Looking Back - Winter in CA

Since I missed posting anything the last couple of months of 2010, I decided to start a series called "Looking Back". I took a whole lot of pictures and there is a lot to tell, but I don't want to recap 2010 all in one post (I doubt you want me to either) so I thought periodically I will put up a post about 2010. So here is my first one.

As many of you know, winter in CA is a bit different than many other places in the country. Even Fall is different. Leaves still fall off several of the trees, you will notice it especially when you are driving by a stone fruit orchard or nut trees. However, when you think of Fall, like October and November, our leaves are still very green. Then comes the change, when everyone else has moved on to winter (we have too, we have our Christmas decorations out) our leaves begin to change and we finally start raking the first of December. You drive around town and think "Oh, a beautiful Fall day" Of course you have the Christmas lights to look at too.

So you have the month of December, where you feel it should be winter, because you are singing songs about a winter wonderland and a white Christmas, but you are still raking leaves. What to do? Well this year we decided to do a typical winter activity, at least typical in colder climates.

We went ice skating.

Only this isn't typical ice skating, it is advertised as synthetic ice. Huh? The ad says you don't even need to bundle up. Well this we have to check out.

We find half price tickets on the internet and a group of us drive about an hour to this outdoor synthetic ice skating rink. We decided to pack heavy coats, mittens, scarves and hats, because where we are from, you dress warm for something like this. Keep in mind that we went with families who were not native Californians, one mom had lived in Colorado for many years, and the other lived in upstate New York.

Well we arrive to find a little rink (and I mean little) with a white picket fence around it and Christmas music blaring. It looked like ice from afar and they are using real ice skates. Then we get closer and see it is white plastic.

This will be interesting.

We lace up our skates and hit the "ice".

The problem is that the blades on the skates do not cut through the plastic like it does on ice and you end up sliding about a foot and figure it is easier to walk. The older crowd wasn't too happy about this. My young kids didn't think it was too bad. Of course they had nothing to compare it to. After about 20 minutes of this, the coats, mittens, and hats came off. After about 10 more minutes the skates came off. We found we could slide a whole better better on the plastic with our socks. I wasn't sure what the employees would think of this, but before long they were conducting sock sliding races and contests with our group. They must not have minded.



After our adventure, the socks went in the trash. They looked pretty bad. It was an experience, but we all agreed that we were especially thankful we didn't pay full price for this. But it will be a memory we won't soon forget.