Skating’s version of cross-country skiing

With the recent warm weather skating on the lake is probably just a memory for another year. It was an exceptional year with 7 or 8 great days when the ice was smooth and there was little or no snow on the surface.

But as reported in the Ottawa  Citizen yesterday, skating this winter was not confined to lakes and rivers. Brian Anderson is a 60-year-old Osgoode resident who practices “wild ice” skating.

Wild ice is not what you would expect – ice hanging out with the cool gang, getting into the booze, and then melting away when the cops arrive – it’s naturally occurring ice that forms in farmers fields, ditches and creek beds during the thaw-freeze cycles typical of late winter and early spring.

As Anderson admits, some of the ice can be “pretty wild”, as corn stalks and clumps of earth poke through here and there, but it can also provide kilometres of natural skateway for the wild ice skating aficionado.

Just don’t wear your best skates.

An ill wind…

As I look out at the lake today I’m reminded of the old adage, “’Tis an ill wind that blows nobody any good”.

We are now into what is arguably the worst weather season – that depressing thaw, freeze, thaw cycle that we go through every year as Spring begins to flex her muscles before bursting on the scene, fully formed, some time in April.

Today is no exception as rain pours from leaden skies to erase much of the snow in the woods and turn the  hard-packed roads to sheets of ice. Puddles of water gather around the door sills and on the driveway. It’s damp and it’s dreary – the kind of day where the best medicine is a good book and a roaring fire.

But the rain has also flooded the lake, melting the snow on top of the ice to create another puddle, this time one that’s about 300 acres in size. And with temperatures forecast to drop to –18 tonight and expected to stay cold for the next few days, we’ll have some of the best skating in the country. All free, and right at the back door.

It’s going to be great!

Wear a helmet - it's good for you

This small item (in its entirety) appeared in today’s The Ottawa Citizen:

“A busy Saturday on the Rideau Canal has prompted Ottawa paramedics to urge skaters to wear helmets. Three women, ages 66, 26, and 36, were taken to hospital, two with broken wrists and one with a back injury.”

The headline was: “Wear helmets while skating: paramedics”.

Helmets?

The only thing that would have prevented all these injuries would have been a ban on female skaters whose last digit of their age is a 6.

I am so sick of being told to wear a helmet for everything from bicycle riding, skiing, snowboarding, motorcycling, ski-dooing, tobogganing, skydiving (like that’s going to help in a 3000-foot plummet), ad nauseum.

Fortunately my bath is still sacrosanct. For now.