Between the cold temps, the rink rake, the bucket dumps, and a bit of Christmas luck, I got my first skate in about two hours ago. About 60% of the rink is skateable, and there is still some snow in the shallower end, but the end that is skateable was pristine. Very smooth, very hard. It was awesome. Since the rink is nestled away in the woods, all you could hear was the crunch of my skates and the soft (ok, not so soft) taps of my stick alternating between puck and ice. My slapshots echoed around the woods like a gunshot, so I’ll either have to abolish those from my night time game or write a letter to my neighbors (who are quite far away), but it seemed like the sound travelled quite a bit on an otherwise quiet evening.

I began the skate with six pucks, and trudged back into the house with two, which tells me that I need to do two things, in this order: put my netting back up, and regain whatever accuracy I used to have when I was playing a lot.

Temps are supposed to increase quite a bit, even possibly into the 60’s on Sunday, so this will be my last skate for at least a week or so. They should drop again by the new year, so we’ll keep an eye on it.