Ottawa Family Fun

I’m kind of lazy. Not sure if lazy is the right word, I just don’t like to do more work than is needed. But I do commit myself to doing enough work that I can’t really label myself as lazy, more of a “quickest path” kind of guy (but not quite enough of a planner to call myself “efficient”).

When it comes to a backyard skating rink my “quickest path” actually turned out pretty good. With only a few mistakes. How do you make a mistake when you are making a rink with at Jiffy Ice Rink you picked up at Canadian Tire!? You can’t…. kind of…. Here is the story:

I was more excited than the kids to get our rink set up. I was waiting for the really cold weather to come and I had my Jiffy Ice Rink right by the back door and the basement window ready with the hose in the basement laundry room sink all warm and ready to go! Then it came, a nice big cold front was sweeping in and it looked like it was going to be -20 C or more over the next 4 days! Great, this is going to be great!

I ran down to the basement, hooked up the hose, cracked the window and instructed my wife to turn on the water when I yelled! I had the plastic down in the yard in no time (a slight incline in the backyard, but I didn’t think it would be too big of a deal). Then the water started filling up and only the low end was filling, and filling and filling. But I was right, it wasn’t so bad that the huge ice cube bubble I was filling up would break. Phew!

I let the water run for quite a while and checked on it every 15 minutes. When all was said and done, I had a great little rink. Now the keyword here is little! My 4 year old was running out of real estate way too soon. So, my answer was to go out and get a second Jiffy Ice Rink and put it beside the other, patch the join and voila 2X the space.

But, … by the time that I was ready to put the 2nd surface in, it had snowed a couple of feet. Hmmm. I can build up the sloped end and reduce the risk of having the my bubble burst (literally)! So, I packed the snow and built up one end. But I didn’t get rid of all of the snow as it would work as a great base.

Well, that base and a slight slope ended up making the new ice surface about 4 inches higher than the first ice surface. Hmmm. Do you know how much water it takes to flood one surface to be 4 inches higher. I tried, but never actually had the first one thick enough to catch the other one. There was instead a “temporary” flooded “ramp” that I put for the transition between the two ice surfaces. My 2 year old mainly stayed on the first ice surface with her bob skates, while my 4 year old learned to “skate the ramp” which really improved her balance I have to say. She would skate the whole ice surface and just take a GIANT step up to get up the ramp, and she would kind of ski down it the other way. It all worked out, but then she learned that you could launch a puck from the first ice surface by using the ramp. She smoked me in the shin more than once using this method. She also learned that if she hit the tin shed using the “ramp to raise” method, it made a really cool BANG! I put a stop to that, but only after I laughed to myself and thought of how many holes my parents had in their garage from my brother and I playing 1 on 1 with a real puck. Dad was not pleased to see the hole where I decided to see what would happen if I fired a slap shot against the wall with a real puck.

So with all that said, this year will be different. I plan to plan a little better this year. I think I will still run out to Canadian Tire and pick up 2 Jiffy Ice Rinks. But this time I will do them both at the same time. I think!

The other option I have been pondering is to just use a big tarp that I have in the shed. Wait for the first big snowfall and build my rink area then. Build up the snow banks, pack the snow underneath and just fill the tarp up. This plan will take a few more days to execute as you don’t want to fill the tarp up all at once like you would with the Jiffy Rink. Hmmm.

Canadian Tire sells the Jiffy Rink, but you can get them at Wal-Mart as well. I think the price was pretty much the same at both stores. Here is a link to the one at Canadian Tire.ca :

Now we just have to wait for the cold weather to blow in and stay (Woo Hoo! ???)

I’m kind of lazy. Not sure if lazy is the right word, I just don’t like to do more work than is needed. But I do commit myself to doing enough work that I can’t really label myself as lazy, more of a “quickest path” kind of guy (but not quite enough of a planner to call myself “efficient”).

When it comes to a backyard skating rink my “quickest path” actually turned out pretty good. With only a few mistakes. How do you make a mistake when you are making a rink with at Jiffy Ice Rink you picked up at Canadian Tire!? You can’t…. kind of…. Here is the story:

I was more excited than the kids to get our rink set up. I was waiting for the really cold weather to come and I had my Jiffy Ice Rink right by the back door and the basement window ready with the hose in the basement laundry room sink all warm and ready to go! Then it came, a nice big cold front was sweeping in and it looked like it was going to be -20 C or more over the next 4 days! Great, this is going to be great!

I ran down to the basement, hooked up the hose, cracked the window and instructed my wife to turn on the water when I yelled! I had the plastic down in the yard in no time (a slight incline in the backyard, but I didn’t think it would be too big of a deal). Then the water started filling up and only the low end was filling, and filling and filling. But I was right, it wasn’t so bad that the huge ice cube bubble I was filling up would break. Phew!

I let the water run for quite a while and checked on it every 15 minutes. When all was said and done, I had a great little rink. Now the keyword here is little! My 4 year old was running out of real estate way too soon. So, my answer was to go out and get a second Jiffy Ice Rink and put it beside the other, patch the join and voila 2X the space.

But, … by the time that I was ready to put the 2nd surface in, it had snowed a couple of feet. Hmmm. I can build up the sloped end and reduce the risk of having the my bubble burst (literally)! So, I packed the snow and built up one end. But I didn’t get rid of all of the snow as it would work as a great base.

Well, that base and a slight slope ended up making the new ice surface about 4 inches higher than the first ice surface. Hmmm. Do you know how much water it takes to flood one surface to be 4 inches higher. I tried, but never actually had the first one thick enough to catch the other one. There was instead a “temporary” flooded “ramp” that I put for the transition between the two ice surfaces. My 2 year old mainly stayed on the first ice surface with her bob skates, while my 4 year old learned to “skate the ramp” which really improved her balance I have to say. She would skate the whole ice surface and just take a GIANT step up to get up the ramp, and she would kind of ski down it the other way. It all worked out, but then she learned that you could launch a puck from the first ice surface by using the ramp. She smoked me in the shin more than once using this method. She also learned that if she hit the tin shed using the “ramp to raise” method, it made a really cool BANG! I put a stop to that, but only after I laughed to myself and thought of how many holes my parents had in their garage from my brother and I playing 1 on 1 with a real puck. Dad was not pleased to see the hole where I decided to see what would happen if I fired a slap shot against the wall with a real puck.

So with all that said, this year will be different. I plan to plan a little better this year. I think I will still run out to Canadian Tire and pick up 2 Jiffy Ice Rinks. But this time I will do them both at the same time. I think!

The other option I have been pondering is to just use a big tarp that I have in the shed. Wait for the first big snowfall and build my rink area then. Build up the snow banks, pack the snow underneath and just fill the tarp up. This plan will take a few more days to execute as you don’t want to fill the tarp up all at once like you would with the Jiffy Rink. Hmmm.

Canadian Tire sells the Jiffy Rink, but you can get them at Wal-Mart as well. I think the price was pretty much the same at both stores. Here is a link to the one at Canadian Tire.ca :

Now we just have to wait for the cold weather to blow in and stay (Woo Hoo! ???)