Rink 2012_2013

[kevmac]

Mark it down - December 16th - first shinny on the backyard rink. Played a little two on two with a goalie for about 1.5 hours on Sunday. It snowed a bit but nothing that wasn't shoveled off the same time as the regular scrapings. Looks like it's going to be a great weekend in Ottawa as well, just in time to keep the Christmas Eve skate tradition alive!

Hope it's getting cold where you are.
Kevin

[kevmac]

I finally had a chance over the holidays to put up my remaining 'sponsor boards'. Here's how they look this year:



Like I said in another post, I cleared the snow from the weekend last night (took me almost 2 hours; I really need to get my snowblower fixed) and skated for almost two hours since the BCS Championship game was a wash:



Kevin

[Joe]

I need to get you a backyard-hockey.com banner. Rink looks great!

[kevmac]

Thanks and a backyard-hockey banner is definitely missing from the pictures!

[kevmac]

First the bad news: My winter mistress took a beating this weekend.
Then the good news (well sort of): It's a high of -15'C (0'F) today

We skated on Saturday afternoon until it hit about 2'C. It was a beautiful day until late evening when I started BBQing some beautiful steaks and it decides to start raining with some snow mixed in for good measure. I monitored the rink for parts of the evening and Mother Nature was doing a nice good of resurfacing the ice so I decided to go to bed. I awoke to see a lovely layer of slush covering the rink as it turned to snow overnight. The wind must have picked up as well because there was a couple of branches laying in the slush (FANTASTIC!) - did I mention that it was still snowing and that I was rushing off to the local arena for my Men's league game? Play the game and a couple of pints standing in the parking lot with snow blowing in my face, I decided I would head home and check on the rink (and prepare for the NFC Championship game - GO NINERS!) I knew that if I started removing the slush, I was in for a multi-hour task and I wasn't going to miss the football game. I decided to wait it out.

After both games were over, I checked the weather and it was -12'C -> huge difference from when I awoke on Sunday morning and it was -3'C. I thought that the slush would have hardened to the point where I could shovel off the snow, unfortunately this was not the case. I could 'stand' on the slush but the shovel dug in when I tried to scrape. I packed it in and will give it another whirl tonight when I am sure it will be harder than a rock. I can honestly say I will have added about 2 inches of thickness to the ice due to the slush. Hopefully I can get it back to 'glass'.

Wish me luck!

[MLeslie347]

Ack! sorry to hear about the slushfest. Hopefully you guys are getting hit with this same arctic blast that we are, so you'll have 3-4 days of really cold temps to get some layers of water built up out there.

Reminds me of the "Fire triangle" from grade school science: Fuel-Oxygen-Heat. Very similar to the "Rink Triangle": Time-Water-Cold. Sounds like you should have the Cold and the Time part, just need to add the water! :-)

On second thought, maybe it is a "Rink Square", the fourth side being - warm gloves.

Hope you're back up and running in a day or two!

[kevmac]

I'm going to go with a Pentagram - fifth corner is alcohol. We are expecting highs (that's right highs) of -18, -21, -17 and -14 for the next couple of days so it won't take me long to get it back. It's going to be so cold doing it. :-)

Kevin

[MLeslie347]

[kevmac]

There is always a spare shovel!

Well, it took me almost two hours to clear the snow/frozen slush off the rink. Ended up going over it 3 times with the snowblower and then I flooded twice. Both south corners look like hell because that's where the water pooled and the majority of the slush resided. I'll be diligent over the next couple of evenings and build the ice back up around these two heaves and she should be golden by the weekend. Needless to say, I'll be skating on it tomorrow in order to help out any issues. :-)

[kevmac]

The rink looked so perfect this morning when I awoke that I took several pictures from my bedroom window and then used MS ICE in order to stitch them all together to make a panorama. It is a ritual for me to get out of bed, walk to the window and gaze at its beauty - I might be a wee bit proud of it.



Hopefully it will warm up a bit this weekend in order to convince my buddies to come out for a shinny tournament.

Cheers
Kevin