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Ice Moguls
Why should rollerbladers have all the fun? | |
Ice rinks are uniformly flat, which is great for those guys who like to race around whacking pucks and their opponents' front teeth out. But flat is so passé for the modern rollerblading crowd.
One of the most enjoyable ice skating sessions I've had was on the Central Park Boat Pond after an
ice storm. The ice covered the piles of snow left over from previous snow storms and snowman building, creating a hilly but marvellously smooth surface. So I propose we build a skating rink with curved surfaces, ramps, shutes, tubes, funnels, etc., as a design feature, not an accident of nature.
In terms of creating non-flat ice surfaces, it shouldn't be all that difficult, even though we are starting with water. Ice rinks are typically built up by spraying thin coats of water first onto the freezing concrete floor, and then onto the frozen ice. Provided the person spraying the ice doesn't get carried away, we should be able to build up a decent thickness of ice without puddling.
Quite how the Zamboni will manage thereafter, I've no idea. But I'm sure the Zamboni people can come up with something.
http://www.zamboni.com/
Well, maybe an autonomous swarm of them. [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 05 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]
(?) This might just be the ticket.
http://store4.yimg....hockey_1761_2063544
Well, maybe an autonomous swarm of them. [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 05 2004]
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AHA! Here you are, and we all thought you were dead! |
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I'm thinking this will call for an all-terrain Zamboni. Now that would be fun to watch. |
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Can we paint wavy lines on the ice? |
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More importantly: can we still play hockey? |
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And how did you get out of my trap? |
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Love it. I once dreamt of an ice rink with two rinks, one above the other, connected by a ramp. To go down the ramp was easy enough but to get up it I had to skate round and round, faster and faster until I acheived escape velocity and could hurtle up the ramp, possibly leaving the ice as I crested the slope and doing a star-jump or somersault (now, look at that word, that's a really wierd word). Brilliant. |
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Please note: this ice-skating prowess of mine is entirely fictional. I usually start off shuffling while holding onto the barrier (I'm always very worried at the exit and entry points and have to make a mad lurch forwards) and after not falling down for a few minutes, become desperately over-confident and start letting go, skating faster and then I try and do that crossing-the-feet-over-when-you-go-round-a-corner- business. This usually results in me being carried from the ice with my skates inexpicably tangled together in a mangle of metal and a me-shaped dent in the rink barrier. |
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I would love to experience skating inside of a large,
perfectly formed, eerily translucent, hollow globe of ice. |
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I would like it even more if it were uplit from within the
perimeter of a short circular stand, aglow in a rainbow of
softly changing colors. |
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...Could I request that this base house two, low noise,
motorized wheels steered by voice command, (mine from
within the globe) to gently, or briskly, rotate the ice
globe thru infinite axes while I skate inside? |
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Lastly, would it be too much to ask someone for his or her
assistance with the proper mathematical function for
setting this globe rotating in such a way that I could,
while balancing on one skate upon its interior curved
surface, spin perpetually there after? At least until it
starts to rain on me from my breath's vapors condensing.
:b |
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One of my favorite skating memories of childhood is about an ice storm when I was about 8 or 9. It was quite severe, and the whole town seemed covered in it. The streets were coated an inch-thick and nobody could drive until the town workers got them cleared. But in the morning they were barren, so I got my skates on and skated all over town, up and down hills. It was a blast. |
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Once again I am extremely jealous of those of you who live in places where it snows. I *love* to ice skate and if someone baked this idea they would undoubtedly be able to relieve me of much of my hard earned money. |
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DrC - this one is pure genius! |
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I would go with the flow and give this my +, but I think it would be more honest if I could try ice skating first. |
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I lived in northern Ontario as a child, and one winter the water main burst a couple of blocks from our house during one of the coldest winters that I can remember.
The water froze into these huge blue mushroom shaped ice pillars, because the water main would freeze solid and burst a few feet further up the line. The end result was awe inspiring, with the sunlight diffusing through the ice and reflecting off of the columns. The tops of the *mushrooms* were all frozen to one another at about six or seven feet high and the floor of ice between them was solidified in ripples like some magma flows you see.
It was really something to see before the teenagers turned it into a party spot. |
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How about forming the moguls and ramps and chutes from a mold suspended above the rink ... simply lower it into place, fill mold with water, freeze, and repeat if necessary ... one minute a hockey game, 10 minutes later you have aggressive skating ... simply lovely, Dr.C! [+] |
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Oooo this could lead the way for
ice pinball. With a luge and caster
skates. Hmmm, I gotta post that.
Thanks for the inspiration. |
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Let's put some sturdy clear plastic under it, since many of these marvelous shapes as some point will collapse. Ice skating mistakes are both common unforgiving enough without adding ramps. |
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and/or, combine this with an on-site dental practice. |
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Baked. If you want this experience, put on rollerblades and go to a skate park in the early morning when you won't have to compete with 11 year olds. |
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[Goomba] There's really not a very good comparison between ice skates and rollerblades. I've done both and they dynamics of them are quite different. |
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you know...i've been thinking about this for QUITE AWHILE... |
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the idea that "ice skates and hockey skates" can be treated like rollerblades down a ramp or pipeline. |
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or like ski's with their "long jump" or what's it called with bumpy mounds of hill terrain they ski through. |
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i was even more enspired when a fellow figure skater told me of a story of when the brilliance of nature offered her and her friend a nice glistening ice that went downhill. She went down through the nature ice course with her skates on. I WANT TO KNOW THAT THRILL. |
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it would be genius! and FAAAAAR more entertaining for the general crowd that your plain old skating around the rink. *plots and plans* |
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