BYI: Johnville

You might have heard about a little TV show called CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.  The popularity of the show resulted in two spinoffs, CSI: Miami and CSI: NY.  See what they did there for the names of the spinoffs?  Well, I'll be copying that naming logic.  So, here is the first spinoff of BYI: Backyard Ice...it is about a patch of ice in Carleton County, NB.  Welcome to BYI: Johnville!

In my last blog entry, I mentioned that my Uncle Joe had contacted me about rink-building.  I asked him to write a few words about his rink and send along some pictures (click on a picture to see a larger version).  He quickly obliged, so here are his words and a few of his pictures.  (Oh, welcome to the lucrative world of blogging, Joe; I'll send you 85% of the proceeds from this particular blog entry.  Now, where's my calculator...85% of $0.00 is...?)

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Having a good rink on the pond is a yearly challenge. Our pond raises and lowers itself on the water table. This is a good year, so far because there seems to be lots of water in the ground. Mother Nature freezes the pond for us. We flood the ice by cutting a hole in the pond and pump water onto the ice.  There are a few problems:

1. When the water table lowers, the air space under the ice causes the ice to settle creating cracks and making for uneven ice surfaces.  Flooding seals the cracks.

2. Because of all the rain we had, the pond was really high when it froze. It froze about 6 inches then 4 feet of water seeped out from under it causing the ice to settle. This creates problem number 3

3. Getting on and off the ice is not for the faint of heart. It is like going down a frozen slide and clawing your way back up.  The advantages are you hardly ever lose the puck or tennis ball and for the most part you are down out of the wind.

4. The 4th and worst problem with pond rinks: when the pond gets covered with a few tons of snow there is a tendency for water to squish out from under the ice, onto the top of the ice. Unless the snow is cleared quickly you are left with a slushy mess. I now have a smaller rink but still pretty good size.

Problem #5: goaltending.

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Great stuff, Joe.  I'll only take credit (blame?) for Problem #5, as captioned in the picture on the left.  It's nice to see that there is lots of fun being had in Johnville this winter!  As for here in Beresford, the "work-time to skate-time ratio" that I mentioned in my last article is getting much better.

I'm hoping to present another spinoff of BYI in the near future.  How does "BYI: Rothesay" sound, you Kanes down there?  Hint, hint...