Centuries ago, intrepid and hardy souls, undaunted by freezing temperatures, strapped animal bones to their shoes to glide across ice.
Roman emperors to French kings to medieval English children attested to the joys of ice skating.
The accouterments have changed, with modern metal blades and man- made ice rinks. Dancing on ice is an Olympic sport, and skating is a prerequisite for professional hockey.
But the spirit to lace up is remarkably the same, and still simple.
After the region's first kiss of snow last week, ice rinks were swarmed by young and old alike, the aspiring professional skater and the adamant amateur.
"Everyone skates," says Harry Datz, manager of the Rink at PPG Place, Downtown.
"There are people who haven't skated before and people who have not skated for 25 years," he says. "There's the lunch-hour crew. And skating makes a great date."
This week, rentals at PPG Place and rinks throughout the region will spike with the holiday season, replete with throngs of students on break and families with free time on their hands looking to get out of the house.
"Families are home for the holidays, and there's not a Fake Movado Watches lot of activities that all members of a family can do at the same time," says Trudy Ivory, manager at Kirk S. Nevin Arena in Greensburg, which has operated an indoor ice rink since 1968.
The cold weather and the hockey season draw the crowds to Nevin Arena in the winter, says Ivory, who has seen an increase in attendance this year.
"I don't think it's anything in particular," Ivory says of the increase. "As soon as it gets cold, people think of indoor sports, and this is where they come."
Fake GucciBut it's not so much the cold weather, but a blanket of snow, that cues the herd to head to Pittsburgh, Datz says.
He points out the fresh crust of snow still hanging on the 65- foot-tall, artificial Christmas tree in the center of the rink, standing like a jewel in a castle of glass towers where everything shimmers.
"We got busy after it snowed," he says. "On Saturday, five weddings came down for photos." Without skates, of course.
Skating since he was a teenager, Joe McAllister, 53, of O'Hara brought his two daughters to take to the ice for their first outing of the season recently at the PPG rink.
"It's an idyllic setting with the snow, and the temperature is not too cold," McAllister says. "Everything looks beautiful."
Describing himself as the skating version of a duffer, McAllister says he can proudly skate around in a circle but is not pulling off pirouettes.
McAllister's best move: "Staying upright."
Downtown visitors flock to the ice rink, taking a break from shopping or just infiltrating the city during off-work hours for a skate that typically lasts about an hour.
The only noise that snuffs out the jazz renditions of holiday songs is the Zamboni polishing the ice. Thankfully, all of the rink hubbub drowns out civilization, most notably the sound of splattering slush from passing cars.
"We all woke up with different ideas of what to do," says Jim Dirling of Brentwood, who brought his wife, Amy, two kids and a friend ice skating at the Rink at PPG Place.
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