I can't believe I haven't posted on this thread!
I started when I was 5 or 6 - Carol Heiss had won the Olypics in 1960 and I had a little set of cut-out dolls of her - I wanted my own skates and got some for Christmas.
My dad said the first time he took me skating on a frozen pond at a park near our home in Detroit, I must have fallen 50 times the first time around!! I still wanted to skate though.
But it was my dad who REALLY got into it - he had skated as a boy in Northern Michigan and so he took it upon himself to get really into the sport. Before I knew it we had joined a skating club (Detroit Skating Club) and I was on my way with lessons and everything just kind of went from there. He became quite the accomplished ice-dancer and the club at that time had evening dance sessions 4 nights a week and he was always there. My mom also skated but she always had trouble with anything but the lower dances - I remember her constantly complaining about trying to learn a mohawk.
Things were kind of tough though with our family - my dad's health was not so great and he stopped skating. I skated for a few years after that but failed a couple of tests - 2nd figure and Pre-Silver dances and so they they made me quit - I didn't have a choice at that time because - well, they paid for the club and lessons and the rink was quite a drive and impossible to get to by any other means so that was that.
I always thought about skating though through the years - always had a pair of skates and when I was in high school a lot more rinks opened up in the area and of course I could drive so I went to the area rinks as much as possible - crazy wild public sessions with millions of teenagers - I was probably the only person on the ice who really knew how to skate...
Continued this pattern through my twenties - always wanting to get back into it but no time, no money, trying to establish my career, graduate school, etc. I was in my Jr year of graduate school when Torville and Dean won the Olympics and they I started to get back into it - I had a pair of used men's skates and would skate more and more - eventually once I finished school started working at a clinic that was very close to one of the rinks where they had an ice-dance session at Noon (this was in Massachusetts) and started to go to the sessions and met a coach who took me through my Pre-Silvers and one Silver - they moved on to another coach when he left the area - got through my Silvers and one Pre-Gold... then moved to Oregon...
Have not tested any more dance but have learned Moves and gone back to doing figures - social dances, etc. - my coach encouraged me to become a judge - which has been great - and difficult - but knew I would do that one day as well.
Skating has been good to me!