I was on campus today for a retirement party for a former co-worker, and decided to stop at Bird Arena across the street on my way home. I had spent many, many hours at that rink until the knee injury in 2022.
I was struck by a number of changes. First, lighting inside was vastly improved, with loads of daylight balanced illumination. There has been thermal insulation placed in the ceiling, and the roof trusses got a badly needed coat of white paint. There are new benches in the lobby with a fresh finish on the wood slats. It's actually a very clean looking rink now.
Unfortunately for figure skates, the emphasis on hockey is even more in abundance. Lots of signage for hockey and its events is everywhere. It's as if the whole facility has forgotten about other kinds of skating. I noticed that the schedule for freestyle ice is reduced from when I skated. Sigh.
The university has scheduled work to entirely replace the cooling system in the floor in summer, so it looks like renovations are not yet finished.
(https://www.afterness.com/skating/images/bird_arena/bird_arena_12-2025-2-1000px.jpg)
(https://www.afterness.com/skating/images/bird_arena/bird_arena_12-2025-3-1000px.jpg)
It's happening too late for me, but I'm still glad to see the facility improvements.
Oh no, what happened to your knee? Are you not skating at all anymore?
Hockey makes the rinks more money I believe, but I certainly wish there was a rink near me that I could go to that catered to figure skaters specifically. I get jealous when I watch videos of figure skaters in Japan whose larger rinks don't have any boards at all - you can just step right off the ice anywhere you want. Meanwhile mine has 6 feet tall old dingy plexiglass above the boards and netting above that so watching a competition as I did last weekend is pretty suboptimal. And having skated on Olympic-size ice before, NHL always feels too narrow... My home rink is pretty run-down and really could use some renovation - the old pictures on the website look a lot better than now. The roof could use some insulation - condensation drips are a big problem there. To get to Olympic-size ice now, I have to drive an hour and a half, and ice time is ~50% higher (but a nice treat on occasion). But the home rink, despite it's flaws, is home. :)
I tore a meniscus when I fell on a RFO twizzle just before COVID hit.
Even though I went to a doctor, it went un-diagnosed for a year or two. Inflammation of the torn meniscus destroyed much of my right knee's cartilage in that time.
After surgery to remove my meniscus, I'm still hobbling around even on land. A knee replacement will be in my future.