Robbin, age 50, says the friendly community of roller skaters is entirely different from the chilly roller bladers she skated beside for years.

In 1990 I started roller blading. For years I was just going around the whole park, down the hills, and I never made any friends. Roller bladers are not friendly. I used to try to talk to them, I asked one person to teach me how to skate backwards, he said, "How much you gonna pay me?" So I thought, you know what? I'm just not going to make any friends this way."

So, I was just about to give up on it, when one day I saw everybody skating in a circle. And it was wild back then, because it was an illegal circle, and people were drinking and getting high, and asking for money. But when I came to the circle, I was on my blades, and I was too intimidated to go in. And some little guy grabbed me and started throwing me around and around and around! And all of a sudden I said, "This is where my life is!" Everybody was so welcoming! Everybody wanted to help you learn how to skate. It was pure love.

When Lezly and I got married, the rabbi was on skates. I'm a nurse, and I was taking care of children with AIDS, and my kids with AIDS came down the aisle on skates. It was beautiful. Everybody is talking about it to this day.

Skating has changed my life. It gave me back so much self esteem, because I didn't have friends at work; they were all foreigners, and they kind of cliqued together and they didn't have anything to do with me. I would have had something to do with them, but they wouldn't. And I was skating around the park for 4, like, years, and nobody would talk to me. I would try to talk to the roller bladers, and they were just nasty. But this circle welcomed me with open arms.