Skating on a Frozen River in February

Today was a provincial holiday in Ontario. So if you worked for an organisation that observed provincial statutory holidays, such as my employer, you were in luck. However, the employees of the federal government had to report to work today. Unless they booked off a vacation day or perhaps a sick day.

The weather was nice out. Last week the temperature went above freezing and it rained a little bit and everything started melting. Then it got freezing cold again the way it is supposed to be in this town in February. Which reminds me. A lot of people complain when it gets cold. But not me. I don't complain about the cold. I just make jokes about it. That usually is okay except that now I'm catching myself making the same jokes over and over. I remember hearing some old people doing that years ago before I started getting old myself. Actually, I'm not old yet. I'm barely middle aged. Not that I act like it. Now where was I with my story... Oh yes. So the snow started to melt. Then it froze. The result is the same as when you flood your little skating rink in your back yard. Except that this is an entire river. Now the Ottawa river is a big skating rink. So I made up my mind to go skating on the frozen Ottawa river.

Everybody else in town was skating on the canal downtown. I'm sure it was very nice. But, as a contrarian, I decided to skate on the river. I decided to access the river by means of the ramp at the yacht club where people launch their boats during other seasons of the year.

Because I'm out of shape, my skating speed was rather less than 5mph. I did not create any wake at all. At least none that I was aware of.

I wondered how many people I would see on the river. I didn't see very many people when I started out. I only saw a few people. Imagine that. You've got a whole river here, with miles and miles of ice to skate on, and you only see a few other people here and there. And to tell you the truth, the only person I saw on skates was me.

I said hello to this person who was ice-fishing. He had bagged a pike. I'm sure it would have made a good supper. To me the pike looked about maybe 16 or 18 inches long. However, the pike might get bigger with each re-telling of the story. That is how things go with fish stories. The fisherman was rather reserved in his manner at first, but he seemed to be in a good mood due to his success. After he began speaking to me it was in one-word sentences. Here he is smiling for the camera.

Then someone in an ice boat passed me. Each of us was in a good mood, so we exchanged greetings by means of a wave of the hand. I took the picture but the ice boat was far away by the time I succeeded in getting the shutter to click. Actually I don't think digital cameras have shutters any more. They just play this tinny little digital recording of an old-fashioned camera shutter clicking. Anyway, I was telling you about the ice-boat. I read somewhere that these iceboats can reach speeds of 100mph on the ice. With a good operator who knows how to cut the wind just so, there is some kind of vacuum which forms in front of the sail and it reduces the air resistance. I don't quite understand how it works so I'll have to read about it on wiki-pedia.

Then this other ice boat came by. There were two people with this one. Maybe they were friends with the first person. They said they needed a bigger gust of wind. I offered to push the ice boat a little but they politely declined. Maybe they were worried that I might damage the ice boat. Things like that have happened to me before. I remembered that one time many years ago, I tried to open my friend's car door but the door handle broke off in my hand. After that I tried to be more careful with other people's possessions. Some people get huffy if you break their things even if you don't mean to.

So I skated farther away from the frozen river bank. Then I took this picture of the sun shining on the ice. The ice was not really purple. Those purple
pixels are something that the stupid camera was doing because the light was too bright. But you get the idea. Maybe I shouldn't blame the camera. Come to think of it, there was too much light for my own eyes and I was wearing sunglasses. Anyways, the sunlight reflecting on the glare ice was nice looking. That was why I took the picture. I took it because I thought it looked nice.

Then I skated back to the ramp I started from, put my winter boots back on, and went home. I was in a good mood. I decided that I had enjoyed the day. Let me quote one of the few words spoken by the ice-fisherman described earlier in this blog entry, "Yup."