Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Floodin' & Mowin'

As stated in the Backyard Ice theme song*, when you are floodin' you don't have to think or nothin'.  Well, actually, sometimes you think about topics for your blog.  Like the fella says at the bottom of this web page, ideas for this blog tend to arrive when I am standing outside in sub-zero temperatures pouring water from a garden hose.

Mowing the lawn is a similar experience to flooding the rink because when you're mowing you also don't have to think or nothin'...it's just another great activity for mulling blog topics.  And so it was that a little less than a month ago, as I was mowing the lawn on the rink, I came up with the idea for this blog entry (and, it turns out, some future ones, too).

I took a picture of the rink with the intention of taking pictures from the same vantage point throughout the season to document the evolution (or lack thereof) of my backyard ice.  I'm betting that the next picture will be a lot whiter.  At the very least, I guarantee that the wood pile in the background will be smaller (...it already is).

I suppose that the rink-building process could start any day now - it's not unheard of to get a ton of snow dumped on northern New Brunswick in early November - but a quick peek at the forecast for the next two weeks doesn't look promising, as the average high temperature is about 6 degrees.  Real progress only happens when the average high temperature is about minus 4.

It seems wrong to be hoping for an early winter with lots of cold temperatures, especially when you consider that I spend about half of my time at my job in the great outdoors.  However, that's the mindset of an outdoor rink builder.  I'm actually probably the only person who isn't wishing for a repeat of last winter, only because I don't want to be blogging all winter about hoping to go for a skate in the backyard.

* 700 ft. Ceiling by The Tragically Hip