Ice Skating on Plastic

Yep you read that right-plastic. Tonight a friend and I took the older 3 kids ice skating downtown on an outdoor ice rink. It was a free event put on by the city's Art Festival. When we got there and looked at the rink it was obvious that it wasn't ice, but we couldn't tell what it was. When you looked at it you could see the spots were the pieces were fit together.

It looked wet and there were what appeared to be shavings (ice possibly) on top of it. When you skated on it, you didn't glide so much as stick, and it sounded like you were walking on plywood.
We asked a man in charge about it and he told us there was no ice at all on the rink, and that it was indeed plastic sheeting with a chemical sprayed on top to make it slick. The neat part about the rink is that you could ice skate in the summer on it because it doesn't melt.
The kids had a great time skating. Simeon happened to have 2 friends get in line right in front of us, so the 5 kids skated together. Ammon took some time to warm up, but once he did he was off and had no desire to be done skating, even after being out there for over an hour and  half. Corrine was excited to get some ice skating practice in before an ice skating birthday party tomorrow. She took a good fall on her rear right at the end and came up pretty sore!

It was a nice warm 50 degrees outside so we weren't cold as we skated and people watched.