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...

Backyard Skating!

Things have been pretty busy lately, so unfortunately I've kind of neglected the ol' blog.  My last article was posted on January 5, which was only day 2 of the rink building process.  The weather has been cooperating this year, and I've been able to work on the rink just about every day.  Which brings us to this:

This picture of my son was taken on Saturday the 15th, and it was the first time anybody skated in our backyard for almost two years.  It's supposed to be pretty cold and not very windy tonight, so I'll be back out there giving it another flood.  In fact, the forecasted high temperatures are well below zero for at least the next couple of weeks, so this should be a great year for the rink.

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I got a note from my Uncle Joe yesterday...you remember him, he is the Uncle I made famous in this blog post.  He is also working on a patch of ice to skate on, as he has done for years, and he was wondering why we do what we do.  I think we carry the same gene that gets some people on their knees out in the dirt - and the heat and the flies - planting flowers.  Personally, I'll take a cold, crisp winter's night over a sticky hot summer day anytime.  As Joe said, "I feel good flooding the ice on a moonlit night when I'm freezing my butt off, even if no one ever skates on it."  Man, Joe, that's poetry.  As we both know, the work-time to skate-time ratio is always about 150:1 for most backyard rinks, but it really is time well spent.

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This blog isn't really the place to say this, but here I go anyway:  right now, I hate pro sports.  Explanation: my favourite NFL team is the New England Patriots, and my favourite NHL team is the Calgary Flames.  The Flames will be playing an outdoor game next month, so I'll probably write about that when the time comes.  Or not.  Ah, whatever.  I'm going outside now!

BYI's 1st B-Day

My first blog entry was on January 6, 2010, which makes this blog now one year old.  Quite honestly, there hasn't been much to blog about with regards to actual results in the construction of my rink, but I have enjoyed writing about other aspects of rink-building and skating outdoors.  Some highlights:

• I discussed my experiences competing in the World Pond Hockey Championships in Frozen Bodies (…of Water): Part II;
• I demonstrated the unbelievable differences in recent winters in March 9, 2008 Redux;
• here's a Father's Day post comparing the backyard rink to a garden [Gardens and Barns (and Happy Father’s Day!)];
• and, a recounting of some great stories told to me by my father and uncle about skating outdoors a long time ago can be found in Joe, Bob, Terry and Jim.

I'm really looking forward to year two of Backyard Ice, and I have many more stories for the blog bouncing around in my head.  However, I'm hoping that the next couple of months will be full of stories about our experiences skating in the backyard.  Oh, and speaking about that...

I've managed to get a decent start on my rink this year.  We had a green Christmas here in Beresford, and the first "big" snowfall we got after that melted away after a few days.  So, the only real work just started after we got a good bit of snow on Monday; on Tuesday night I spent some time splashing around in slush to work on the base.  It's now Wednesday, and I just came in from putting more water on the rink.  Its should be pretty cold for at least a few more days, so I'll be out there as often as I can puttin' the water to 'er.  Hopefully by the time a forecasted snow storm hits us on Saturday (20-30 cm, according to the Weather Network) my base will be built up and smooth enough to run the snowblower over it!