CLOSED FOR BUSINESS

God dang it… another season of skating on the Rideau Canal has come and gone, and yet again, I failed miserably at dragging me and my so-called husband out for some hot chocolate and a beavertail on the world’s longest skating rink.

The NCC announced the closure of the canal last night, due to the arrival of the mild temperatures. I knew it was coming (and trust me, I am welcoming the warm weather), but I just thought I would have one more chance to get out on the canal before it actually closed.

Every year skating on the canal is something I want to do, and every year it is something that never happens. I think the last year I was actually on the canal was back in 2003. PC and I went for our first skate together that year (back in the day when we were young and in love), and since then I thought it was something we would do every year. However, it’s been 5 long years, and everything including washing the baseboards and organizing screwdrivers goes ahead of skating on the ol’ priority list.

This year, I had it all planned out - on Valentine’s Day we would go skating and then for a nice dinner. I even had the plan implemented as far as having PC verbally commit to it, and then WRITE it in his day planner (major step). But V-Day turned out to be a wicked cold, stormy day, and to hinder the final phase of implementation, some no-mind person assigned PC a hockey game making all plans shot to HELL (but don’t worry, I am over it, just like I am over the other 4 years my V-Day was ruined by hockey)!

Anyways… not to belabour the point, but every time I have a plan to go skating something comes up… like two weekends ago when the Chuck Brown Golf store decided to go out of business and have its CLOSING sale on the Saturday. It was a nice day and would have been a prime opportunity to hit the canal, except that PC couldn’t miss the sale because everything was 75% OFF. The place opened at 9, PC left the house at 8, returned home at 4, BUT got unbelievable deals – making an afternoon skate near impossible.

This weekend would have been a good time to go too, but the CRA decided to have a small system glitch, which cut into my leisure time, so a final opportunity for some skating was missed.

Needless say, the whole skating season has been a big disappointment to me because we didn’t go. I guess there isn’t much that can be done, except to prepare better for next year and VOW to get out there first thing next winter, even if it is minus 61 with the wind chill!