No, I am not talking about cars. Sorry. I am not sure if any of you care, but I recently landed my single axel on-ice. For those of you that don't know, I figure skate. I am kinda good. I would show you a pic of me, but they normally don't turn out while I am moving. The reason I am posting this is simple: I am very proud of myself. A single axel is the fisrt advanced jump I have been able to land. You have to jump up off of your left leg, cross you left over your right in mid-air, rotate around 1.5 times, come down, and cheque your arms to stop your rotation. It is a true highmark. It takes some skaters more than a year to get it. For me, it didn't take that long in skating years. However, it is right now more of an accomplishment than I ever thought possible. Let me explain this :P

I started working on my axel in april 05. I had almost gotten it by july 05. I had been taking off ice classes to help. Well, one fateful day, after having an agrivating practice on-ice, I was going wild in my off ice class. I was being an uncontrolled idiot. This resulted in giving myself a class two ankle sprain. Damn that hurt. My shoe left a mark on my claf muscle my foot bent so far. The doctor said I should be back skating in, oh, three weeks. He didn't know that "getting on the ice" and "skating" were two very different things. By mid october I was JUST starting to get some of my basic moves back. I was preparing for a test in november so I could conceivably raise my competition level. After a sesion after school I was walking back to my church. About a quarter away from my church, two college girls came up on my. Being polite, I stepped to the side to let them pass. Well, apparently I wasn't far enough over for them. They pushed me about three inches to the right and damn if my foot didn't roll off the first step of a staircase. My face hit the ground infront of theri feet in pain, and of course they did the very "cool" act of smartly walking over to me.
I was not a happy person by this time, and I am not sure of this was the right choice or not, but I got up and to my credit, walked all the way to my church. Needless to say, I didn't get to test, which meant I couldn't compete in a higher level, and didn't get to be in a small group for my axel. Actually, it wasn't untill January 06 till I could finally do all my moves again. From there, it was perfecting them and getting them back to the quality I had before. Slowly I started to practice my axel again. I had to do one in the ice show (I got a small stepout in my large group). Finally, 45 minutes before the show in april, one year after I had started to practice them, I landed two single axels. I didn't land them in the acctual show, but I had landed them. However, three days after the show, I got new skates. They were two lbs. More than my old ones and the blades had a different rocker. In simple terms, they were stiff as rocks and felt really wierd on the ice. Goodbye axel. After that, our rink shut down for about 5 weeks to do it's normal yearly renovations. I was cut down to being able to skate only once a week, versus my normal four times. Then, I went on vacation to assateague. When I came back, I foudn myself in a pitiful state of skating. I maintained this state for a while, got better by the end of july, and then finally I was getting close to my axel again. Then I went to france :'(
However, I was prepared for the brake this time. I had been doing stregth training exercises, and I practiced my off ice jumps almost every day in France. Took out another campers tent once, but that was pretty much the wort that happened. Wheni came back, I found to my joy that I had barely lost a thing. I started to focus my... Focus towards getting my axel back. Well, on Monday of this week, I landed one. It was shaky, but I got the muscle memory. I then did another one, a little bit better. The next day when I skated, I was pleased to find that I could land it consistantly and at a higher speed. Today, after the one day break, I landed seven more. I am now focusing on all my doubles. Just so you guys know, here is the sort of heiarchy of skating jumps:
Waltz jump
Half flip (has nothing to do with going upsidedown. Just spinning in the air)
Half lutz
SalChow (Procounced "sow cow". No one knows why)
Toe loop
loop jump
flip jump (same as above)
Lutz
Single axel
{{^I can do all of these^}}
Double Sow chow
Double toe loop
douple loop, ect

And just so you know what it looks like...

(No, this is not me... I jump higher than she does :P She does make it look easy, though )
Girly Axel

If you read all that, I bow to you.

That's way cool about the skating, but...

If those girls meant to push you off the pavement, you should'ave got up and punched them...

Let me rephrase somthing there:

My face quite literally hit the ground in pain. I kinda got hot in the head and the ankle spraining again shocked me to the point where I really couldn't think straight. If I would have been, though, I might have "casually" lifted my back while the one was stepping over me, thus sending her falling into the other. Trust me, I have played that scene over and over in my head :P

You should have grabbed a d-lock (the bike lock in the shape of a d) put it round one of their necks and locked them to a railing...

...one of my personal fantasies, but I probably need to start carrying one round with me first.

....sorry, I should probably stop.

Axel?

Pardon the confusion... Congratulations PGG- I know how much you wanted that.

I really admire the dedication it takes to be able to skate that well. Really a big achievement, especially when you got set back like that. VN!