London and Eastbourne Skaters News and Events for April 2008
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In this months edition we have news on:
- Sk8 Street Wise Course
- Wheals On Blog
- Kids Club
- Breakfast Skates and Night Skates
- Ghana Teacher's Sponsored Skate
- Paris Skate coming soon!
- Congratulations Section - Sk8 2 Ski and Flow Grace and Tricks
- Mark and Matt's London Courses
- Results from the Skate with Pete appeal
- Shops News
- Links and Site News
Sk8 Street Wise
Lots of interest already in this always popular Eastbourne Skate Lesson, a half-day intensive course will get you skating the streets, kerbs , steps and hills of Eastbourne, leading to a bit of skating "in amongst the traffic". Deal with dogs, blind man bumps at crossings and even going to the loo on skates! (hows that for attention to detail!). The course takes 4 hours and has several rest stops and a break for lunch. Places will be limited so book with Tim now. As it is outside please ensure you are able to attend BOTH dates as the second is a reserve in case the first choice is rained off.
We've moved the date back to allow more of you to attend, it is now on the 19th April OR 26th April (same day as the 2nd Breakfast skate of the year!)
Attendees should be able to heel brake stop with confidence and be comfortable with Stride 2 and parallel turns. (10 miles around Eastbourne just doing stride 1 is no fun!). All our instructors will be happy to ensure you "make the grade" before the course with a few private lessons if required.
If you want to see previous pictures or need more information about the First Sk8streetwise of the year click here!
This Eastbourne Skate Lesson will get you skating faster, will allow you to stop on skates in several ways and even confidently stop on hills, so the "Hill of Doom" by the Fishermans club will be no problem!.
Cost is £40 per person and pre-booking your place is essential. The class starts at 11am at the Turning Circle. Payment in advance payable to Tim Wheals, 32 Lawns Avenue, Eastbourne, East Sussex. 10 people maximum, first come first served!
Wheals On!
The WHEALS ON! Blog seems to be working well - so now we'll open it to the public!If you have any questions about any skate matter, register a user name and post your question to the Blog and one of our instructors will post up the answer! How's that for service?
If you can stump our instructors with a skating question - we'll have to dream up some sort of prize, so get your thinking caps on!
The first 3 questions on the blog will get £10 off one of our "Mastering courses" that will be running monthly (or more frequently) through the summer!
As you know we're experimenting with several "interactive" mediums at the moment to see which ones you like most. Have a look at the RSS feeds and Face book club as well! I suspect the Internet is not totally reliable however, since when I last looked at the RSS feed monitor it showed that 20,000+ of you have subscribed to the Sk8school feed! Impressive since the Newsletter circulation is only 2500 monthly!
Kids Club
The first one OUTDOORS is nearly here. It will now be at the TURNING CIRCLE, every Sunday at 11am. Weather permitting.
We fully expect the Kids Club to grow and have plans to run it in the winter too. This is the ideal way to get children skating as we have special games that get kids learning to skate, without even realising that they are picking up the new skills!
Along side the Kids Club we will resume our regular group lessons and shop intro's 11am Sunday mornings, also at the TURNING CIRCLE.
Private lessons will of course be available anytime.
Every month (and more frequently if demand dictates) we will run our half-day intensive courses on Mastering stopping, turning, backwards, street and for the brave "flow grace and tricks".
Breakfast Skates and Night Skates
The Breakfast Skates and Skate n Chips night skate sessions will be beginning again on April 12th 9am (some of you will have already have noticed the Sk8 M8's page on the website).
The night skates (the Skate n chips) will soon follow. We recommend with all these social events that you have the skills to fit the task - luckily the dates for the First Sk8 Streetwise of the year have already been announced (with reserve dates in case of rain), watch this space for the treasure hunt...
Subscribe to the RSS feed and keep an eye on the Sk8 M8's page.
The Breakfast skates and Sk8 n Chips start at the Turning Circle at 9am and 7:45pm respectively.
Sponsored Skate
Carol Mockett, an experienced primary school teacher, is dancing and walking her way to Ghana, hoping to raise enough sponsorship money to fund flight, accommodation and teaching resources. For pictures of the work she does in Ghana click here.
Carol is also looking for volunteers to join her on a sponsored walk from the Turning circle by the Waterworks to Holywell and back again. Fancy dress is optional, possibly in the Ghanaian colours of the national flag – red, yellow and green. The walk/skate takes place on Sunday, 13 April from 1pm. The walk represents the distance children in Ghana have to walk to collect water on a daily basis. Children are particularly welcome to join the walk, but they must be accompanied by a responsible adult.
If you'd like to join in and support this worthy cause by skating the route Carol would appreciate the company. If you can get sponsored for it - she'd be even more grateful!
For more information, or for a sponsorship form, please contact Carol on 01323 748922.
I hope many of you will take the time to join us at 1pm at the Turning Circle for this worthy cause! Bring your sponsorship forms!
Paris Skate
Our colleagues in SkateInstructor.com and SkateFresh are organising a trip to Paris to include skating in the Friday night Paris skate. Lessons if you want them and various tours. Totally fantastic skating fun! See here for details or contact Tim. The trip is scheduled for May 9th and you certainly want Sk8 Streetwise skills to do this!
Congratulations Flow, Grace and Tricks / Skate to Ski
Well done to the intrepid bunch that had such a great time on the Sk8 2 Ski Trip! We picked a cold day, so by the time 6:30pm ticked round the hill actually froze which made the Dry Slope at Knockhatch all the more fun! It was a terrific experience and many thanks to Jess and Alex who kept us moving and entertained. We expect to be returning the favour to the Knockhatch ski Instructors at Sk8school soon!
On the note of congratulations, well done to Rebecca, Suzi, Teresa, Jackson and Helen who all survived the Flow Grace and Tricks course. Also many thanks to Ivor for taking millions of photo's whilst saying such things as "I'm glad I didn't sign up for this - it's too hard!".
It was billed as being our toughest course and I think it met expectations! There was a lot of crash and burns, but a large number of successes and everyone is a better (if bruised and tired) skater now! The next course will be outdoors towards the end of the summer - assuming there's enough people that "make the grade" to even sign up for it!
If you are considering it, make sure you are confident with ALL the "Mastering Course" material before you attempt this one. It really is for experts only.
In May we will be announcing coaching sessions to cover specific skills, such as backwards and forwards cross over, stride 3, power slides etc. You might wish to brush up on those too!
Mark and Matt's London Skate Lessons Program
Just thought I should let you all know that we have launched our new website and we'd love to get any feedback you might have on it. Visit http://skateinstructor.com/ and see what the fuss is all about.Although this might not affect any of you (tell your friends who are thinking about taking up skating!) we will be moving our Sunday Drop-In Session (http://skateinstructor.com/courses/course/550923727) from 13:00 to 12:00 from the first Sunday in May. We have a couple of new courses that'll be coming in on Sunday and we need the extra hour for lunch!
And whilst I'm on the subject of our courses: David's Slides course is in a couple of weeks time and it's got places left. Please do consider coming on this course as David is a truly great skater.
Anyway, watch http://skateinstructor.com/ for more information over time.
Skate with Pete appeal
As you may remember we had an appeal regarding a Skate Park project a fellow ICP instructor is trying to get off the ground in Scotland. Many of you responded to his appeal and asked what happened? Well we've got this back from Pete:
Pete says: Thanks so much for your interest and support.
The online vote went extremely well - 97% voted in favour of building the park on the site that we've got the planning permission for.
I'm just back from the council meeting tonight. What a shamble. We presented a rock solid case but the councillors are a bunch of total muppets. They decided to dither about again and want to consider other sites. Not quite sure where it all goes from here.
So it sounds like Eastbourne still has the most friendly council towards skaters then! Good luck Pete!
Shops...
LOCO Skates reports that its stock level is higher than ever. Over 300 pairs of skates currently in stock! Loco have also recently made some price reviews meaning many items have dropped in price. Have a look at the huge range of gear below!
RE-AL reports that they have Nike Hockey Boots in stock (as well as a few other brands of Hockey skate) and have a massive range of pads and helmets for all ages and sizes - so if you are getting ready for Kids Club outdoors in April; make a visit!
Not only that but if you're buying new skates and get one of the vouchers (from either shop), even if you are an experienced skater, hang on to it as we accept them as up to 20% off our "Mastering" skating classes.
Links
For those that have not got themselves completely sorted out with the Sk8school RSS feed yet, here's a tiny fraction of what you missed:Local weather added to the front page.
Skate event countdown timers added to the Sk8 M8's page.
Sk8school Swap Shop re-opens.
WhealsON blog now open to public registration and questions.
To get the Sk8school RSS feed click here - to get the Skateinstructor.com Atom feed click here.
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In Next Months Newsletter:
Mastering half-day intensive courses in "10 more ways of Stopping"Mastering half-day intensive courses in "Mastering Backwards"
Eastbourne Carnival Procession News
More Sk8 2 Ski and Ski 2 Sk8 trips
The Paris Trip details
The Sk8school - Skaters Treasure Hunt
Breakfast Skates, Night Skates and so much more...