The Fat Lady Sings...

 And I sold the rink the other day...

 It comes with a lot of mixed emotions... The good times... the frustrations... the blood, sweat and tears of the creation and maintenance... Of the joyful laughter of the kids (and adults) skating and playing hockey.

 Life moves on, and sometimes not for the better.   Due to a change in real life circumstances, it was time to clear out the backyard and find someone else who could put all that equipment to good use.  A couple of the boards had started to rot, but the majority of it was still in great shape (if only needing a good pressure washing)

 I'm glad it's found a new home. 

 I have no doubt the new owner will put it to good use, and that the boards I've passed on have been infused with some of that youth and laughter that was once heard in the cold winter months in my backyard.

2011-2012 Rink

 So October is nearly here... and I think I've made a decision...

 To *not* build my rink this year...  For a couple of reasons.

 The biggest one being that my girlfriend of 5 years and I broke up due to... well, whatever.  She moved out in July, and with her went her 7 yr old son who was the main user of the rink the past couple of years (except for last year when I didn't have one either). 

 The second is that my daughter is now almost 14 years old...  Doesn't really do 'that stuff' anymore...

 So that's a lot of work AND a lot of money to do something that would be used maybe a half dozen times during the year.

 It makes me very sad on a couple of fronts, most being the dissolution of my relationship.

Finished the cleanup...

 So I took down the boards the other day after hauling the tarp to the dump... 

 Next year, I'll make sure it's done RIGHT.

 /sign.

An Unmitigated Disaster

 /frustrated

 So there was a hole in the liner... AT least one... 

 I had tried to do another fill, with the same result...  I noticed a small orange wiffle ball under the tarp in the middle of the rink... I had to make the hole larger to get it out and repaired it with multiple strips of duct tape.

 Another fill, same result - so the liner itself might have a defect in it somewhere... somewhere I just can't find.

 The rink is now 7" deep with snow.  I had thought about watering the top of the snow - getting that to freeze then flooding over it.   After trying to do that with 2 applications of water of incredibly cold days, I've given up....

 The liner was $160.  I can't afford to drop that kind of cash around Christmas time again...  Others on the Yahoo board suggest going back to Home Depot and see if they can swap it out...  That may be my only option at this point...

/frustrated

*Grrrrrr*

 So it was nice and cold on Saturday morning...  I stopped in at Home Depot to see if the liners were in for the rink... Luckily enough, they were...  but they'd raised the price of the 40x60 to $149 this year!  Freakin scammers!

 Got it home, and Hannah helped me put it down... Got the water running....  It filled and filled and filled...  I had a feeling that it was leaking somewhere, but there was no evidence of it anywhere.  

 Left it filling overnight.   Woke up this morning, and it was at  the same level... Checked again, and the area by the cement path was submerged in 5" of water...

And it's snowing now, with the rink 1/4 filled...  and I"m leaving for work reasons for a week in a few hours.

 NOT the start I wanted to have.  :S

Side boards

Are up!  (No picutres - I think you've seen enough of that!)

 Chainlink fence along that side is up as well and secured...

 I'm not going to make the same mistake that I did last year - Putting up the end boards BEFORE laying the liner... That just caused all sorts of problems trying to do it that way.

 So I'll go back to my regular way of base boards, then liner and filling it up - once frozen THEN I'll put up the boards...

 Temps still +10 some days here, so it may be a couple more weeks


 - k

New "boards"

 So my (ex) girlfriend has a dog named Bella that she brought into the home as a 'surprise' when we were first living together.

Odds are, I'll be keeping her when she moves...  And I'm getting tired of putting her on the chain everytime, so I figured I'd put up a chain link fence...  Which, coincidentally will run right along side my rink... kind of giving the once side of it a new "board" to keep players and pucks on the ice...

 Just a thought.

The Rain commeth...

 It's March 10th, and it's pouring rain...  

 The rink has been dead for a couple weeks now and in fact, before coming to work I poked holes in the liner to start the draining process...

 Soon the boards will come down and be stored for another summer... until a chilly November day comes along and spurs me to put them back up....

 Goodbye HIA, see you in the fall.

Hockey Day in Canada!

 Rink needs a fair bit of work before Saturday's annual game... Going to be hard between working midnights...  will see.

 Hockey Day @ Kev's house starts around 2:30 and runs into the night.... BYOB!  Fire pit, boot hockey, xbox hockey, tv hockey... gonna fire up the BBQ and cook some burgers.

 Let me know if yer interested!

Boards are up (mostly) and first skate

 Thanks to the boys coming by on a warm Tuesday night, the end boards went up with only slight difficulties.  A couple of days later, the kids too to the rink for a few hours of bliss and exercise.  Good times.

 Over Christmas it rained... Yes, rain.  In Northern Ontario at the end of December.  Combine that with snow and the entire city was a disaster. 

 The kind of snow where you have no problem paying the local pre-teens to come out and shovel for $5/hour.

 I had enough fun with doing the driveway that I decided to hold off on the rink.  I recall back to the  year prior where I attempted to clean the rink off after such a weather predicament...  It wasn't pretty.  So this year I vowed to let everything harden, then clean it off.... Unfortunately, the weather has since dipped into the -30C category - too cold to do anything.

 New Years afternoon I'm going to attempt to snowblow the rink and get a couple of floods down - in an attempt to get it semi-smooth for a friendly skate over the weekend.  

 Will see how that goes....

 

On Frozen Pond

 I wanted cold, and we sure got it.  Past week of  -10C days and -30C nights...  The ice is solid alright - but it's been too cold to put up the boards...

 Maybe next week when it warms up a bit.

 Boy, rink owners are a fussy bunch.

Time to Flood

 Temperatures FINALLY dropping to a decent -8 to -15c at night... Got a bit of snow last night. Figured this was my chance to get the rink going (finally).  I snowplowed the 5" of snow out of the rink and put the liner down... Started flooding at approx 1:30pm today... So far, so good...

5C and...

Not falling very quickly.  In fact, it'll be into December before the nights will be cold enough for me to even begin thinking about flooding.

 The other day I was outside doing yardwork in shorts and a t-shirt.

 It's the end of November.

 Gah.

2009-2010 Edition

 It was a beautiful +10C type of day on Saturday, so I put up the main framework for the rink... Only took about an hour and a half and it was complete.  I still have to drive a few 2x4 stakes down along the 2x12s for added support... Probably do that today.

 I've been having difficulties with Home Depot and the liner I've been buying every year.  Seems like the first time I called them (I've been visiting the store every 3 or 4 days to see if they've come in) they stated they weren't carrying them anymore.    Then I called Jay in the Soo to check his store - voila.  They had 9.  I called our store back and, "Oh yes, we just don't have any and we don't know if we're going to get any" was the tale I was told this time.

 Jay has offered to pick me up one in the Soo and throw it on the Greyhound to get to me.

Grr.

 Of course, it's still way above zero here... barely gets below 0 at night yet.   Crappy summer, but it's carrying over to the fall.

... the season begins anew

It's almost October... That means soon comes the cold of November and the snow of December.

On the flip side, I was on kijiji and someone was selling a rink rake (an official NHL licenced one!) for $10. I bought it. Turns out the seller was someone else who works in my company, just in a different office. Small town.

Hockey draft is this week.

I'm thinking about installing a sillcock this year. (Go google it Laura, you'll see) Hot water is the bomb, but running a hose from the kitchen sucks - especially when you have to leave the door open when its -40.

It's all about making life easier.

Is this the end?

The coming of spring often times brings about major changes in ones life. There's some personal upheaval atm, which I'm not going to write about - but I will discuss the ice situation.

Recently we've had some very warm weather (+5C) and some snowfall, which has left the rink pitted and bumpy.

I think we may have seen the last "skate" of the year last week. It's still great for boothockey though, so that'll be ongoing for another couple of weeks I'm sure.... And after the snow is gone the long arduous task of dismantling the rink for another year.

Et le but!

Et le but!
Originally uploaded by Big Swede Guy

The 2nd "Annual" Hockey Day in Canada was held on my rink this past Saturday. We had 9 participants for the 3 on 3 boot hockey game - people subbed off as they needed to replenish their drink, or, in the case of Jeff, catch their breath.

It was a perfect day. Jay and I spent about an hour clearing the snow from the rink. I would have loved to have flooded it the night before (to provide that EXTRA slipperiness), but alas, it was snowing.

We had a firepit goin' on the side to warm up by... although with the temperature a balmy -5C it was a gorgeous day.

Festivities started around 2, and carried on until after 5 when dinner was served. The day ended with a few of the guys watching UFC 94.

I forgot to get ideas on a rink name... Will have to work on that.

All in all, a great day!

Nothin' Goin On

Yup, that's right... Not much going on lately with the rink. Between severe cold (read -40C with windchills), a major snow dump (over 3'), the holiday's and one kid with broncitus, not much has happened with the rink.

In fact, there's still 2' of snow sitting on it atm.... I finally got around to snowblowing out the driveway/pathways etc etc the other day...

We're still around. Rink is still there.


We're just a bit frozen atm.

Damage Assessed...

It's not nearly as bad as I thought it would be... Temp hovered just above zero today, and the rainfall was actually VERY minimal. It just made all the existing snow sticking... and HEAVY. Laura shovelled most of the snow to the sideboards of the rink while I slept today (working midnights) so her son could play... I had to get that snow off the rink, less it freeze into an unmanagemable mess. 1/2 hour later, it was done. I'm hoping to clear it right off tomorrow and do some flooding to repair the damage that was caused last Monday.

Rain.

Yes, it's raining in Thunder Bay. December 26th, 2008. It's raining, and +5C.

Had I known that, I would have shovelled the rink today... But I didn't, I slept before my midnight shift instead. Hopefully it's just a sprinkel tonight, and I can get at it tomorrow afternoon after I get up... Or maybe early this morning if I have any energy left.

Scooter asked how the side boards are holding up: VERY well indeed! I didn't put any bracing behind them this year - I simply screwed them down to the frame, and then screwed in 1' pieces of 2x4 between every panel - holding them together. They were quite sturdy before - and now they're rock solid due to the reinforcement of snow behind it. :)


Hopefully I can shovel and do a flood to get the ice back up to skateable level this week :)

Merry Boxing Day!

K