m at the county park that has lots of fisher cars. Walk a quarter mile over the old, broken, snowy ice, plop my bucket over, sit down and wedge the skates on. So far, so good. Sun beating down, tiniest of breezes. Time to stand up. Yikes, what are these things. I need balance! Where are my poles? I have funny feather feet. Skates are so LIGHT. The boots I walked in are way heavier, light xc ski gear is many times heavier. Skates feel delicate. Too delicate.
Okay — a little glide. After maybe six years of only xc skiing, this feels very weird. Skate blades seem tiny by comparison to skis. They move with my feet, not under my feet.
A two foot, two foot glide, then a little one foot glide, then another and soon a little rhythm starts.
I work my way over toward the fishers. Don’t want to intrude, but get close enough to finally ask how thick the ice is. “Eight to ten inches.” Great. Nice guys. I take off.
I’m about two miles along the bay, and in the middle. I can tell it’s deep. Unlike Lake Lansing, where we could listen to the echo of our skates off the bottom as we glided over the littlest bumps, here I hear nothing. A slight breeze from the Northwest is enough to blow the road noise away and all I can hear is the cracking of the ice.
Now — for those who haven’t ice fished or skated — ice cracks. All the time. It is alive. The sun heats it, the night cools it, a breeze shifts it, even if ever so slightly. It is always shifting, and adjusting. Like a cat sleeping in a sunbeam, tiny movements keep the optimal conditions. I remember the weirdest ice event I ever had was on Lake Lansing when conditions didn’t change for about 10 hours one day. Dropping temps compensated for the sun and the wind was dead calm. It was weird because the ice didn’t crack. After a while I started to get very uneasy, and it took me a half hour or so to figure out why. It was creepy — like skating with a dead partner.
Anyhow — the ice today cracked in the quietest way. Almost a sigh of a crack. Not the shore-to-shore gunshot loud, heart-skipping sounds and feelings that I have had in the middle of Lake Lansing when the whole lake adjusted to night cool by dropping maybe a quarter inch between my feet. Not the rubber ice cracking of the Red Cedar river in the 1960’s when I could watch the cracks move out from each stride. Times when I had to jump onto the ice and hit my stride immediately, then after a few bridge to bridges left no area without skate stride wounds I’d have to barrel jump off the ice to keep from swimming. Nope, these were just gentle, puppy-sigh kinds of easy, slow, lazy cracks that said hello, then wandered off and soon lost interest.
I’ve only been in Traverse City for four years, but this particular area is known to me from a kayak. My kayak time sets the standard here, just as bike time sets the standard on the peninsula and ski speed sets my time for the Vasa trail. It was hard to adjust. I glided off south on the newest frozen ice. The surface wasn’t perfect, having broken into 10 by 100 foot sections and refrozen, but the joints were quite smooth and the surface fair to good, with bumps my 17″ blades straddled easily. I got in the rhythm. I started to discard all the skiing ‘mistakes’. In skating you use more thigh (almost all thigh). Instead of the 45 deg knee bend of skiing, you have to support yourself at 80-90 degrees. Try it. Skaters have huge thighs. Skating is a lactate tolerance sport, skiing is aerobic. Skaters bring their heels together, skaters bring their knees together and recover with their recovery toes pointing at the supporting/gliding ankle. Skiers land on flat skis, skaters glide the blade through and land on the outside edge of the blade, rolling over to the flat as the weight is transferred.
After a hard 20 kayak minutes (in the long stripper kayak Jeff talks about — the one I sold him), I turned around and headed back. I could barely make out the ice fishers. I was way out at the head of the bay. It was only 5 minutes later. Skating time was weird. I could skate for 30-40 kayak minutes in a straight line, then change direction and do it again. I covered the whole bay from almost Deep Water Point to the head. I checked out the neat air boat and chatted with a couple other fishers. One even had caught a fish. I gaged the direction of my runs based on the long seams and the sun. I’d forgotten my sunblock. Stokely ski area last week had needed SPF 50 in the sun. So did this. So I skated 15-20 kayak minutes with the sun at one angle, then changed direction. Memories of long days on the ice in Lansing came back. We used to take lunch, skate for a few hours, eat, skate again until wiped out, then drag home and prep for the next day. This was one of those ‘best’ days that could go on forever without freezing. A truly ‘ignore your mother calling for dinner’ kind of day.
My legs and knees finally got tired. It took what seemed like a long time to even find my bucket and boots, they were so far away, but I made myself get off. I know absolutely that when good form goes away, you quit. Don’t end with bad habits, or bad strides. Finish with the best, so your body will learn while you’re away.
I headed home for food. Maybe I’ll recover enough to go back out again, since snow flurries are forecast for tonight, and that will make it ‘back to Vasa’ time.
I’d been out an hour. Wow.
Skating is amazing. And it’s tough. Note to self — get the legs strong for next year.
Only once maybe every four years does this bay freeze smooth without snow and get thick enough to support skating. Then it’s Hans Brinker time. There is nothing so calm in sport as gliding silently over ice in the middle of nowhere. XC skiing and smooth racing-stroke paddling feel brutish by comparison. On ice, you can become the surface of the ice, not just on it. It may be the defining sensation of my life. I will always keep an eye out for it to come again.
Air Boat
Bay Ice
Bucket and Skates. (What more do you need?)
