The $300 Skate

by Leigh Hafrey

For a decade now, my family has paid annual dues to the Cambridge Skating Club, a town institution dating back to 1897. As our boys have grown, we have spent time at the indoor rink the club rents a few hours a week from a local independent school, in addition to the club’s own outdoor rink, within walking distance of our home.

The outdoor rink is, in fact, just a set of flooded tennis courts plus the clubhouse, a vaguely Nordic structure that deviates sharply from its plush mid-Cambridge surroundings. However, the clubhouse is all the more charming for its rough-hewn whimsy.

Since the outdoor rink has no refrigeration units, the weather rules it, and our use of it. Over the years, the number of days of outdoor ice has fluctuated from a handful to several dozen. We never know what we are going to get: though the club newsletter quotes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the non-traditional cultivators who inhabit this city of universities and bio-technology labs recognize that federal agency forecasts do not always better the Farmer’s Almanac, itself never a sure thing.

We joined the club largely for that outdoor ice, since I skated on the lakes of downtown Minneapolis as a boy. By some quick turn of heredity, our boys have adopted my personal predilection and now decline to skate indoors. My ice differs from theirs, though. In my idyllic and hazy Minnesota memories, we used the broad, ploughed paths on the lakes, like the heat from the big cast iron stove in the warming hut, for free. Our boys’ love of the open air and pick-up hockey concentrates the cost of our club membership in those few days of each season when cold, dry weather intersects with sudden pauses in our collective work schedules.

As a result of this haphazard rhythm, I have developed a fretful inclination to constantly tabulate how much use we get from those dues. A long string of "no ice" days feels like a catastrophe, but even in a good season, I routinely assess what each session is worth in the fond hope that we will eventually live what could be considered a "deal": in my perfect, post-childhood world, something like $5 per person per visit.

To my knowledge, we haven’t ever reached that $5 value and are now drifting further from it, what with college, international business travel, aging parents and ski weekends ("discretionary" activity, of course, represents money spent on top of the sunk costs of enjoying the outdoor rink). I say all of this with embarrassment, but an embarrassment somewhat mitigated by the fact that, during a conversation I had recently with a fellow club parent, I mumbled something about having made it to the rink only once that season, to which he responded with a grin, "Ah, yes, the $300 skate!" A rueful light dawned —I was not alone in my obsession.

A shared obsession is still an obsession, though, and I wonder about its origins. Does it bear any relation to my impulse to consistently put fewer quarters in the parking meter than I need, even if another 25 cents would save me hours of worry regarding a potential $10 ticket I could receive because my meeting runs late? Does it reveal our penchant for using a bad purchase, no matter how uncomfortable, until we feel we have justified what we knew was a mistake the minute we paid for it? Or does it, as I think on enjoyable skating days, reflect the impulse to follow our bliss in at least one venture, without crippling it and ourselves through utilitarian calculation?

In the end, it is probably all of those factors, plus one more. We still live at least implicitly with the 19th-century notion that rational, "economic man" seeks a maximum of wealth for a minimum of effort. That seems fairly straightforward and efficient at both a societal and an individual level. Yet, how do we define rationality and efficiency? While giving up our family’s skating club membership would eliminate the anxiety I feel from not using it, I know I want the option of outdoor ice time in the heart of the city.

When the Charles River freezes over, Massachusetts state troopers routinely remove those who venture onto it. Though the risk of falling through the ice is real, and the Charles is only dubiously swimable in any season, visions of Big Brother dance through my head when I see a patrol car stopped on Memorial Drive, its roof lights flashing, while a uniformed officer reins in the latest impromptu Michelle Kwan. If that is the only convenient alternative, it seems worth $300 a season to preserve the freedom of ice, or at least the idea of it.

Adam Smith, he of the "invisible hand" and "moral sentiments," would say I sympathize with that innocent on the river, and I do—enough to protect my own interests as best I can. At the same time, the antidote to my dues anxiety may lie elsewhere; say, in our collective efforts to minimize climate change or, if you choose to dispute the impact of greenhouse gasses, at least to live more economically, more frugally. We may not fix the weather, but we can behave a little more humbly, a little more patiently, beneath it. That, too, is a form of efficiency.

In the interim, the "$300 skate" inspires in me an ethic of resignation and renewal. At the beginning of the summer, the club sends us a notice regarding our membership for the coming year. I then ask my family if they think we should sign up for another round of (increasing) dues. Before they answer, I begin writing the check, because I already know, and appreciate, their reply.