I wanna drive the zamboni

Nick is totally infatuated with zambonis. I truly believe that is 1/2 the reason he wants to go to hockey games (1/4 is for the refs and the other 1/4 is for the actual game). He will get out his hockey nets he got for Christmas, play 2 minutes of hockey, then move the nets out of the kitchen so he can use his shopping cart or the toy vaccuum to zamboni the ice/kitchen floor. He also uses his lego garbage can to zamboni the table. He gets mad when the televised hockey games cut to commercial between periods. The list goes on, but I think you get the picture.

So this weekend Felix, one of Mike's co-workers, offered to let Nick come down and see the zamboni. In part, I think Felix feels bad because he has shown up at our house on a few occassions to take Mike away for several days for business. He's done his best to make it up to the kid (we've also seen Felix's two vintage fire trucks -- real ones folks, not models), but Nick still isn't sure about him. So today, we watched Felix zamboni the ice and then headed down the to garage to learn all about what happens behind the scenes. I'm not sure how much Nick understood, but he sure looked like he was taking it all in. Unfortunately, he is so dang shy he rarely smiles around strangers which then makes it look like he's not having any fun. But, I know he did. A mom can tell these kinds of things.

First Felix showed Nick how the zamboni shaves ice from the arena and collects it in a bin on the front of the machine. Once the zamboni is parked, the front end lifts up and drops all the ice into a pool of warm water to be melted.





Then he showed him how really hot water squirts up from the back of the machine to create the new layer of ice. If you look closely you can see the water. A heavy white towel then smooths the water out so the new layer freezes evenly.



Then, Nick got to sit on the zamboni. We had walked over to that side of the machine and Nick grabbed my hand and inched toward the driver's seat. Felix, on the left, was kind enough to offer to let him sit up there, as long as he didn't touch anything. I'm pretty sure that is a repair bill we couldn't have afforded.



Felix showed Nick some other cool stuff, but by that time his attention was wandering back to the ice where the Jr. Hawks were playing Omaha. And then I had to get a picture of me and Zander, just to prove we were there!