Ice Skating on the Platte River in Colorado

Am really looking forward to watching the Opening Ceremonies of the Winter Olympics on TV tonight.  Friday night TV shows are not my cup of tea, so this will be great entertainment.  With all of our snow/cold in the USA right now, maybe we will appreciate more of what some of these participants go through with their training. 

I was born in Denver, CO and grew up in the mountans near there.  As teenagers, we would go to the Platte river where it was frozen, build big bonfires near the edge of the ice,  and ice skate on the river at night.  That is, until my Dad found out about it...and how dangerous that could be.  What??  Dangerous??   Well...really, we did need the big bonfires to help us see the rocks & tops of the bushes poking through the top of the ice, so we could avoid them.   Needless to say, he put a stop to us kids doing that!   From then on we had to go skating on the fish pond nearby and it always took us a couple hours to shovel the snow off for a big enough area to skate. 

What great memories!  I wonder how many of the Olympic skaters have ever done that??