It’s incredibly hot outside. Too hot to ride bikes for 20 miles. Too hot to go for long walks. Too hot to garden! Most mornings temperatures range from 84F (with 74% humidity it feels like 96F). The afternoons are 96-98F (feels like 106F).

They fit! A first try on of the Lime Green Suregrips.

So… to add diversity and motivation to my indoor workouts, I purchased a pair of lime green roller skates. Not without first giving it much thought and planning.

My lime green suede Suregrip rollerskates with lime green wheels arrived on August 1.

I was like a kid waiting for them. Would they come today? Would they fit properly? Would I be able to do it – skate that is. I’m not 20, so this had a daunting element to it. But I had loved roller skating as a kid.

Replica of my key

As a young kid of 7 or 8, I was given a pair of metal roller skates that expanded to fit my feet as I grew. I wore the key to the skates on a shoelace around my neck a lot. Even when I wasn’t roller skating. At night I hid it in my jewelery box protected by swirling ballerina.

If there was snow or rain, I could be found skating around the basement ping pong table my dad built. The cement floor that was painted a mustard-color was smooth. The corners of the ping pong table not so much.

When the garage was empty I’d circled the cement floor, careful to avoid the bikes and sharp (I learned) garden implements hanging on the walls. Avoiding the oil dripped from the car in the middle of the floor, I would often stop abruptly (a skill in itself) to open the yellow milk box and look through to the outside. Like the spies that I read about in my elementary school books.

Just like my first pair of roller skates

We never ever used the milk box. No milkman ever came to our new house in the subdivision like he did at our old house. At the old house, the truck would stop at the end of the long (it seemed to me) gravel lane and the milkman (never a milkwoman) ran up to our rust-colored stoop. I’d hear the glass milk bottles rattle as he took them from the small wood carrier and put the milk at the foot of the stoop stairs. When there was only one bottle it was my job to go carefully get it.

My dad designed our new house. The whole thing. And I’ve always wondered why he had a milkbox put it in. He thought things would remain the same?

I digress. Back to joy of roller skating.

There were two summer time rinks at two beaches. One in a resort town on Lake Erie and one in a resort town on Lake Huron. As kids we would watch the roller skaters (inline skates had not been invented yet) after a day at the beach. Mom and Dad held my sisters up high so they could see over the wood wall barriers. If I stood on tiptoes, I could see. And sometimes we would see my teenage cousins roller skating. I was riveted.

My sisters each received a pair of white roller skates when they were in high school and would go almost weekly to the roller rink at the opposite end of the city. Sometimes they took a long bus ride to get to the rink. They were dedicated. By then I was in college and would drive them occasionally on a Saturday, renting skates and joining their people. They were daredevils and one of their favorite games was “snake” — of course my sisters favored being the tail of the snake and getting whipped mercilessly around corners of the rink. Until it it got outlawed at the rink.

Protective gear and the new red “key”

All that was not a digression. Not until I started researching online the whole of quad or roller skates, did I remember the extent that rollerskating had been part of my younger life.

These days there is a wealth of videos, podcasts, and tutorials online. I’ve watched thousands and learned that apparently during the pandemic lockdowns there was a surge in roller skating. To the extent that skates were scarce for those who wanted to buy. That is not the case now.

As well there are so many genres of roller skating. Several, such as dancing or rhythm skating, can be practiced in a room in one’s house. As well, the evolution of wheels and bearings can make bearable roller-skating on rough outside surfaces such as the roads near me. The need for a local rink is not as imperative. And I have no desire to master half pipes or bowl at the local skate parks.

Armored with lessons to practice from Asha at Fresh Skate, Dirty Deborah Harry (named after movie “Dirty Harry”), and Skatie I am enjoying my first two weeks with my lime greens. It helps to join communities online for beginning skaters and skaters of a certain age where we progress at our own speeds. I have learned that there are many people who skated in their youth who have “rediscovered” skating later in life. This is a great article about skaters in London.

Further armored with helmet, wrist guards, elbow pads, knee pads and a tailbone guard, I have begun relearning how to roller skate. When the weather cools, I aim to be ready to get outside and get a different kind of workout!

Did you know? Rollerskating is hot!