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learning to skate

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Kenny's going for his introduction to ice skating tomorrow, and needs some equipment.

I've no idea what makes for decent skates or helmets these days, so it's a bit of a crapshoot. I never learned to really skate, myself (my wife, from subtropical Japan, is the skater!), and I certainly don't expect to find any clues as to what's a quality product when in the store. It's no longer possible, it seems, to get useful answers on products when you talk to the people who sell them—every answer is either slanted or made in ignorance. And it's certainly not possible to gauge a product's relative value from its price, location of creation, or brand. The label on the product essentially indicates a rough collection of shareholders behind a certain team of marketing parties who've likely contracted the actual manufacture to someone based on price. The collection of shareholders is almost certainly non-unique to others operating in the same field, and even understanding the qualifications of a management team responsible for a company is hard in the era of high executive turnover and celebrity CEO's.

And sure enough, I emerged from the store with some skates. But I can't tell you the brand, by whom they were made, or what features that they possessed to make me select them other than that they looked to my inexpert eye a bit better made than the others. I certainly wasn't required to spend much. We'll see how they stand up. I expect that Kenny will have outgrown the things before the skating season is through either way.