jakehas

The day I do that, my life will be complete.

Great question, the wheels actually have very very small spikes facing out that grip the ice. But don’t be confused, we still drift it once in a while. Ice is slippery.

It’s an amazing job, not something I would do long term as a career, but I find it really cool and unique to say that you use to drive a zamboni! The pay can be tough, most ice rinks are expensive to run and don’t generate enough income to afford it all. That’s why a lot of rinks end up going under which, in turn, will make the pay not so great either and the workload heavier.

I got fairly lucky because the university I work for is decently wealthy. The hockey team’s success is keeping us alive!

While that scene may be dark as hell, you definitely do not want to find yourself under one of those things... You wont be able to tell the tale.

We start by doing two laps around the edges and then shoot down the middle and basically do circles in such a pattern that makes it so we dont have to do many tight turns. The zam is basically a giant lawnmower, it can turn sharply, but not that sharp. The pattern itself doesn’t actually effect the ice condition or the smoothness of it. What determines that is the amount of ice we are actually cutting down and how much water we are laying.