Wednesday Night Skate Blog

The last skate of the 2009 season happened on October 28th. And guess what? It rained. Just like it rained on the much-hyped April 1st WNS season opener. The rainiest season WNS had ever seen was going to conclude with a rainout.

Still, a few brave skaters decided that they wanted to risk it and squeeze in a little bit of skating, despite the rain during the day and the prediction of more rain coming shortly after our start time.

The small group of about 15 skaters managed to make it to Washington Square Park, and then over to the West Side Path before slight drizzle turned into a downpour.

Carefully, we navigated wet streets to make it back to Mumbles, our traditional post-skate bar. Entering the bar we found ourselves greeted by skaters without skates – they didn’t want to take the risk that we did, so they were waiting for us in the bar. They came out to party.

And party we did.

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That’s a wrap, WNS 2009.

See you next year.

Sometimes fate doesn’t give you a choice. Sometimes you absolutely, positively have to skate over a bridge.

On October 21st, we had great weather, and it was our second-to-last Wednesday Night Skate. Logically, it was our last chance to skate into Brooklyn over the Brooklyn Bridge.

We had a great turnout — in fact it would be the last big crowd we’d see during the season. The group performed well, handling the wooden slats of the Brooklyn Bridge stoically.

A quick tour to the Promenade preceded our long run back to Manhattan Bridge, which was also handled admirably by the group.

Later in the bar, we celebrated a skater birthday with shots of Jameson and lots of Blue Moon beer. Happiness was experienced by all.

In a group as large as the Wednesday Night Skate, we end up celebrating quite a few birthdays. Sometimes, we’re lucky enough to have a particular member’s birthday fall on a Wednesday, and at the bare minimum we’ll celebrate (and embarrass) that person by singing them “Happy Birthday” at some point during the skate.

On September 9th, a young lady had a birthday, and had a special request for a route: she wanted to go to the South Street Seaport. While we had done that route quite a bit this year, we couldn’t say no to the request, and took the group down the Westside Path, through the Atrium (where we paused to sing to her) and across through Chinatown and Little Italy.

After leaving Little Italy, we headed up to Astor Place. We had a little bit of extra time on our hands, having only skated for about an hour and a half, so we headed to the always-smooth streets of St. Mark’s Place, and then to Thompkins Square Park.

Afterwards, we headed back to the bar, where the real celebration began – with lots of booze and mingling, skater style.

May 13th was one to remember. First of all, we connected with members of the Delaware Skate Club, who drove two hours from Delaware to skate with WNS. Talk about dedication. The Delaware Dudes, as they will henceforth be known as, were a great addition to the group.

That night, we did our traditional South Street Seaport route, which first took us down the Westside Path. From the path, one has a great view of the water. From there, we took a winding tour through a few small public parks, stopping along the way for one of our famous group photos.

Eventually, we ended up at the South Street Seaport, right in front of the two large ships that are permanently docked there. Our route home includes trips through Chinatown and Little Italy, which is very active at night given the many restaurants that line its streets. Upon returning to Mumbles, the bar was decorated in honor of the birthday of one of our members. Pictures from the gallery that night show the craziness that is typical of a skater party, and the full gallery is worth checking out for that alone.

We experienced some extremely hot weather towards the end of April, with temperatures reaching 80 degrees or more. Because the forecast showed such high temperatures — and no threat of rain — WNS decided to do a skate on Saturday to take advantage of it. The destination was the famous Brooklyn Brewery.

This of course meant going over bridges, something we wouldn’t normally do this early in the season when few people are in “skating shape”. But those desperate for beer on a hot day will take desperate measures.

We sailed over the Manhattan bridge and while in Brooklyn, the leader took a few wrong turns and got the group lost. Not that big of a deal, since we had a few Brooklyn residents along for the ride, who set things straight. It’s likey that one or more of the afforementioned Brooklynites had a built-in beer homing device, but that’s pure speculation. Eventually, we made it to the Brooklyn Brewery, and drank copious amounts of their fresh beer.

Afterwards, the group sobered up enough to make the trip back to Manhattan via the Williamsburg bridge. Or was it some other bridge? Perhaps beer-affected memories are hazy.

After months of preparation — new promotions, new marketing, new internet advertising — we were ready to go with the 2009 season kickoff. The regular skaters were looking forward to dusting off their Rollerblades or K2’s and rolling with the group again, and new skaters were eager to try their first WNS. The weather was great…right up until the afternoon of the event. We experienced pretty heavy rain from then on, so our greatly hyped and promoted season kickoff skate was a complete washout.

Fortunately, WNS is quite used to the threat of being rained out, and we implemented our trusty backup plan of hanging out in our usual skater-friendly bar & restaurant, Mumbles, in lieu of skating. Many people showed up. It was great to see old friends, and meet new ones. We actually had a pretty good time despite not being able to skate.

Check out the full gallery at http://www.weskateny.org