Shattered Ice Rink Dreams
Written with Plaster Rock Pond Hockey and TDQ in Mind!! (HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!)
Early in the fall, when Glenn from down the street suggested that the guys build an outdoor rink, we created in our minds idealized traditional Canadian winter scenes. We fell in love with the idea of building the quintessentially Canadian outdoor rink on a basketball court at our local park. Memories of neighbourhood children skating, and impromptu pick-up games of shinny with frozen tennis balls came to life in our collective mind. We foresaw a rink on which young daughters and sons could take their first shuffling, hesitant learn-to-skate strides and fall softy into the boards made of snow banks. Classic Canadian memories of cool air and the sound of skates on cold ice on crisp evenings sprang to mind. I head the sound of sticks on ice, pucks on boards and ice scraping.
John, Ralph, Andy and I, who formed the Monday Night Flood Crew, were intent on making our rink dream a reality. The reality of the rink proved to be not so ideal. In the end, we only got to flood twice. One late and cold evening we actually got to use the fire hose to flood, but the other time I got the timings wrong and didn’t have the combination to access the hose to do the flooding. It was too warm that night anyway.
Throughout the winter many friends gave well-intended, though unsolicited, advice: "Make sure your hose is long enough", "don’t build your rink by the dryer vent" and "use an iron to smooth out the bumps" was nice, but didn’t come in too handy. No one provided the advice, "you can fight the weather and you can fight the terrain but you can't fight both." We learned that one the hard way – and lost both fights.
The Crew quickly learned the theory of hydrodynamics as applied to outdoor rink builders. The theory states water seeking its own level will find it at one end of the rink. Who knew that one end of the basketball court was 2 feet higher than the other? With such a grade it was impossible to flood more than a third of the rink. I’ve been told that Walter Gretzky built his outdoor rink by letting a sprinkler run all night in his backyard. Obviously, Walter had a gentle natural depression in his yard — one that could collect water in a wide but shallow puddle. Not a sloped basketball court like ours.
Weather wise, The Crew knew that for a rink the size we were building, we needed a real cold spell for at least a good week. It didn’t happen - this winter was the warmest in recent memory. As predicted by the Farmer’s Almanac, "The eastern section of the country is on tap for a crazy ride." Last month, Environment Canada told us what we had learned the hard. Environment Canada declared this past winter as Canada's warmest on record. Between December and February, Canadian temperatures were 3.9 degrees above normal.
Our outdoor rink never became a reality. Our rink dreams never materialized. The Monday Night Flood Crew’s shared romantic visions become mere slush and water. Our jewel of a rink became mere puddles on the tarp.
The Crew is all ready making plans to get the city to asphalt and level off the basketball court for next winter. Now that it is Spring, we know that we weren’t successful in our rink dreams, but we were successful in creating something that we didn’t plan on – a better Community and the Monday Night Flood Crew.
Early in the fall, when Glenn from down the street suggested that the guys build an outdoor rink, we created in our minds idealized traditional Canadian winter scenes. We fell in love with the idea of building the quintessentially Canadian outdoor rink on a basketball court at our local park. Memories of neighbourhood children skating, and impromptu pick-up games of shinny with frozen tennis balls came to life in our collective mind. We foresaw a rink on which young daughters and sons could take their first shuffling, hesitant learn-to-skate strides and fall softy into the boards made of snow banks. Classic Canadian memories of cool air and the sound of skates on cold ice on crisp evenings sprang to mind. I head the sound of sticks on ice, pucks on boards and ice scraping.
John, Ralph, Andy and I, who formed the Monday Night Flood Crew, were intent on making our rink dream a reality. The reality of the rink proved to be not so ideal. In the end, we only got to flood twice. One late and cold evening we actually got to use the fire hose to flood, but the other time I got the timings wrong and didn’t have the combination to access the hose to do the flooding. It was too warm that night anyway.
Throughout the winter many friends gave well-intended, though unsolicited, advice: "Make sure your hose is long enough", "don’t build your rink by the dryer vent" and "use an iron to smooth out the bumps" was nice, but didn’t come in too handy. No one provided the advice, "you can fight the weather and you can fight the terrain but you can't fight both." We learned that one the hard way – and lost both fights.
The Crew quickly learned the theory of hydrodynamics as applied to outdoor rink builders. The theory states water seeking its own level will find it at one end of the rink. Who knew that one end of the basketball court was 2 feet higher than the other? With such a grade it was impossible to flood more than a third of the rink. I’ve been told that Walter Gretzky built his outdoor rink by letting a sprinkler run all night in his backyard. Obviously, Walter had a gentle natural depression in his yard — one that could collect water in a wide but shallow puddle. Not a sloped basketball court like ours.
Weather wise, The Crew knew that for a rink the size we were building, we needed a real cold spell for at least a good week. It didn’t happen - this winter was the warmest in recent memory. As predicted by the Farmer’s Almanac, "The eastern section of the country is on tap for a crazy ride." Last month, Environment Canada told us what we had learned the hard. Environment Canada declared this past winter as Canada's warmest on record. Between December and February, Canadian temperatures were 3.9 degrees above normal.
Our outdoor rink never became a reality. Our rink dreams never materialized. The Monday Night Flood Crew’s shared romantic visions become mere slush and water. Our jewel of a rink became mere puddles on the tarp.
The Crew is all ready making plans to get the city to asphalt and level off the basketball court for next winter. Now that it is Spring, we know that we weren’t successful in our rink dreams, but we were successful in creating something that we didn’t plan on – a better Community and the Monday Night Flood Crew.
posted by Pete at 3:31 PM
<< Home