An old coach of mine used to preach “empyting the bucket” on each shift, meaning that each of us should totally exhaust all faculties to get the job done.  Surely those words are still spoken in rinks around the world, but when it comes to backyard rinks, emptying the bucket has a slightly different connotation.  I did some bucket dumps onto the snow-packed ice this evening, hoping to melt the thin layer of snow back into the ice and freeze it in time to use it this weekend.

Of course, with a rather large evening storm approaching tomorrow, this could all be for naught.   So with that in mind, I decided to try a little experiment.  I did bucket dumps on about 2/3 of the rink, which should lead to relatively smooth ice once it freezes overnight.  The other 1/3 I left alone with its thin layer of snow.  I’m eager to see if the difference in pre-snowstorm ice conditions has any effect on the post-snowstorm cleanup and ice quality.  I’d love to say that this was a planned experiment, but in reality, I just got tired of bucket dumps and it was getting late.  At any rate, I’ll post back here with the results after Saturday’s storm.