Roller blading is for sissies.

Just kidding! Holy cow. Took the roller blades out for a spin last night. I thought that it would be totally reasonable to ride from my house down around Lake Nokomis. Yeah, no. Pete was brave and strapped his roller blades on too and the two of us headed out. We must have looked semi-special as we tried to maneuver the sidewalks around the Lake Hiawatha park down to the bike path. We couldn't skate next to each other because we were both all over the place, so I let him go ahead of me.

Then the question came up: Do we roller blade on the walking path or the bike path? My thought was that because the roller blades have wheels we belonged on the bike path; I'll have to look that one up. In any case, my ass is killing me today. Anyone looking for a good workout for their hiney should try roller blading.

I wasn't so confident in my ability to stop, and since the paths are pretty hilly I found myself scooting off to the grass to slow down. Seriously, people must have thought we were let out from a group home or something. We found a parking lot just north of Lake Nokomis and skated in circles there. I thought I would be slick and try doing a sideways stop, the way ice skaters do it (Pete's suggestion), and totally bit it. There is a reason for wearing elbow, wrist and knee pads. Although another reason I probably looked a bit gifted was that I could only find one of my wrist pads, so I only had one on.

Between all of the padding, arms flailing about and skating into the grass its a wonder we ever made it back to my place. We ended up going about a mile from what I could tell from the map and boy, did I feel it. To think that when we left the house I was so certain we'd make it four miles down and around the lake.... some other time perhaps.