Be Joyous and Chairful!

What do you get when you combine skiing, ice skating, and sitting? A a glorious recreation only China can come-up with! I am going to call it chair-ice skating for lack of a better name.
A week or so ago the whole Baoding team got really pumped up to go swimming in a hotel across town. We arrived ready to swim in our "bathing suits" and with the idea of staying all day, until we found out the dreaded news...you had to wear a swim cap (that we didn't have) and the boys had to have real swim suits! Even if the boys did have the "proper" swim wear, look to the right for an idea of what the men wear here, it still was going to cost us each 100 yuan! No thanks! We resorted to plan B, ice skating. On the way back to change out of swim suits into ice wear, we stopped at the local park with ice skating to check it out and discovered chair-ice-skating! It basically consists of a wooden chair with sled like bottoms. You have a little place in front of you to put your feet and two poles to push yourself on the ice. I think mostly children do it in China, but aren't we called to remain child-like? There are also options in the chair, well...you can either go solo or get a chair with someone and slide all around the ice. The solo chair offers a faster take-off, but the double chair offers a faster top speed. Look to the left to see the little ham demonstrating the chair.

After one look at the chair-ice skating we knew we had to return! After changing, we gathered back together and grabbed the 29 bus through the rush hour traffic back to the park. Their were people out riding the chairs and people ice-skating as well, but as we approached the booth the pay for our chair, their was rope wrapped around two columns five or six times indicating it was closed. Bummer! Dismayed, we stood there for a moment trying to collect new ideas of what else we could do, when a Chinese lady breezed by, ducked under the rope and went out onto the ice. A moment later, we did exactly the same thing. For the next hour and a half we raced, pushed each other, made trains together, became friends with a seven-year old named Tom and generally didn't act too much older than him. It was a magnificent close to the day.

Me riding on the chairs! So fun!