Saturday, December 15, 2007

Icing the Rink

We've had a lot of snow lately. Well for around here we have. Funny when I read Coldest winter in 15 years I thought great that will make it easy to freeze the rink.

What I didn't realize was that the other comment in the article was also going to apply. Higher then normal level of snowfall. Snowfall? I figured that was for those in milder climates.

Well in the end I had waited and waited hoping wind, or warm weather might have cleaned up the rink. Nope. So, since I had some time between exams and the big party, I figured it was time to get started. 3 hours of shoveling later I finally had the rink clear. And by finally I mean FINALLY.

It was 11:00 so I figured I had some time to get a coat of ice down before hitting the sack. Then I saw the timer on the tap. You know those mechanical timers that let you turn on the sprinkler and have it shut off after so much time. So the tap is wide open. Guess what -15'c temperatures did to that? I ended up going in to boil the kettle a couple of times till I finally got the water flowing. I even had to use a wrench to get the timer off the tap. For a moment I thought the whole thing was going to come off the house.

Now I'm sitting in the dark waiting to move the sprinkler to a new location. So far so good. Things are doing better now that the ibuprofen is in my system.

PS Trying to avoid walking on the plastic and newly formed ice gave me the idea to use the long reach paint pole to move the sprinkler around. Normally I have to climb around the edges in the snow to get the movement.

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