Things to Do in Rochester

With 70,000 square-feet at its disposal, Suburban Ice Macomb fosters frozen fun with figure skating, hockey, and open-skate sessions. The expansive brick facility is large enough to house a pro shop, game room, café, and two NHL-sized rinks where kid and adult leagues face off during hockey games, and zambonis choreograph elegant figure-sweeping routines late at night. Learn to Skate lessons teach students 3 and older how to glide across the ice by using techniques borrowed from the U.S. Figure Skating program.

Dawn Malek and Kathy Hinchman, co-owners of CCPlus @ The Center, designed their roster of fitness classes with one goal in mind: to make exercise accessible to people of all ages and abilities. Regular fitness classes cater to all tastes, and include Vinyasa yoga, kickboxing, Zumba, and Flirty Girl Fitness. Seniors keep in shape in a staggering array of gentle, low-impact exercise programs—many of which are appropriate for clients who use wheelchairs and walkers—such as water aerobics, ballroom dancing, and seated yoga and tai chi. On the other end of the age spectrum, high-energy Zumbatomic classes get kids aged 4–12 in on the popular aerobic dance routines, which harness children’s innate capacity for energy in the same way nuclear power plants rely on an atom’s ability to create electricity by running on a hamster wheel.

To make good on their mission statement, instructors run the My Chance to Dance program. Specially designed for kids and adults with physical and developmental disabilities, the program trains up to 3,000 Special Olympics Michigan athletes each year.

A nonprofit organization, Midwest Freefall Sport Parachute Club aims to instill a love for skydiving in each person who steps into its 17-place Jet-Prop Cessna Grand Caravan, which elevates jumpers to more than 13,000 feet above the southeast Michigan countryside. Tandem jumps allow thrill-seekers to harvest cotton candy from clouds as seasoned instructors take care of dive essentials, including parachute deployment. For those who want to learn more, seven levels of free-fall training transform novices into experienced jumpers who can take solo dives. Before their second jump, skydivers become members of Midwest's club, which hosts social gatherings that debate the merits of traveling down stairs by parachute. Midwest Freefall Sport Parachute Club embraces the standards and procedures established by the United States Parachute Association to help ensure safety during all of its dives.