JOHNSON – Encounters of the Zamboni kind down at the new skating place

SAW MR. MEL’S already enjoyed a short visit down at our new and local skating rink, pond, trail … thing (who is Nancy anyway? Or maybe which Nancy is the question?), and I appreciated his short video and story found here.

When we were down there Saturday after 3 p.m., the gas fire barrels were burning, and there were hundreds more people there than shows in Mel’s video snippet.  It was actually bumping into each other busy.

Saw a dad take out his own five-year-old with a flurry of arm waving, ice skate skipping — gonna end up on his butt panic — as they both either relived their youth, or was actually experiencing it for the first time.  After accidentally body slamming the handheld youngster to the ice, they brushed each other off, and carried on.

We enjoyed a walk around the rink trail (a design I have to say is actually brilliant; ensures it isn’t just a square that would be taken over by hockey players which would just scare off family skaters) … and then I had an enlightening conversation with the young lad Zamboni operator/ occupant of the shack by the west end of the rink.

The ice cooling structure, condensers and pumps are out in the open there beside his shack, and as a bit of a fan of industrial cooling systems myself, we discussed icing issues around the coldest part of the pipes’ coolant cycle, and the design challenge to get the coolant to the other end of the loop … quite a distance … then he informed me that the actual combined square footage of the present ice is about equal to that found on a regulation square rink, but it needed more pumping capacity.

Interesting.  The more ya know.

He also told me that it runs daily on two of the three red pumps, and the third is there as backup in case of failure.

Huh … cool.

It’s a Saturday midafternoon, and beside the rink, right near the barrel fires and seating area, there sat a big sea can-style metal box, which we thought would be a retail hot chocolate shack … but no … it’s Tourism Kamloops … and it was closed.

There were probably 400 people there, fires were on, but not a hot beverage to be bought.  Struck me very oddly.  Our young custodian looked at the Tourism Kamloops box and said, “Ya, I dunno what that’s there for … they’re never here; I’d take a hot chocolate though.”

The grand opening is set for
Saturday, Jan. 17, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.,
speeches, food trucks and hot chocolate.

I can think of a bunch of lunch trucks that would happily scale down to running pots of hot chocolate, if the City let them in the park outside of their established yet limited food truck opportunity schedule.  Missed opportunity, I’d say.

The Zamboni there is a rental, and after the season it will likely be moved off to another year-round ice surface facility, or maybe returned as, in fact, the city has had an order in for two new machines for a few years now, and will likely need more with the addition of the new sheets going in in Aberdeen.

The interesting thing is, these things are hard to get.

This is the kind of stuff that you order … and they just don’t show up.

Apparently, there is a Zamboni manufacturing capacity issue — the world needs more but the factory is exporting less and less. They say it’s not a high profit, high speed assembly line product. They are basically hand made, and they cost starting at $300K, a price that will only go up if demand keeps increasing and supply lessens.

And … they just can’t make them any faster due to a lack of skills as there’s just not enough people trained in the specific fields needed to build these things.  And there’s also a profitability issue in the specialty hand made infrastructure machine world. The Zamboni is the pinnacle idea of that kind of machine; few need one, and no one wants to make them … so it’s not a big business model flush with investment.

Anyway, our young park labour lad also mentioned that he has to run the grooming machine during busy periods with a bull horn to warn skaters to stay away, and volunteered that it’s tricky here, as it’s not a predicable square to steer a box shaped machine around, one in which you can’t see your own wheels.  Where a boxed rink is a learn-able pattern … imagine the challenge to navigate around a twisting trail nightmare curved edge … when you literally can’t see where you are going.

Some people are giving him a (hopefully jovial) hard time (“ya missed a spot”),
but let’s all keep in mind that it’s kinda like assembling Ikea blindfolded, while driving a lawnmower on ice the size of a Ford 350 with a canopy, from a seat on the back bumper.

I suggested a pole-mounted 360 camera and a monitor setup, but that might be too good of an idea.  It’s fair to say it isn’t a hard job … but it isn’t an easy job either.

They say driving a Zamboni is like being a street sweeper, but the job is always on thin ice … or being a retired Zamboni driver is when you never really went anywhere, your dreams forever in circles … or it’s actually an art form where your ‘brilliance’ only lasts for five minutes before some 10-year-old makes a mess of it.

Maybe it’s like being a smooth criminal on the run — except your getaway car tops out at nine mph … or it’s the best hockey career backup plan: even if you never play in the NHL, you’re always guaranteed to resurface.

All I got, I play the lounge at 7 p.m.

David Johnson is a Kamloops resident, community volunteer and self described maven of all things Canadian.