Quick tip: extra skate guards for competitions

This tip comes from Competitive Skater, who keeps two pairs of skate guards in her bag for competitions. One pair is her wet pair, the other is the dry pair.

At a competition, Competitive Skater wears the wet pair (dry at the time) to the rink, removes them, skates, and then puts them back on.

Competitive Skater returns to her skate bag, dries the guards, dries her boots and blades and puts on her dry guards for photos. No rust. Smart girl, that Competitive Skater.

Competitive Skater Dad is even smarter – he got Competitive Skater’s second pair of guards from the rink manager when the manager was getting rid of a year’s worth of lost-and-found stuff.

I scoured the lost-and-found last night: no dice. So, Ice Girl will be getting her second pair of guards at Badger State this weekend. Renee at Rainbo’s bringing them with her – we just have to pick the color. I’m hoping Ice Girl won’t pick purple, but I’m betting they’ll be sparkly.

Update: Ice Grandma popped for the new blade guards at Badger State Winter Games. When I buy guards, I shell out for the plain ol’ guards that cost $9 – 13. Ice Girl has had her eye on these cool flashing guards for $25. You know me. I did the math and figured I could buy two pairs of guards instead of one pair of flashing guards. Or, I could buy one pair of plain ol’ guards and one hour of ice. Choose, Ice Girl. She totally outwitted me and hit up Ice Grandma instead. Now Ice Girl has flashing guards (very cool) that require 8 watch-type batteries. They came with batteries, but I’m betting we’ll need replacements soon. I did lobby hard for the orange flashing guards, but both Ice Girl and Ice Grandma looked at me as if I were nuts. She chose clear flashing guards – the better to see the cool lights.