Tag: winter

Finally, the backyard is frozen enough to skate upon!  We had made tentative plans last night to skate early today, assuming that the overnight temperatures would be sufficient to freeze the ice to support real skating. This morning before the day got too warm I went outside to reconnoiter and found the the rink was frozen solid – there was absolutely no water sloshing up around the edges of the ice when I walked on it. I quickly went back inside, grabbed my skates and went back out to tie up the laces and take a spin on the ice. I must say, after being so disappointed last year, when we did not get to use the rink at all, and then feeling bad for putting up the rink so late this year and thinking I’d missed the opportunity for enough cold days to freeze up the ice, being able to finally step out on the ice and glide over the entire surface was such an exhilarating feeling. Finally!

Before long, W. came out of the house, and I helped him put on his skates. I got him a folding chair to use as a kind of walker on the ice to help him get used to keeping his balance. A little while later, out came K. and Mom; we had bought a pair of strap-on double bladed skates (imported from the Great White North, so you know they’ve got to be good, eh?) for K. to use, that go right over her sneakers. She was a little wobbly, and tended to walk, taking steps, rather than pushing off, but she’ll get the hang of it eventually. Mom, unfortunately, only took pictures and did not get to skate at all 🙁

We were outside for about 40 minutes, when I decided to dig through the garage and break out my hockey sticks (c. 1975, complete with the Bobby Clarke signature, and a 1979 Koho stick.) Although I am right-handed, I actually am a left-handed stick handler, so W. can’t use my sticks, but he has two small play sticks and a puck that Santa had brought him a couple of years ago, so we took turns skating around the ice and taking shots at each other’s imaginary goal. This was exactly the kind of fun that I had imagined we’d be able to have on a backyard rink when I first got the idea to build one a few years back. It is really great to finally enjoy our rink.

Eventually, the sun started to warm up the rink a bit, and the surface got a bit chopped up, so I had to bring out my rink rake to resurface the ice. The only problem was that last week, while resurfacing the ice, I had made an amateur mistake in forgetting to turn off the shutoff valve to the outside spigot, and open the spigot to drain off any water remaining in the line. The water instead froze up and I could not turn the spigot on for the rink rake. So, I grabbed Mom’s hair dryer and heated up the outside spigot just enough to melt the ice and get the water flowing again. Once again the rink rake worked perfectly and things should be pretty smooth for maybe some more skating this evening.

So after coming home from yesterday morning’s Pinewood Derby, I spent most of the afternoon assembling the backyard ice rink. I picked a new location from last year, since the yard is so unlevel in that spot; this year’s location so far seems much better. So, it was pretty cold yesterday afternoon (it was -6 F yesterday morning) and since the boards had been sitting outside for the past year they were pretty well frozen, which made them a bit heavier and harder to drill the decking screws to attach them together, but by around 5:00PM the rink was assembled. At that point I did not want to put in the tarp and start filling it up, since I wasn’t really sure how long filling would take, and since I was essentially frozen myself at that point I did not want to hang outside anymore. I put in the tarp and called it a day.

I knew that there was a chance of snow last night, and sure enough when I took a blurry look sans glasses out the window this morning at the backyard on my way downstairs there was about 2 inches of snow in the rink. I finally got around to setting up the hose and filling the rink today. I put much less water in this year, as I think last year’s rink never froze solid enough for us to use because it never really got cold enough to freeze so much water. I really wish that I had setup the rink earlier, since it has really been such a cold winter thusfar, but we’ll see what happens this year. Also, using a white tarp would reflect much more sunlight than the blue one that I use, but that will need to be an improvement for next year. I did finally try out my homemade rink rake just to make sure water flows through it as expected (it does) to use as a little handheld zamboni for surface repairs.

My work is now done – 10 minutes until the NFC Championship game… go Eagles!